The Impact of Visa Liberalisation in Eastern Partnership Countries, Russia and Turkey on Trans-Border Mobility. CEPS Liberty and Security in Europe No. 63, March 2014

Schengen Visa liberalisation in the Eastern Partnership countries, Russia and Turkey has proven to have a huge transformative potential across the justice, liberty and security policies of the countries where it has been deployed. Far-reaching technical reforms in the fields of document security, irregular migration and border management, public order security and fundamental rights have to be implemented so that visa-free travel can be allowed. Evidence provided by visa applications data reveals that visa liberalisation is a logical step, provided that the technical reforms are adopted and implemented. This study analyses the current state of play of the implementation of the EU visa policy instruments and assesses the positive impact of visa-free travel on trans-border mobility according to current visa application statistics.

Public and Private Regulation: Mapping the Labyrinth. CEPS Working Document No. 370, October 2012

Private governance is currently being evoked as a viable solution to many public policy goals. However, in some circumstances it has shown to produce more harm than good, and even disastrous consequences as in the case of the financial crisis that is raging in most advanced economies. Although the current track record of private regulatory schemes is mixed, policy guidance documents around the world still require that policy-makers give priority to self- and co-regulation, with little or no additional guidance being given to policymakers to devise when, and under what circumstances, these solutions can prove viable from a public policy perspective. With an array of examples from several policy fields, this paper approaches regulation as a public-private collaborative form and attempts to identify possible policy tools to be applied by public policy-makers to efficiently and effectively approach private governance as a solution, rather than a problem. We propose a six-step theoretical framework and argue that IA techniques should: i) define an integrated framework including both the possibility that private regulation can be used as an alternative or as a complement to public legislation; ii) involve private parties in public IAs in order to define the best strategy or strategies that would ensure achievement of the regulatory objectives; and iii) contemplate the deployment of indicators related to governance and activities of the regulators and their ability to coordinate and solve disputes with other regulators.

The impact of demographic change and its challenges for the workforce in the European public sectors. Three priority areas to invest in future HRM. EIPA Working Paper 2012/W/01

European public sectors are particularly affected by the demographic challenge and an ageing and shrinking workforce. According to OECD statistics, over 30% of public employees of central government in 13 countries will leave during the next 15 years. Moreover, the public sector has as compared to the private sector to rely on a much older workforce, who will have to work longer in future. Against this background, European governments need to react and re-think major elements of current HR and organisational management in the public sector. Particularly the skills in age management should be improved in order to also maintain in future a highly productive, competent and efficient public sector and to ensure that public employees stay longer ‘employable’, ‘healthy’, ‘fit for the job’ and ‘up to the task’. The survey suggests some solutions by investing more in three priority areas in the field of HRM.

Restoring Order in Global Health Governance: Do Metagovernance Norms Affect Interorganizational Convergence? CES Open Forum Series #23, 2014-2015

This paper theorizes about the convergence of international organizations in global health governance, a field of international cooperation that is commonly portrayed as particularly hit by institutional fragmentation. Unlike existing theories on interorganizationalism that have mainly looked to intra- and extraorganizational factors in order to explain why international organizations cooperate with each other in the first place, the paper is interested in the link between causes and systemic effects of interorganizational convergence. The paper begins by defining interorganizational convergence. It then proceeds to discuss why conventional theories on interorganizational- ism fail to explain the aggregate effects of convergence between IOs in global (health) governance which tend to worsen rather than cushion fragmentation — so-called "hypercollective action" (Severino & Ray 2010). In order to remedy this explanatory blind-spot the paper formulates an alternative sociological institutionalist theory on interorganizational convergence that makes two core theoretical propositions: first that emerging norms of metagovernance are a powerful driver behind interorganizational convergence in global health governance, and secondly that IOs are engaged in a fierce meaning-struggle over these norms which results in hypercollective action. In its empirical part, the paper’s core theoretical propositions are corroborated by analyzing discourses and practices of interorganizational convergence in global health. The empirical analysis allows drawing two far-reaching conclusions. On the one hand, interorganizational harmonization has emerged as a largely undisputed norm in global health which has been translated into ever more institutionalized forms of interorganizational cooperation. On the other, discourses and practices of interorganizational harmonization exhibit conflicts over the ordering principles according to which the policies and actions of international organizations with overlapping mandates and missions should be harmonized. In combination, these two empirical findings explain why interorganizational convergence has so far failed to strengthen the global health architecture.

EU-Turkey Summit on the refugee crisis Law and (dis)order? EPC Commentary, 21 March 2016

After many meetings and long hours of negotiations, the overwhelming feeling when a deal between the EU and Turkey was struck, was one of “mission accomplished”! Faced with an unprecedented crisis and forced to appease increasingly hostile public opinions back home, EU leaders had only one objective in mind: reducing the number of migrants arriving in the EU so that order can return in the framework of EU rules. However, a closer look at the Summit Conclusions and the EU-Turkey statement leaves a bitter taste, according to Yves Pascouau. In this Commentary, he questions the feasibility of the final EU-Turkey deal, saying that it creates more problems than it solves: besides the obvious legal and practical issues, it is far from certain which member states will be willing to do their part, or whether or not the EU can come up with a strategic vision on human mobility for the future.