Visiting KU Leuven and Hosting Leuven in Illinois: Strengthening Transatlantic Relationships

By Jessica Mrase

CEURO participants visit Brussels.
Jessica is fourth from the right, in the beige trench coat.

When the CEURO project was in its early stages, I had already fully committed to it. Nothing had been set, and we weren’t sure of any details, but I knew that somehow, I would be a part of it. I believed in the project, the course, and the trips abroad. It was something original and being part of that would be an honor. Returning to Leuven was something I had always thought of doing, but never knew if it would happen. With the CEURO course, I was able to travel back to Leuven and revisit the city that captured my heart two years before when I had studied there for a semester in my undergrad. I had a grand plan of sleeping the entire way across the Atlantic so that I would be ready to hit the ground running as soon as we landed, and that was very much the case. I wanted to serve the others in my group as a guide and show them all the wonderful parts of Leuven. Showing them the beautiful architecture, where I had had class, and of course the chocolate, were all highlights from the first day in Belgium.

But, this trip was more than just revisiting Leuven for me. I was excited to meet the students we had only interacted with virtually in class. Here, we were able to meet them in person and be in class together, have meals, and go on excursions. We learned about each other’s life stories, where we came from, and also our interests, what we are researching, and where we hope to end up in our careers.

However, with all of the wonderful memories made abroad, nothing can compare to the week that the students from KU Leuven came to Illinois. We welcomed the Leuven students to typical Illinois spring weather: snow, rain, and sunshine. It was as if a week had barely passed between us. During this week we invested more time in our conversations. Somehow, being in the US struck more political conversations between the Europeans and Americans, but all in the spirit of curiosity. On both ends, we admired the differences between cultures and ways of life and took pieces of each with us. At our potluck, we all had the opportunity to thank one another for sharing this incredible experience.

CEURO participants in Champaign, IL

The relationships made in Europe only became stronger in the US. This pilot project was made possible by the dedicated staff at both KU Leuven and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Without their hard work in making this course possible, we would not have experienced the government and culture of each other’s homes in the way that we did in these few short weeks.

The US, the EU, and the Internationalization of Higher Education

By Rafael Rodríguez

This blog post was written for the course "Current Issues in Global and EU Affairs", which took place from February 12-April 30, 2018.

It is a well-known fact that defense and security remain some of the main scopes of the transatlantic relations between the European Union (EU) and the United States (US). Yet, there are many different areas that cover other fundamentals of these relations, such as education.

Education, and more specifically, the Internationalization of Higher Education, has had a tremendous growth in terms of the number of educational institutions tailoring efforts to attract the international market of students. Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), best known for publishing the QS World University Rankings, state in their website that international student enrollment has grown exponentially to reach five million between 1990 and 2014; by 2025, this number is expected to reach 8 million globally (West, 2018). The EU’s marketing efforts to promote the region as a single destination for international students since 2007, added to the Bologna Process, which ensured comparability in the standards and quality of higher-education qualifications. This causes the US to stay behind only with an economic approach where higher standards of education go mainly along with some of the highest tuition fees in the world, while the EU set strategies to market EU educational institutions not only for their affordable tuition prices but for their research and internationalization interests.

Yet, the internationalization of HE has been strengthened by collaborative partnerships among educational institutions across borders in the last couple of decades (Stiasny & Gore, 2012). This is due to an increasing global significance of cosmopolitan students and universities. More specifically, Stiasny and Gore (2012) mention that these transnational and transatlantic partnerships allow international and even local students to become "more knowledgeable, more focused, clearer about their needs and their wishes, more sophisticated and more international" (p. 43). Furthermore, through international academic experiences, the labor market is better qualified and competitive, and as a result, countries on both sides of the Atlantic, now have the opportunity to obtain better-trained professionals who can support further research and development and ensure a stronger nation for future international relations. This double benefit for professionals and for the nation-state is a way to understand why education and student mobility is one of the phenomena that has been strengthened with globalization, and how important it is to explore this aspect with reference to transatlantic bilateral relations in more depth. In other words, if more students go abroad, a wide range of needs and demands at a personal, institutional and even national level can be covered (Macready & Tucker, 2011).

With the experience that the EU has gathered within more than a decade of promoting the entire region as a single destination for international students, the transatlantic cooperation between Higher Education institutions in the EU and the US starting in 1993 is facing new challenges (De Wit, 2015). While those transatlantic relations initiated and have been maintained at a bilateral level, a new agreement should focus on a multilateral one in which the EU integration can be better matched. The knowledge economy has made that Universities become oriented towards a regime of academic capitalism institutes. Students have been turned into consumers who prioritize the outcome of education, like acknowledgement, satisfaction, pride of belonging to the university, etc. rather than the sole purchase of the program.

In a nutshell, the new era of information and the trade of knowledge as a commodity characterize the importance that the internationalization of Higher Education represents for the transatlantic relations among global competitors like the EU and the US.

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References

De Wit, H. (2015). A decade of transatlantic cooperation. International Higher Education, (35).

Macready, C., & Tucker, C. (2011). Who goes where and why? an overview and analysis of global educational mobility. New York: Institute of International Education.

