European Union

DRAFT REPORT on the 2023 and 2024 Commission reports on Georgia
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Rasa Juknevičienė

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DRAFT REPORT containing a motion for a non-legislative resolution on the draft Council decision on the conclusion of the Enhanced Partnership and Cooperation Agreement between the European Union and its Member States, of the one part, and the Kyrgyz Republic, of the other part
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Nacho Sánchez Amor

Source : © European Union, 2025 - EP

On Tuesday, MEPs approved two proposals granting Jordan and Egypt loans worth €500 million and €4 billion respectively.
Committee on International Trade

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On Tuesday, MEPs approved two proposals granting Jordan and Egypt loans worth €500 million and €4 billion respectively.
Committee on International Trade

Source : © European Union, 2025 - EP

On Tuesday, Parliament endorsed Lucian Romaşcanu to be Romania’s member of the European Court of Auditors (ECA).
Committee on Budgetary Control

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On Tuesday, Parliament endorsed Lucian Romaşcanu to be Romania’s member of the European Court of Auditors (ECA).
Committee on Budgetary Control

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Having voted to use the urgent procedure, Parliament will decide on Thursday whether to delay application of the new sustainability reporting and due diligence requirements.
Committee on Legal Affairs

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Having voted to use the urgent procedure, Parliament will decide on Thursday whether to delay application of the new sustainability reporting and due diligence requirements.
Committee on Legal Affairs

Source : © European Union, 2025 - EP

On Tuesday, MEPs discussed trade, defence and competitiveness with Presidents Costa and von der Leyen, pushing for action to strengthen the EU economy and defence.

Source : © European Union, 2025 - EP

Tuesday, 1 April

Source : © European Union, 2025 - EP

Source : © European Union, 2025 - EP

DRAFT RECOMMENDATION on the draft Council decision on the conclusion of the Enhanced Partnership and Cooperation Agreement between the European Union and its Member States, of the one part, and the Kyrgyz Republic, of the other part
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Nacho Sánchez Amor

Source : © European Union, 2025 - EP

AMENDMENTS 1 - 236 - Draft report 2023 and 2024 Commission reports on Albania
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Andreas Schieder

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AMENDMENTS 1 - 145 - Draft opinion European Defence Industry Programme and a framework of measures to ensure the timely availability and supply of defence products (‘EDIP’)
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Hilde Vautmans

Source : © European Union, 2025 - EP

Myroslava Hladchenko

Global university rankings have got prominence in recent decades. Nation-states develop evaluation policies drawing on the assessment criteria of world rankings aiming their universities to take higher positions in these rankings (Salmi & Saroyan, 2007). QS Rankings is one of them. It is a profitable business that generated €46 m in revenue in 2019 (Shahjahan et al., 2022). Research assessment by QS Rankings takes the form of citations (excluding self-citations) per faculty indicator (Staff, 2021).

 

Since the 2010s Ukrainian media and the education ministry have traced the positions of Ukrainian universities in QS Rankings (Higher Education, 2011). However, since 2022, everyday survival has taken priority over research in the lives of Ukrainian scholars. The paradox of war is that, while life-threatening conditions, shelling, blackouts and economic recession are the part of everyday reality, work obligations and responsibilities remain the same as they were in pre-war life. This applies to all, including scholars. Despite the war, Ukrainian scholars continue to publish which deserves respect. As well, Ukrainian universities participate in QS Rankings 2025.

 

However, QS is a for-profit company the aim of which is not to contribute to societal well-being but to increase its profits. Elsevier which provides data for QS is another for-profit company the aim of which is also to increase revenue. The same concerns publishers issuing Gold Open Access journals, as many of them are oriented on publishing as many articles as possible to ensure profits.

 

The university is a key institution for social and economic development in a knowledge-intensive society (Mohrman et al., 2008). University performance is supposed to result in the quality of life, technological progress and social well-being of the nation. These are the ends that the university is supposed to achieve through research. Publications are just one of the means of achieving these ends. QS Rankings has turned the means of universities into their ends. The university’s position in the global ranking reflects, first, the economic development of the country. Second, the university position at the national level. A university cannot increase its position in the ranking, if there is no economic growth and beneficial conditions for science in the country. On the other hand, the university should contribute to economic growth at the national level.

