Latest blog articles

  • European academia pays the price for Brexit

    Almost 20 years ago, in 2002, I had the honour to give one of the “William Harvey lectures” at the University of Padua, celebrating the 400th anniversary of the Englishman’s graduation with a degree in medicine from the famous Italian university.

    brexit blog Martin Paul
  • Three countries, three ways of counting?

    Comparing figures on corona infections and mortality can be misleading

    The number of people dying in Belgium from the effects of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) is higher than in neighbouring countries. This high mortality rate makes it seem as if Belgium is not doing as well as its neighbours. The...

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  • Working from home: not a self-evident matter for frontier workers

    With the prevailing Coronavirus (COVID-19) it is recommended to work from home as much as possible. For frontier workers, however, working from home can be disadvantageous. This is because they then work in another country from one day to the next. International and European rules on the...

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  • Towards the end of German housing (construction) subsidies?

    More than ten years after the European Court of Justice ruled that the German Eigenheimzulage was in breach of European law, the EC also started questioning its successor, the Baukindergeld. ITEM had previously concluded that the Baukindergeld was in breach of European law. We now await the...

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  • Limburg Esperanto

    We occasionally receive letters here at Maastricht University telling us we are ruining the Dutch language by only offering education in English. They do not actually have the facts straight: we are a bilingual university with an ‘English unless policy’, which means the language of instruction is...

    Prof. dr. Martin Paul
  • It has to be different?!

    On 8 September 2015 State Secretary for Justice and Security Klaas Dijkhoff announced that from now on only refugees who have applied for asylum in a safe place outside the EU would be accepted in the Netherlands. The government wants to put an end to asylum-seekers placing their fate in the hands...

    Bulgaria’s zero refugee integration policy and beyond