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Since 1951, with the first attempt of “integrating” coal and steel commodities on the European platform (united initially within a community of six states), as well as the “common market” approach in 1957, which “integrated” over 10 sectors of socio-economic development, the European integration (turned into European Union in 1993) has acquired qualitative and quantitative strength in the world: uniting 27 states and about 30 economic sectors presently. With about 25 per cent of global GDP and 6 per cent of population, the EU-27 created the second largest currency in the world (uniting 19 states in the euro-zone) and reached fundamental achievements in global science, technology and trade, thus becoming a major player in the world.
However, numerous global and European challenges during last couple of decades have made extremely complicated a further progressive integration among the 27 states requiring continuous adaptation and refurbishing efforts in the EU’s political economy to continue the integrative endeavor. Hence the need for a professional and independent perspective vision coped with the analytical monitoring of modern political, economic and social trends in European integration.
Among numerous aspects of the EU’s integration, the following “blocks” of research activities represent the main spheres of Institution’s interest:
- Sustainability’s block: covering main UN SDGs implementation in the EU states, European “green deal”, as well as circular economy’s aspects and “green growth” in the national development;
- Political-economy’s block: including the EU and the member states political economy’s analytical monitoring, as well as researching inherent connections between the political decision-making and their economic implementation;
- Digital agenda’s block: covering contemporary issues of digital transformation in the EU-27 member states within numerous socio-economic sectors;
- Education and training block: aimed at reviewing modern trends in online education, with specifics in professional and general education and teaching at various education levels (graduate and post-graduate), as well as “teaching sustainability” direction;
- Science and innovation block: covering increasing role of science, research and innovation in the modern national development models;
- Modern EU block: analyzing recent development in the EU’ institutional framework and decision-making.
- Post-COVID block: Global science’s trajectory and appreciation of trends in the European integration have reoriented our Institute’s efforts towards a new sphere of research devoted to analysis of changes already taking place and those only slightly visible in modern EU. The COVID-19 pandemic has instigated a new EII’s research direction aimed at revealing pandemic challenges both for the EU’s integration and for expected transformations in the member states’ growth models.