 

The examination of the assessment of six Ukrainian universities in QS Rankings 2025, first, raise concerns regarding the mismatch between the faculty staff of universities announced on the QS Rankings website and the number of authors affiliated with the explored institutions in their research outputs. Second, it is unclear why the articles in the journals discontinued from Scopus are still in Scopus and correspondingly they are not excluded from the research output assessed by QS Rankings. Third, QS Rankings uses closed data. University managers do not have access to these data and cannot use them while developing research assessment policies. While developing the research assessment policies, universities mostly use SciVal provided by Scopus for a fee. However, there is a mismatch in data that shows SciVal and data that uses QS Rankings. First, QS Rankings normalises only by disciplines but SciVal normalises by year, discipline and document type. As conference papers are less cited than articles, normalisation by a document type results in a high FWCI shown by SciVal. Second, QS Rankings excludes self-citations but SciVal provides data including self-citations.

 

The IRN (International Research Network) index introduced by QS Rankings requires universities to increase the number of countries they collaborate with. It means that not academics but QS Rankings decides with whom they need to collaborate. Aiming to increase the IRN index, Sumy State University gives points if the article increases the number of collaborating countries. This is nothing else but means-ends decoupling.

 

The study findings resonate with the other studies that raise concerns about the ability of QS Rankings as well as other rankings to be a trustworthy assessment tool (Chirikov, 2023; Teixeira da Silva, 2024; Shahjahan, et al., 2021). In 2024, the University Zurich has withdrawn from the ranking published by Times Higher Education magazine. University announced that rankings create false incentives focusing on measurable output, forcing universities to increase the number of publications rather than prioritise the quality of content (Swissinfo, 2024). In 2023, Korean universities boycotted QS Rankings because of the IRN index (Jung & Sharma, 2023).

 

Six Ukrainian universities participating in QS Rankings 2025 have publications in discontinued from Scopus and MDPI journals. MDPI journals is a fast and easy way of publishing for a fee. The question is why academics from a country at war with underfunding science and low salaries are ready to pay an unaffordable APC (article processing fee). Arguably there is a high degree of international collaboration in articles in MDPI journals because Ukrainian academics are interested in finding a foreign co-author able to pay an APC. However, the question is who benefits from publications with a high APC except for publishers that make revenue? Academics publish at the cost of science because the money spent on APCs could be invested in science.

 

The findings highlight that articles (co)-authored by Ukrainian academics co-affiliated with foreign institutions or foreign academics have a higher impact than articles authored by only Ukrainian researchers. The share of articles authored by only Ukrainian authors ranges from 52.6% to 73.3%. Thus, Ukrainian academics have the space to strengthen collaboration with foreign colleagues.

 

To summarise, the research assessment criteria at the global, national and university levels must be oriented towards scientific excellence that results in economic growth and societal well-being. Ukrainian case shows that means-ends decoupling at the global, national and organisational levels results in diversion of critical resources, both financial and human. This negatively impacts on the development of society, the economy and the fulfilment of the talents of individuals in academia as well.

 

Myroslava Hladchenko is researcher in Kyiv, Ukraine. Her research focuses on higher education, universities and research assessment. This blog post is based on her recent article Hladchenko, M. (2025) Ukrainian universities in QS World University Rankings: when the means become ends. Scientometrics 130, 969–997. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-024-05165-2  

 

Acknowledgements

This project has received funding through the MSCA4Ukraine project, which is funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union. Neither the European Union nor the MSCA4Ukraine Consortium as a whole nor any individual member institutions of the MSCA4Ukraine Consortium can be held responsible for them.

 

References

Chirikov, I. (2023). Does conflict of interest distort global university rankings?. Higher education, 86(4), 791-808.

Higher Education (2011). Ukrainian universities at first in the global rankings http://vnz.org.ua/statti/879-ukrayinski-vnz-upershe-v-mizhnarodnomu-rejtyngu-zadovoleni-ne-vsi

Jung, U., and Sharma, Y. (2023) Korean universities unite against QS ranking changes https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20230704195008557

Mohrman, K., Ma, W., & Baker, D. (2008). The research university in transition: The emerging global model. Higher Education Policy, 21(1), 5–27

Salmi, J., & Saroyan, A. (2007). League tables as policy instruments: Uses and misuses. Higher education management and policy, 19(2), 1-38.

Shahjahan, R. A., Grimm, A., & Allen, R. M. (2021). The “LOOMING DISASTER” for higher education: How commercial rankers use social media to amplify and foster affect. Higher Education, 1-17.

