Historically, the EU is both curious and controversial: it is hard to explain from a state-centrist view the delegation of sovereignty and the fragile agreement on the gradual extension of the EU powers together with externalizations of the decision making to a polity that can be described, as Jacques Delors expressed it, as an unidentified political object. However, in the last 60 years the European Union absorbed increasing amounts of intellectual and political energies that attempted to singularly or complementary explain the nature of the beast and the logic of the processes unfolded within. A large amount of theoretical assumptions, methodological choices and explanatory techniques were imported from different fields of research to constitute what gradually took the shape of the EU studies. Still today, the European Union is seen as a unique project of regional integration that is unsettled and unfinished and yet a particular scientific vocabulary takes shape and influences research and policy making. The present conference aims to take into account the enormous creative energies invested in understanding and shaping the project of the European Union from the limited competences granted at the creation of the European Economic Community till the current formulation of the post-national understandings of its evolution.

From neo-functionalism to constructivism as IR theoretical imports to the EU seen as a political system in itself or as a post-national order, an overwhelming variety of puzzles and controversies animate the arena of the EU studies and bring partial agreements, alternative explanations, mutually exclusive proposals and unpredicted consequences regarding vital factors that shape the EU as a polity. Even the explanatory models often considered outdated prove to be resourceful in confronting determined policies, processes or institutional choices inside the EU. The innovation together with constant reevaluation, reformulation and revisiting of the past accounts seem to be the trademark of the EU studies. The plurality of approaches stands as the optimal choice in dealing with the diverse, multileveled, multitiered and multicentered reality of the European Union. Yet the advantage of plurality was also often used to blame the epistemological weaknesses and inaccuracies resulted from fragmentation and limited empirical applicability of particular trends inside European studies. The excessive conceptual imports from other fields and the limited methodological creativity were also established as skeptical positionings towards the European studies seen as a cohesive field of research and scholarship.

The Euroacademia International Conference ‘Reviewing the Trends: The European Union from a Regulatory Institution to a Post-national Cosmopolitan Order’ aims to bring openly on the floor of debate and discussion both the past and the contemporary trends in the study of the European Union trough the use of the magnifying glasses. The conference seeks to create an opportunity for evaluative accounts of essential developments within the study of the European Union. These accounts are to be understood as creative moments for articulating current concerns in the frame of disciplinary dialogue and methodological constrains or opportunities provided by the established traditions in the field of European studies. It is an opportunity for revisiting and assessing the persistent epistemological challenges in the field, the inheritances and their creative potential, the orthodoxies but also the heresies.

The conference welcomes panel and paper proposals dealing with one or multiple traditions, trends and methodological choices within the arena of European Studies. The panels and papers are expected to provide a critical assessment or a comprehensive valorization of one of the central or out of the mainstream approaches applied to the European Union. Papers that address new puzzles, alternative theoretical choices or methodological corrections/innovations are welcomed. Both theoretical and empirical enquiries are equally considered.