Stiasny, M. (Ed.). (2012). Going global: the landscape for policy makers and practitioners in tertiary education. Howard House: Emerald.

Study in Europe. (n.d.). Retrieved April 23, 2018, from https://ec.europa.eu/education/study-in-europe_en

West, J. (2018, February 9). Growth of International Student Numbers in Higher Education. Retrieved April 17, 2018, from http://www.qs.com/growth-international-students-higher-education/

USA-EU Relations: What is the Future of the TTIP?

By Javier Zenil Peña

This blog post was written for the course "Current Issues in Global and EU Affairs", which took place from February 12-April 30, 2018.

The US presidential elections in 2016 had a pronounced impact in the transatlantic negotiations between the EU and the US.  As the new US president, Trump began new protectionism initiatives with the intention of prioritizing the interests of the American people. Consequently, trade negotiations such as the Transatlantic Trade Negotiations (TTIP) were halted as “US president-elect Trump campaigned furiously on a promise to scrap international trade deals, throwing the ambitious pact with the European Union into serious doubt.” (Euractiv 2016). With the uncertainty direction of the TTIP, one of the most ambitious transatlantic trade agreements, the Asian markets seemed to open their market to the EU.  Nevertheless, the EU and the US’ relations are not only important but these relations are essential for the international market and the economies of many nation-states.  The US and the EU economies are both the most prominent in the world.  By having conflicts and an immovable trade deal, the international market is impeded from growing, thus the negotiations of the TTIP should continue.  This issue is evidently perceived by some of the most prominent EU member states such as Germany.  Germany’s chancellor has openly expressed the interests of Germany in re-negotiating and continuing the negotiations to revive the TTIP. Last year Angela Merkel expressed in the Christian Democratic conference that she is: “in favour of resuming negotiations on such a free trade accord — and also resolving all the problems together,” (Euractiv 2017). The disposition of chancellor Markel indicates that Germany is much more conscious of the importance of the continuity and development of trade agreements between the US and the EU contrasting to the position of the US president Donald Trump who argues for a better deal.

The Future of the TTIP is uncertain in some degree at least for the next two years.  The current US administration might have a better position to decide the direction of this transatlantic trade. In the meantime, it seems that other nation states are ready to be on board for trade agreements with the EU, like Japan for instance.  This recent movement may indicate that the EU is also considering other options besides trade relations with the United States.  The American government must reconsider its position regarding international trade negotiations with the EU.   With the current trend of globalization, to maintain a healthy and stable economy the US must maintain and develop its international trade with one of the most powerful markets in the world which is the market of the European Union.

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References

German government backs restarting TTIP talks. (2017, June 28). Retrieved from https://www.euractiv.com/section/global-europe/news/merkel-backs-restarting-ttip-talks/

Malmström: EU-US trade deal 'frozen' after Trump vote. (2016, November 11). Retrieved from https://www.euractiv.com/section/trade-society/news/malmstrom-eu-us-trade-deal-frozen-after-trump-vote/

Transatlanticity and Government-Sponsored Networks

By Jessica Mrase

This blog post was written for the course "Current Issues in Global and EU Affairs", which took place from February 12-April 30, 2018.

Transatlantic relations between the US and the EU have been some of the most powerful relations in the world. Out of them, the concept of “transatlanticity” was born, housing core topics such as politics, culture, history, and economics. As leaders of the West, the US and the EU are often argued as normative powers and take it upon themselves to be global actors in other areas of the world. This is not limited to a strictly governmental capacity, as it also takes shape in the form of civil society. Civil societies are communities of citizens that come together in common interests and causes. For example, the Red Cross, Peace Corps, Habitat for Humanity, and many others, are all civil societies. However, through sponsorship of the government, we are now seeing networks consisting of civil society organizations and businesses established that are supported by the government, known as government-sponsored networks (GSNs).

In the CEURO course with KU Leuven, Prof. Kourtikakis from the Political Science Department at Illinois discussed his new study on GSNs and their role in transatlantic relations. The main questions drawn from GSNs come from understanding their basic functions: What are the structural effects of GSNs, and what are the differences between business and civil society networks?

The idea of a transatlantic civil society comes from the New Transatlantic Agenda, which can be found in the EU’s website “Europa” under the European External Action Service archives. In 1995, at the Madrid Summit, the EU and the US comprised a comprehensive statement with four major goals:

1. Promoting peace and stability, democracy, and development around the world.
2. Responding to global challenges
3. Contributing to the expansion of world trade and closer economic relations.
4. Building bridges across the Atlantic

The main purpose of the Agenda was to strengthen relations between EU institutions and the federal US government. With the inclusion of civil society, this would ensure, or at least add another protective layer, democratization of transatlantic decision-making. Prof. Kourtikakis focused his lecture on the creation of transatlantic dialogue networks and why civil societies participate in them. Through the sharing of information, all parties gain something from the network. In his study, Prof. Kourtikakis concludes that direct contact among members is what makes GSNs most successful.

The involvement of whether or not civil society in transatlantic policy is a good thing is still up for debate. Perhaps the quality of agreements between the EU and US with get better as citizens are acting on their own behalf for a greater cause. However cultural differences between the two powerhouses might misconstrue the “lobby”-like tactics that arise from these politics.