Shahjahan, R. A., Sonneveldt, E. L., Estera, A. L., & Bae, S. (2022). Emoscapes and commercial university rankers: the role of affect in global higher education policy. Critical Studies in Education, 63(3), 275-290.

Staff, W. (2021). Understanding the methodology: QS World University Rankings https://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings-articles/world-university-rankings/understanding-methodology-qs-world-university-rankings

Swissinfo (2024) University of Zurich withdraws from international university ranking https://education.am/abroad_en/tpost/48hm4eipi1-university-of-zurich-withdraws-from-inte

Teixeira da Silva, J. A. (2024). How are global university rankings adjusted for erroneous science, fraud and misconduct? Posterior reduction or adjustment in rankings in response to retractions and invalidation of scientific findings. Journal of Information Science, 01655515241269499.

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by Dr Caroline Emberson (Nottingham University Business School and the University of Nottingham’s Rights Lab)

New research, recently published in JCMS, examines the detection of labour exploitation within domestic care services. In the article, I identify a range of municipal activities including whistleblowing procedures; care-worker professionalisation; the expansion of employee’s roles and inter-agency data analysis. Yet my findings show that significant gaps still exist in the regulation of labour exploitation among domestic workers, particularly in relation to live-in care workers who are usually beyond the reach of national labour inspectorates.

I investigated municipal practices in four European countries: France, Italy, Sweden and The Netherlands. These countries allow paired comparison of practices in different welfare regime trajectory types. For example, long-term care in France and Italy has evolved from a tradition of conservative familialism – where the family is seen as the main support provider. Whereas in Sweden and The Netherlands, welfare services have followed universalist egalitarianism principles: where the state aims to provide access for all those in need.

In each of these different contexts, I asked: what actions have municipal government and other regional actors taken to mitigate the risks of labour exploitation among domestic care workers and what barriers remain?

These are important questions. Policy instruments such as Article 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights and the Council of Europe Convention on Action Against Trafficking in Human Beings (ECAT) place human rights protections at the centre of European policymaking. Recent horizontal policy developments open up the possibility for the development of public procurement mechanisms to achieve these social policy aims. However, legal scholars have identified both risks and dilemmas for the state as it attempts to leverage its role as a ‘buyer’ to improve human rights. EU regional governments, sometimes in the guise of the local municipality, are important procurers and administrators of domestic care, a service which is, increasingly, delivered in the home. What role do these local municipalities play in guaranteeing the working conditions of these increasing numbers of domestic care workers?

My findings reveal a significant gap in labour enforcement regulation among domestic care workers. At the time of writing, in every case care workers’ conditions were beyond the scope of the respective national labour inspectorates, who are forced still to view the domestic setting as a private domain.

In addition, the governance activities that have emerged among regional state actors, particularly at the municipal level also warrant improvement. While initiatives to enhance individual agency are more commonly reported in traditionally familial welfare regimes, collective actions are described more frequently in countries with a more universalist approach to care provision. Importantly, my findings from the studies conducted in The Netherlands and Sweden do suggest that municipal roles to combat labour exploitation are starting to emerge. However, in France and Italy greater emphasis was placed upon enhancement of the agency of individual workers within an environment that placed significant cultural reliance upon a cohort of individualised domestic workers. Furthermore, in Sweden and The Netherlands, my informants placed greater emphasis on the collective response of municipal actors. These practitioners engaged with professionals in other national bodies to identify and eradicate labour malpractices.

In each of the countries I studied, my informants had no doubt that the phenomenon of exploitation was real. However, even where municipal engagement to address these problems was at its most extensive, collective action could be hampered by legacy legislation.

Two specific examples emerged at the time of the research. The Netherlands Regulations for Home Services prevented ratification of the ILO C189 Domestic Workers Convention, 2011, which aims to provide conditions for domestic workers that are no less favourable than those of other workers. My second example comes from the Swedish case study. Here, while much sophisticated gender-blind legislation is in force, my informants reported that labour enforcement legislation was still relatively immature and failed to recognise the most severe forms of labour exploitation, referred to in some third countries as modern slavery.

