Sabine Saurugger – Why and how the European Union changes

Hello, I am Sabine Saurugger. I'm a professor of political science at Sciences Po and the Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics. 

I'm an EU scholar. I'm interested in European integration and why the European Union changes. What changes, in which direction does the European Union change and who are the change agents. 

More specifically I focus on three aspects. 

I focus on institutions. I have worked quite extensively on the Court of Justice of the European Union, a supreme court in an international system, whis is not only a judicial actor but also a policy actor. It influences and changes public policies. 

I look then at public policies and why public policies change. I focus particularly on different public policies such as wildfire management or financial regulations or health policies. 

And finally I focus on the question of how to explain this change theoretically, so on theories of European integration. Which is the theory that explains best this political system which is not a state and not an international organization?

I have just finished a research project on soft law. Soft law are recommendations or guidelines developed by European institutions in order to implement European public policy.

The literature says that the European integration process is somehow diluted through these kinds of guidelines which are different from hard law – that means regulations and directives. Our research has shown that this is not entirely the case. Soft law complements hard law more than it replaces hard law, in the majority of policy areas that we have studied. I've done this research with two fantastic colleagues, Miriam Hartlapp from the Free University in Berlin and Fabien Terpan from Sciences Po Grenoble, together with a great group of PhD students and postdocs. 

My current research project focuses on the impact of crises on the European Union. I will analyze which kind of committees and coordination structures the European Union develops in order to answer crises that occur at the European Union level and I will focus more specifically on two policy areas: on the one hand civil protection, more specifically wildfires, and on the other hand digital hybrid threats. 

For me, Sciences Po is one of the most dynamic and internationalized environments in which studying social sciences today. We have stellar colleagues, young researchers, bright students, a very dedicated staff and a possibility to have interdisciplinary and open and pluralistic debates and controversies. 

In particular, the  willingness of Sciences Po and its director Luis Vassy, to put Europe in the center of research and teaching, makes it for me the perfect moment to join Sciences Po and the Center for European Studies and Comparative Politics whose DNA is closely linked to this particular agenda. I cannot imagine a better place to be.