Study Centre for the European Project
February 2005 saw the birth of the “Associazione per il Progetto Europeo”, a venture largely stemming from the Bologna banking Foundation of the Cassa di Risparmio, which is the chief backer. The University of Bologna has been called on to collaborate (in particular through its Department of Politics, Institutions, History), as have a number of individual scholars.
As its active arm the Association has set up a “Europe Project Study Centre” (Centro Studi Progetto Europeo), the main focus of which will be tracing how public opinion forms and legitimizes a common European awareness. We see this process at present as subject to much heated debate (and also, be it said, to tired ideological platitude), though at the same time its very vagueness serves to cover a wide range of themes.
A common approach (idem sentire) to the European res publica in the making is what we shall be studying as mirrored in the daily and periodical press of some European and non-European countries (namely, Italy, France, Great Britain, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Russia, Denmark, Sweden and Norway) constantly monitoring the articles dedicated to the construction of a “European public spirit.”
The Centre makes four types of product available to its users: the “alerts”, updated daily, signal the headlines from the most important articles published; the “fortnightly maps”, present an argued out analysis of the main articles that have appeared in the press; the “two-monthly analysis”, take stock of the trends that have been emerging within public opinion in the various countries during the two-month period subject to the survey; lastly, a “focus”, published on a monthly basis providing a privileged observatory over the most relevant issues in the debate of each one of the countries examined.
We focus on public opinion, classically expressed by those who “think in public” and thus help to form a common political awareness. Our site will not be concerned with the institutional doings of the community, but with anything that prompts thoughts on how the European venture is evolving in the broadest sense.
Building a European public opinion is a key objective in the developing European community identity. Hence the Association is forming a European Forum alongside the Study Centre. This will take the form of a free and informal get-together by personalities from the cultural, political and economic worlds in order to promote debates, public or otherwise, engaging figures influential in the formation of a shared view of Europe: one with its own culture and sense of belonging.
February 2005 saw the birth of the “Associazione per il Progetto Europeo”, a venture largely stemming from the Bologna banking Foundation of the Cassa di Risparmio, which is the chief backer. The University of Bologna has been called on to collaborate (in particular through its Department of Politics, Institutions, History), as have a number of individual scholars.
As its active arm the Association has set up a “Europe Project Study Centre” (Centro Studi Progetto Europeo), the main focus of which will be tracing how public opinion forms and legitimizes a common European awareness. We see this process at present as subject to much heated debate (and also, be it said, to tired ideological platitude), though at the same time its very vagueness serves to cover a wide range of themes.
A common approach (idem sentire) to the European res publica in the making is what we shall be studying as mirrored in the daily and periodical press of some European and non-European countries (namely, Italy, France, Great Britain, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Russia, Denmark, Sweden and Norway) constantly monitoring the articles dedicated to the construction of a “European public spirit.”
The Centre makes four types of product available to its users: the “alerts”, updated daily, signal the headlines from the most important articles published; the “fortnightly maps”, present an argued out analysis of the main articles that have appeared in the press; the “two-monthly analysis”, take stock of the trends that have been emerging within public opinion in the various countries during the two-month period subject to the survey; lastly, a “focus”, published on a monthly basis providing a privileged observatory over the most relevant issues in the debate of each one of the countries examined.
We focus on public opinion, classically expressed by those who “think in public” and thus help to form a common political awareness. Our site will not be concerned with the institutional doings of the community, but with anything that prompts thoughts on how the European venture is evolving in the broadest sense.
Building a European public opinion is a key objective in the developing European community identity. Hence the Association is forming a European Forum alongside the Study Centre. This will take the form of a free and informal get-together by personalities from the cultural, political and economic worlds in order to promote debates, public or otherwise, engaging figures influential in the formation of a shared view of Europe: one with its own culture and sense of belonging.
