Stiftung Forum Morgen
REGIOPARL is a multiannual research project that focuses on the role of regional actors in the EU multi-level system of governance from a comparative perspective and aims at contributing to the debate on the future of the EU from a regional perspective.
The project is a cooperation of researchers from Danube University Krems with the European School of Governance, the Berlin Social Science Centre, the University of Tübingen, and Jagiellonian University in Kraków, carried out in cooperation with Forum Morgen.
Regional political actors are often viewed as crucial players for democratic participation as well as the proper functioning of effective representation and problem solving. Given their proximity to citizens, they can act as links between citizens on the one hand and political decision-makers at the national and European level on the other. In academic research, however, they do not receive as much attention as other political players. The REGIOPARL project aims at filling this gap by focusing specifically on regional parliaments within the EU multilevel system of governance.
The research design combines traditional social science methods of data collection and analysis (including surveys and case study analyses) with a series of workshops with members of regional parliaments discussing the future of the EU from a regional perspective.
In addition to REGIOPARL’s academic research, the project also attaches great importance to the transfer of knowledge between academia, politics and society. In addition to scientific publications, REGIOPARL therefore actively disseminates its research findings to institutions and decision-makers at the regional, national and European level as well as to the interested public.
In this transdisciplinary spirit, as of fall 2020, the project will be accompanied by an artistic contribution by the artist Mona Schulzek entitled „Outer Space Transmitter”. The installation will travel through different European regions in order to include European citizens in REGIOPARL’s dialogue on the future of Europe. The piece features an antenna through which passers-by are invited to find their own answers to the question: What does it mean to be a citizen of the European Union? The artist and ham radio operator Mona Schulzek uses the answers to create art images that are sent as radio wave signals to a satellite. From there, these images are left to the universe as an artefact to be found one day by unknown beings of other worlds and times.
For more details on the REGIOPARL project, please visit the project website at www.regioparl.com
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