Winter school 2016

The Winter school "European Union and relations between Russia and the European Union today" took place at St. Petersburg state University on February 9-10. The major participants in the event were teachers, business representatives, as well as young researchers from among international relations students of SPbSU. Project "J. Monnet Centre of Excellence", which is being implemented at the SPbSU Department of European studies, allows providing information and methodological support to researchers dealing with the issues of the European Union.

"For many, the EU remains an incomprehensible and amorphous structure with non-obvious objectives and benchmarks. And as part of the work of the Center, we seek to explain the working principle of this organization, its values and possible points of contact with Russia. At the same time, we do not impose assessments at all – the European Union can remain both positive and negative for the program participants," said Dmitry Levy, associate professor of SPbSU.
Prior to the formation of the Centre of Excellence, the cooperation of university researchers of European integration with official Brussels was conducted within the framework of the project "J. Monnet Department", which opened in St. Petersburg State University in 2011. "Over the years, under the auspices of the department, there were winter and summer intensive courses on topical EU issues and relations between Russia and the European Union, competitions for schoolchildren. The department took part in organizing special educational conferences - Models of the European Union ", says T.A. Romanova, the head of the Centre. "In June 2015, within the framework of the J. Monnet research project, the conference "Relations between Russia and the European Union: Transnational Perspective" was also organized. The work of international relations teaching staff of SPbSU was highly appreciated, and since the autumn of 2015, the teaching and research work continued within the framework of a higher-level project: Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence. "

During the Winter school, lectures on decision-making process and lobbying in the EU, cooperation in the common neighborhood area, Russian-EU security cooperation, and on the role of sanctions in bilateral relations between Russia and the European Union were given by international relations teachers: associate professor D.A. Levy, associate professor N.G. Zaslavskaya, associate professor A.V. Izotov. The event guest of honor was the Italian economist Mario Baldassarri, who was the deputy finance minister of Italy in the past and who headed the Senate Finance Committee, and today is the Honorary Professor of the La Sapienza University in Rome and the president of the Italian expert forum Economia Reale. He made a presentation on the economic development of the European Union.

One of the most significant and important theses, which was noted by the participants of the program, was the finding of the gradual development of the European Union, which over the years of ups and downs has learned not to accelerate the integration process, but to develop it step by step, correlating its capabilities and ideas with the readiness of national economies and society. This is one of the main reasons why the European Union is looked at when looking for an example for the formation of other regional economic associations, for example, such as the Eurasian Economic Union.