Rethinking the European Union and its global role from the 20th to the 21st Century

Discover the various scientific debates that Mario Telò has been involved.

This edited volume, which has been drafted in honour of Professor Telò’s
research career, offers the reader an overview of the various scientific
debates that he has been involved in throughout his distinguished career. The
aim was to highlight, contextualise and build on his most innovative
contributions to each of these debates.

This book revolves around four thematic areas, each of which brings together a
number of contributions that offer timely reflections on a given question or
challenge covered by Professor Telò’s research.

EXTRACT

We wanted to have a personality of international calibre, espousing different
political systems across the world. But we also wanted to bring a good teacher
into the fold filling students with enthusiasm, able to lead them to develop
their study projects, to establish their vocation as researchers and even to
train personalities active in every day life, in fact to promote a European
conscientiousness.
We know that Mario Telò has perfectly fulfilled these many wishes, in
particular through his commitments towards his colleagues as well as his very
active role as member and President of the Institut d’études européennes –
Institute of European Studies (IEE-ULB), but also through the support that he
has given numerous researchers who have completed brilliant doctoral theses
under his supervision.
It is difficult to pay him tribute, however, as Mario Telò has engaged in and
still engages in multiple and international academic activities. We have lost
count of the number of foreign invitations that have been extended to him as
well as his numerous speeches to defend and to explain the need for a European
area.
Mario Telò knows better than anyone that European values still need to be
defended, that European studies cover several aspects, not just the political
integration process in Europe but also the analysis of the behaviour of
actors, decision-makers and citizens.
We know that the ‘EU acquis’ is often temporary and several times the work has
to be redone, as the difficulties of functioning with twenty-eight member
states, and soon to be twenty-seven member states, show. The European Union
does not always respond to the democratic deficit, the political integration
approach needs to show the usefulness and expected benefits of European
cooperation essential to its existence in a very tense global context.
The energy of Mario Telò, his creativity, his international engagement, his
academic openness will always be essential to the ULB. A member of the
Académie Royale de Belgique [Royal Academy of Belgium], in the Classe des
Lettres et des Sciences morales et politiques [section of letters and moral
and political sciences], Mario Telò will always find the opportunity to
express his analyses and proposals to get through the currently very troubled
time of Europe’s and the world’s evolution.