Bandera de la Unió Europea

Express2

Project providing an innovative response to EU and global calls for a new democratic, inclusive and sustainable social contract to address inequality and other disruptive elements.

A new, more inclusive, democratic and sustainable European social contract

How to promote a stronger, more democratic, legitimate, inclusive and sustainable social contract for Europe? How and which disruptive elements can condition the political stability and disaffection of the social contracts of member states and the European Union (EU)? The UAB's Institute for European Studies (Institut d’Estudis Europeus, IEE) coordinates the research project "EXPRESS2 - Specify and Protect the EU Social Contract", which will spend three years, startin in March 2024, analysing the growing demand to build a new, more democratic, inclusive and sustainable social contract at European level, with greater legitimacy and more stimulating for society as a whole.

To this end, a consortium of eleven organisations from nine countries will work on a draft proposal for a social contract that will be submitted to the inhabitants of the EU, the member states and the EU institutions for deliberation. The different parties will have the possibility to participate in its preparation and to decide on its conditions, rights and obligations.

Participants

The project is coordinated by Antoni Abat i Ninet, María Zambrano researcher at the IEE, and the consortium is formed by the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (Spain), University of Copenhagen (Denmark) Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies (Italy), Molde University College (Norway), Sabanci University (Turkey), Central European University (Hungary), European Movement International (Belgium),  Dublin City University (Ireland), University of Essex (United Kingdom). 

Role of the PRUAB

The UAB Research Park leads the communication of the project.

Period

Start date: March 1, 2023 
End date: February 28, 2027

Funding

The project, one of the three prioritised for funding in the call for social challenges Democratic governance for times of disruptive changes to the social contract (HORIZON-CL2-2023-DEMOCRACY-01-06), is funded by the European Commission's Horizon Europe research and innovation framework programme, with a total budget of nearly 3 million euros, of which 646,977 euros are allocated to the UAB and PRUAB budgets.

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