The Wider Europe Network was first established with a Jean Monnet grant from the European Commission in 2003 to the University of Sussex. It was designed as a collaborative, Europe-wide, inter-disciplinary network of academics and practitioners with an interest in the external policy of the European Union and particularly in the then newly-formed European Neighbourhood Policy.

Events and publications

Our inaugural conference was held at Sussex European Institute, University of Sussex, where the Network was originally based. In summer 2005, as interest in European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) was sharply increasing following the enlargement of the Union to central and eastern Europe and the profound changes in some eastern European countries, we held an important colloquium at the College of Europe in Natolin, Warsaw. Poland, was then a very new member of the European Union, but quickly establishing itself as a key player in EU foreign policy towards the Union’s eastern neighbours. Four senior Polish ministers took part in the event: Foreign Minister Adam Rotfeld, Europe Minister Jarosław Pietras and former Foreign Minister and senior Member of the European Parliament Professor Bronisław Geremek – as well as former Prime Minister Jan Krzysztof Bielecki, who sponsored the event as President of Pekao SA. On the basis of the conference papers, we published a collection of essays European Neighbourhood Policy: the Case of Ukraine.

In 2006, the Network held a symposium at the Verkhovna Rada (the Ukrainian Parliament) to discuss the progress of the then Ukrainian government in its European integration programme. Speakers included Hryhorii Nemyria, Vice Prime Minister responsible for European Integration and Valeriy Piatnitskiy, deputy Minister of the Economy.

Following seminars in Birmingham on the ENP in 2008, two Wider Europe conferences were held respectively at the European Parliament in Brussels in March under the patronage of Bronisław Geremek, and at the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik in Berlin in September. Follow-up events took place in 2009 at the Slovak Foreign Policy Association in Bratislava, and at the Finnish Aleksanteri Institute in Helsinki.

On 3-4 February 2011 the Network organised a conference at the European Parliament, in collaboration with EP President Jerzy Buzek.

Partners

In 2007, the Wider Europe network entered into a partnership with the Centre for East European Language-Based Area Studies (CEELBAS), a consortium of three British universities: Oxford, London and Birmingham, which provided funding to help put on our programme of events.

Since 2008, the network has advised the Swedish International Development Agency (Sida) on how best it could assist Ukraine with their European integration agenda. The group wrote a series of policy reports for SIDA in addition to helping train professionals in the development assistance sector not only from Sida, but also from the newer Member States of the European Union as emerging donor countries.

The core members of the network are academics, who individually however have also advised several European Governments and the EU Institutions over the past decade .