Despite these legislative gaps, findings from the studies conducted in The Netherlands and Sweden show that those in municipal roles are starting to change their practices to combat labour exploitation. This is an important and significant finding. In Amsterdam, specialist anti-trafficking coordinators have been appointed and the responsibilities of other front-line workers widened, including those in fire and building safety roles. Likewise, in Sweden specialist regional coordination roles have been introduced in the municipality of Jonkoping to support the gender equality aims of the Swedish Gender Equality Agency. Unfortunately, the regulatory gaps in labour inspection noted earlier mean that the enforcement activities of these role-holders remain focused predominantly on communal workplaces such as the factory. Scrutiny of the domestic sphere remains off-limits and this, coupled with resource limitations, continue to make it difficult for these municipal employees to uncover exploitation in the home.

The EU and its member states clearly have a duty not only to protect, but also to respect, human rights in the domestic care services that they fund. Municipalities with responsibility for the oversight of services of this type across the EU must act to ensure that the working conditions of domestic care workers are acceptable. To do this, the EU should consider how to address the regulatory loophole that precludes labour inspection within private households. Where legacy legislative regimes persist, EU members states should review and amend national legislation to provide equal rights for domestic care workers and work to ratify ILO convention C189. Where domestic workers’ contracts remain largely informal, as was the case in Italy, my informants suggest that member states should also consider the introduction of employer incentives to encourage formal contracting. As academics, we could usefully improve our understanding of the gendered nature of labour exploitation and, hence, appropriate labour standards enforcement actions.

Dr Caroline Emberson is Assistant Professor in Operations Management at Nottingham University Business School in the United Kingdom and a member of the University’s Rights Lab research group. Her research interests include modern slavery, especially in the supply chains of long-term care. She has consulted widely, giving evidence to UK Government and House of Lords Inquiries and the Canadian Government. Follow Dr Emberson on Twitter.

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by Dr Nicole Scicluna (Hong Kong Baptist University)

As we pass the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the EU continues to deal with the many challenges to which the conflict has given rise. An overarching challenge is that of maintaining unity of purpose and of action – a task that becomes more difficult as the Trump administration’s apparent animosity towards Ukraine and Europe threatens the EU’s Ukraine strategy from without and as recalcitrant national leaders seek to undermine it from within.

My recent contribution to JCMS deals with another aspect of the unity challenge; namely that of maintaining the coherence of the EU’s legal order. In particular, this challenge has manifested on the EU’s external borders with Russia and Belarus. One aspect of it is well known – what has been described as the ‘instrumentalisation’ of migration by the Russian and Belarusian regimes, which have encouraged and facilitated the movement of would-be asylum seekers and migrants across the EU’s Eastern frontiers. The response of the affected countries, particularly Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, has garnered much attention and consternation for the way in which it has prioritised the securitisation of borders over the human rights and humanitarian needs of vulnerable people. Criticism has extended to the European Commission for not only condoning non-compliance with existing EU asylum law, but actually making it easier for states to derogate from their legal obligations.

Yet, this is not the only respect in which the actions of countries on the EU’s Eastern border undermine the coherence of the EU’s legal order. The treatment of Russian nationals seeking entry to Europe also warrants attention. This is an issue that goes back to the early months of the war and to debates over the type, breadth and depth of sanctions that should be levied on Russia for its illegal and brutal aggression. As the EU was placing sanctions on individuals and companies directly associated with the Russian government or with connections to the war, there were suggestions from some quarters that restrictive measures should be extended to the Russian population as a whole, with a focus on Russian tourists in the Schengen area.

Then-Estonian prime minister and now-EU high representative, Kaja Kallas, for example, argued that travel to Europe was ‘a privilege not a human right’ and that the privilege should be withdrawn from Russians owing to the illegal war their government was waging on Europe’s borders. The question was put on the agenda of a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Prague in August 2022, at which the idea of a total ban on Russian tourists obtaining Schengen visas was rejected.

Nevertheless, on 8 September 2022, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland jointly announced that they would begin refusing entry to Russians holding Schengen visas issued by other member states. After some hesitation over the legality and viability of such an approach, Finland announced that it would also stop receiving visa applications in Russia and would deny entry to Russian holders of Schengen visas on 29 September 2022. Thus, the five EU member states bordering on Russia and/or Belarus (and which, therefore, account for the vast majority of Russians entering Schengen, given that the EU closed its airspace to flights originating in Russia at the outset of the war) effectively replicated among themselves the kind of Russian tourism ban that had been rejected by the Council.

The problem with this ‘regional solution’ is that it likely violates Schengen law, which does not allow for nationality-based bans on the granting of Schengen visas or entry at Schengen borders. And yet, the Commission has refrained from criticising these legally dubious policies, much less initiating any kind of enforcement action.

