Conversation on Transatlanticism and Europe Blog

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 t

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 pr

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 internat

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 busines