EURINT 2026 INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
Building tomorrow’s Europe: strategies for integration, growth, and resilience
14-16 May 2026│ Iasi, Romania
The EU’s future: Cohesion in an age of inequalities 14-16 May 2026│ Iasi, Romania The European Union’s next decade will be shaped by how effectively it reconciles ambition with fairness. Green and digital transitions, demographic shifts, security pressures, and prospective enlargement all set the premises for deep transformations, yet they risk expanding social and territorial inequalities if benefits and burdens are unevenly shared. A credible future for the EU requires an adapted and updated politics of cohesion: policies that empower people and places to thrive, reduce opportunity gaps, and sustain democratic trust. This conference invites a frank, multidisciplinary conversation on how the Union can modernize its growth model and governance to reduce inequalities, align investment with well-being, and ensure that no region or community is left behind. Held under the banner of evidence-based, place-sensitive policymaking, EURINT 2026 will assemble academics, policymakers, practitioners, and civil society to co-design pragmatic pathways toward a more cohesive Europe. We will examine how to retune Cohesion Policy, strengthen cross-border cooperation and resilience in peripheral areas, and refine metrics beyond GDP to capture territorial and social progress. Core themes include: •Upgrading the EU’s cohesion toolbox for the green & digital transitions •Tackling spatial and social inequalities: from left-behind places to inclusive growth •Financing cohesion: EU budgets, fiscal capacity, and public–private investment •Governance for convergence: multi-level coordination, participation, and accountability Beyond these tracks, we welcome contributions on enlargement and differentiated integration, urban–rural linkages, just transition mechanisms, migration and labour markets, data governance for policy evaluation, and innovative methods for measuring well-being. EURINT 2026 is an open invitation to envision, and operationalize, an EU future that is both dynamic and fair. The following special sessions will be organised during the conference: [-] Regional Pathways in the Green and Digital Transitions Chairs: Andrés Rodríguez-Pose (London School of Economics and Political Science); Alexandra Sandu (London School of Economics and Political Science); Maria Tsouri (Western Norway University of Applied Sciences) [-] Mechanisms of Inequality: Organizational, Technological, and Institutional Dynamics in Contemporary Europe Chairs: Oana Carmen Țugulea; Diana Danaila; Elena Silvas (Constantin) (Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi, Romania) [-] CITY-Focus special session Chairs: Alexandru Banica, Cristian Incaltarau, (Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi, Romania) [-] SAGES special session Chairs: Ramona Tiganasu, Bogdan-Constantin Ibanescu (Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi, Romania) [-] Democratic Resilience and the EU’s Future at its Eastern Borders: Institutional Transformation in Times of Geopolitical Uncertainty Chairs: Loredana Simionov (Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi, Romania), Cristian Nitoiu (Loughborough University London) [-] About Europe - Young researcher Special session - dedicated to bachelor and master students awarded within the Students scientific sessions in European studies Chairs: Bogdan Ibanescu & Ciprian Alupului (Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi, Romania)EURINT 2026 agenda [pdf version]
EURINT 2026 conference volume
EURINT 2024 | Debating Europe: new approaches, action
tools and integration scenarios
24-25 May, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi
The European Union has been a successful story for many
decades, despite the crises it has faced over time, becoming in
years a pole of attraction for other European countries. In
general, crises have generated a sense of deepening
integration, and the enlargements from EU6 to EU27 were seen
as a natural dynamic of the "(re)integration" of the European
continent, strengthening, with each stage, the EU power and
relevance in the international order. The synergies between the
deepening and the widening mechanisms encouraged to look for
a federal future of the EU as an “ever-closer union”, a “hard
core” of regional and global cooperation, and as a real economic
and political power.
New opportunities and challenges have emerged in 1990s, in
the context of the political transformations in the Central and
Eastern Europe. For the countries from this “liberated” part of
Europe, the accession to the EU has been identified with their
aspirations for freedom, democracy, prosperity and security, a
definitive break from the hegemonic tendencies of Russia. In
the same logic of European unification, the Union has enlarged
from the EU15 to the EU28. The integration of diversity has
been achieved based on the community method and on variable
geometries, successfully applied to previous enlargements.
However, an important transformation of the strategic vision of
the future of the EU has occurred. Although maintaining the
federalist option, with this wave of enlargement, the federalist
future of EU is no longer a widely shared dream and the
differentiated integration looks increasingly obvious.
Lately various crises and shocks which have hit the EU in the
last two decades have shown the limits of the current system.
Additional pressures are generated by the prospect of the Union
enlargement to the countries of the Eastern neighborhood and
the Western Balkans, which has become a priority in the foreign
policy against the background of the war in Ukraine. Therefore,
an even more enlarged, but also a more diverse Union is
foreshadowed in a timeframe, which albeit not yet politically
assumed, already requires a reconsideration of the EU's
strategic agenda.
