Posted on 22 January 2018
The Alcide De Gasperi Research Centre has started work on an academic research project looking into the history of the European People’s Party’s Group in the European Parliament.
After being awarded a grant in November, an international and interdisciplinary team has started working on the project launched by the EPP Group, which will examine its contribution and impact on key episodes in the process of European Integration and of the directly elected European Parliament in particular.
Luciano Bardi, part-time professor at the ADGRC, is coordinating the research and writing one of the chapters. The other chapters will be completed by professors Carine Germond, Wolfram Kaiser, Wojciech Gagatek and Karl Magnus Johansson.
This project demonstrates the ADGRC’s continued commitment to make the history of European integration present and relevant in current scientific research. The project will provide a modern update on existing research about the EPP Group with an emphasis on recent developments within the European Union.
The research, which has a proposed completion date of May 2019, will be published in a book and presented at a seminar on the subject. The ADGRC team will draw on the extensive resources available to them due to their location within the Historical Archives of the European Union and the European University Institute. They will also consult the EPP Group Archives in Brussels and in the Konrad-Adenauer Stiftung in Sankt Augustin.
Another main research component of the project will be interviews with various current and former members of the EPP Group. This, in addition to the archival research, will inform five chapters about the history of the EPP Group, the role of EPP Group in EU treaty reform, how the EPP Group made itself relevant within the EP party system and finally the role and contribution of the EPP Group in shaping the development of EU policies.