Would-be Russian tourists are not an obvious target for sympathy. But putting aside the substance of the dispute, the larger issue is that of creeping member state unilateralism and the Commission’s permissiveness towards it. Political agreement and legal obligation are the European Union’s lifeblood. When member states act outside the limits of what EU law permits, it is for the Commission, as ‘guardian of the treaties’, to take the lead in seeking redress. Yet, research has shown a steady decline in the number of infringements opened by the Commission over the past two decades. Moreover, the findings suggest that the proximate cause of this drop is not a fall in instances of probable non-compliance, but rather a growing preference inside the Commission for political solutions to legal compliance problems.

The Commission’s enforcement forbearance is especially evident when it comes to migration and borders. Aside from its deference to national prerogatives on migrant instrumentalisation, it has enabled – through both action and inaction – the widespread and prolonged reintroduction of internal border controls, seriously undermining one of the foundational principles of the Schengen area.

One may well understand why the Commission is reticent to lock horns with member states on matters of great political sensitivity. But at a moment when the prospective German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, wins an election campaigning on permanently reintroducing controls at all of Germany’s internal borders, the Commission’s tacit toleration of member state unilateralism seems to be contributing to an unravelling of foundational principles of EU legal order.

Dr Nicole Scicluna is an Assistant Professor in Government and International Studies at Hong Kong Baptist University. Her research and teaching interests include European and EU politics and law, and the relationship between international law and international politics. She can be contacted on Linkedin here and followed on X/Twitter here.

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EUHealthGov held its fifth Practitioner Perspective on 13 March 2025. We were delighted to host Sebastiano Lustig, Policy Coordinator for prevention, preparedness and response planning for medical countermeasures at the European Health Emergency preparedness and Response Authority (HERA). What follows is a summary of some of the key points addressed in the presentation. A recording is also available here.  

While the EU health security architecture predates COVID-19, the lessons learned from the pandemic, especially on the importance of coordination, have led this framework to be restructured and strengthened. Successful coordination during COVID, visible notably in mechanisms like joint procurement served as good examples to build on. However, the pandemic response was generally marked by a lack of coordination, which exposed fragmentation and vulnerabilities in supply chain of medical countermeasures (MCM). The new EU Health Security Framework aims to address this and represents the first pillar of the broader project to build a European Health Union announced by Commission President von der Leyen in 2020. The health security pillar includes the new Regulation on cross border health threats (replacing the 2013 Decision of the same name), strengthened mandates of the ECDC and EMA, and the creation of HERA. HERA deals specifically with MCMs, its mission is to strengthen the EU’s capacity to respond to future pandemics of other health threats, mainly by ensuring the provision of critical medical countermeasures. 

HERA’s work takes a so-called ‘end-to-end’ approach, covering each stage of the MCM from threat assessment (in partnership with the ECDC) through to stockpiling and everything in between. This approach was illustrated using the pandemic influenza case study, also pointing out that, at the R&D stage, HERA recently established a structure for coordinating clinical trials. The coordination role of HERA was also emphasised when outlining its interaction and collaboration with other EU institutions (in particular but not limited to the ECDC and EMA), industry and civil society stakeholder, and international actors to promote global health cooperation. 

HERA operates in two phases: preparedness and crisis. The activities and mechanisms of the crisis phase are set out in a separate emergency framework regulation. In addition to emergency measures aimed at accelerating the availability of crisis-relevant MCMs, the activation of the crisis phase triggers the set-up of a Health Crisis Board, composed of Commission officials, high-level member states representatives, and is the only structure within the EU health security framework that is co-chaired by the Council. 

Finally, the audience’s attention was drawn to two next steps: first, the upcoming release of a new strategy to support MCM against public health threats. Second, the assessment of national preparedness and response plan, a task undertaken by the ECDC, with the support of HERA.

You can watch the recording of the presentation here.

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OPINION on a revamped long-term budget for the Union in a changing world
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Hilde Vautmans

Source : © European Union, 2025 - EP

DRAFT REPORT on the proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council establishing the European Defence Industry Programme and a framework of measures to ensure the timely availability and supply of defence products (‘EDIP’)
Committee on Industry, Research and Energy
Committee on Security and Defence
François-Xavier Bellamy, Raphaël Glucksmann

Source : © European Union, 2025 - EP