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This essay sets out to reflect on the prospective transformation of two Italian panoptical buildings that straddle the border between different places and times: the prison of Ventotene and the hospital of Gorizia. Local authorities have recently put forward a proposal to turn the former into a European school and the latter into a European prison. Both of these hermetic, unbending architectures have particular historical significance. Ventotene is the island where Altiero Spinelli was incarcerated by the Fascist regime and wrote the manifesto that paved the way for the process of European integration. Gorizia is the town where Franco Basaglia began his career, elaborating the theory of mental health that led to the closing of all Italian asylums. The proposed Europeanisation of these structures of confinement and isolation, which embody the exercise of disciplinary power in its most extreme form, speaks to the problem of opening the total institutions of modern statehood and repositioning them within the increasingly decentralised, indeterminate order of the European Union.

No como ironía de la historia, sino como resultado feliz de una estrategia diseñada en Bonn, esa despolitización de las relaciones bilaterales durante el franquismo iba a ser la clave que permitiría a la RFA ejercer su influencia positiva en un proceso de transición dirigido por una elite de la dictadura que, empezando por el propio monarca, había aprendido a ver en los alemanes sus más fiables y comprensivos socios en Europa. De ello da buena cuenta el artículo de Christian Salm, Limbering up Sister Parties' Europeanization: Transnational Socialist Networks in the Portuguese and Spanish Transitions to Democracy and Accession to the European Community. El autor muestra el predominio alemán en todas estas iniciativas y pone de manifiesto su importancia crucial para el PSOE de Felipe González y el PS de Mario Soares. El autor muestra cómo durante los primeros años de la transición en que el PSOE se benefició de la ayuda del SPD, Felipe González y sus compañeros fueron interiorizando las razones de los alemanes, sin por ello dejar de manifestar sus simpatías por las de los franceses.

Portugal is a young European democracy. However, it has been a member of the European Union (EU) for twenty seven years. During this time, it received more than 75 billion euros from the EU Cohesion Policy, in order to correct regional imbalances and to boost territorial development. As might be expected, the intervention strategies designed for these programming cycles had a profound influence from the European Commission (EC) guidelines and proposals. Hence, the goal of this article is to present a critical analysis of evolution of the EU Cohesion Policy strategic guidelines and the influence of the ESDP, the Territorial Agendas and the ESPON Programme in the design of these strategies, and its consequences in the Portuguese territorial development, during the last two decades.

The adoption of the euro is a topic of constant discussion within the European Union. Since joiningthe EU in 2004, Poland and Hungary have taken quite different paths regarding their commitment to the eurozone, despite both being legally bound to join once they meet the convergence criteria. This article looks at how public opinions on euro adoption have changed in both countries from 2004 to 2024, while also considering the stances of important national institutions on monetary integration. Based on a close look at public debates, surveys, and institutional statements, the study finds a growing enthusiasm for the euro in Hungary. This interest is mainly driven by economic challenges and the perceived advantages of being part of the eurozone. On the other hand, Polish society remains more sceptical. This scepticism is influenced by political narratives that emphasise sovereignty and monetary independence. Even though there have been some noticeable changes in support, neither country has yet joined the ER M II mechanism or met all the necessary convergence criteria, making it unlikely that they will adopt the euro anytime soon. The findings show us just how much local political dynamics and the strategies of elites influence the process of Europeanization in the monetary sphere.

This article is primarily a scene-setting one, which aims to give the reader both European Union (EU) and Irish institutional and policy context for this special edition. It presents and discusses the EU and national institutional and policy contexts relevant to the Just Transition (JT) and addresses relevant aspects and issues. Our interest is in the institutions and policies that shape or limit our capacity to change the conversation to what is needed to advance a transformational agenda that conjoins climate and equality as twin goals and enables integrated and inclusive governance. Our focus on the JT is because, as a concept, it interfaces climate policy and social justice. The article sketches the EU policy framework as it relates to climate and social policy observing the lack of coherence between them and difficulties in advancing fast and fair transition and transformation. Delving into the contemporary EU policy framework for JT enables us to unpack the social pillar of the European Green Deal. The paper’s analysis of the Irish policy infrastructure, its statutory basis, and planning and assessment process allows us to analyse Irish climate policy. Our outline of the recent evolution of Ireland’s JT Framework, highlights how the establishment of the Irish JT Commission in 2024 and plans to give it statutory status in 2025 make Ireland a leader in the EU. Europeanisation is a characteristic of JT in Ireland.

This thesis is an exploration of the EL, one of the pan-European party federations, which is concurrently one of the most recently-launched transnational parties. The work explores the theoretical literature on Europeanisation of parties and applies a three-pronged theoretical framework, involving the theoretical insights of Johansson and Raunio, Charalambous’ ‘communist dilemma’, as well as discourse analysis to the EL and some of its most important national components. These are constituted by the Greek Coalition of the Radical Left, the French Communist Party, the Spanish United Left, and the Italian Rifondazione Comunista. The analysis covers the pan- European level, seeking to reconstruct the EL’s vision of the European Union, as well as its organisational and ideological capacity to influence the Union’s direction, and its degree of institutionalisation and Europeanisation. Concurrently, it addresses the national level, involving the aforementioned case studies of Greece, France, Spain, and Italy, as well as the internal party dimension by seeking to evaluate the importance of the parties’ long-standing factions with regards to the parties’ stance towards the process of European integration. Its most salient findings relate to the high degree of convergence between the parties under analysis, both with regards to their ideological core, as well as their policy proposals, something that could initially verify the argument of policy transfer between national and European level. Moreover, the thesis findings suggest that the financial crisis that has been affecting the whole of the EU ever since 2008 has strengthened the parties’ distinct left Europeanism. Finally, the thesis’ findings suggest that there is indeed a unified political discourse of the European radical left that has been fighting for hegemony inside the EU for the last decade and that at the moment of the drafting of the present thesis has been able to create a growing consensus inside the EL with regards to the party’s future direction and to the means of bringing about the radical changes that it professes with regards to the Union’s alternative future.

A decade of crises has changed the EU’s modes of governance and power relations between institutions. By the same token, the rule of law crisis has reshaped the ways the Union ‘hits home’, or in other words, the ways it Europeanizes its Member States. This article looks at how the EU's responses to this ongoing crisis has led to the institutionalization of new modes of Europeanization. How does the EU seek to shape the national justice systems of its Member States? This article proposes a framework that conceptualizes two modes of top-down Europeanization: coordinative and coercive . Drawing on the analysis of policy tools established in response to the rule of law crisis, it shows how coordinative Europeanization strengthens the ability of the Commission to shape national agendas ( power to ) and how coercive Europeanization empowers the EU to take binding decisions that impact Member States ( power over ). Coercive and coordinative Europeanization complement each other and are supported by specific mechanisms such as dialogue, persuasion and negotiation between the Commission and Member States.