Latest blog articles

  • SMECC stands for School, Minimum standard, Education, Child-friendly policy and care-Continuum. Imagine SMECC as a flat drawing of a house. The regulatory backstop is the minimum standard in family litigation for competent parenthood – far on the horizon, however, a necessary fundament of human...

  • The statutory pension of civil cervants in Belgium is on de verge of a reform. The legislative proposal ‘mixed pension’ will soon be introduced by law, after being the centre of intense debate for nearly a year. What exactly does ‘mixed pension’ mean?

  • Mobility and good public transport prove to be essential requirements for an attractive (border) region. Establishes ITEM-PhD candidate Julia Reinold in an interview with EurekaRail.

  • Union citizens have the right to be accompanied by their ‘spouse’ when exercising their mobility rights. But what if your spouse is denied right of residence because the destination Member State does not recognise your marriage?

  • After more than seventy years of the trials in Neurenberg and Tokio, and more than twenty years since the set up of the ad hoc-tribunals for former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, we wonder wether something is wrong with the International Criminal Court? (Dutch only)

  • ‘Follow your heart.’ Anyone who faces an important choice, will undoubtedly hear this advice at times. Trust your gut feeling and everything will be all right. However, very often our intuition is wrong.  (Dutch only) 

  • Asylum seekers usually do not cross borders with a bag of documents. They have lost their personal belongings or have been confiscated by smugglers. Oral statements are therefore the only proof of origin. (Dutch only) 

  • In September 2015 for the second time this year, after a first mobilization of more resources in June 2015 already,[1] the European Commission announced additional financial assistance of €801.3 million from the 2015 EU budget to tackle the current refugee crisis in the European Union (EU).[2]

  • It took quite a while before the European countries realized and recognized that the influx from asylum-seekers via the Mediterranean Sea and Turkey into the European Union is not just a matter of controlling the outside borders of the Union, but also a humanitarian and human rights issue. Some...

  • I am sure you have heard that the Bulgarian government built a fence on the Bulgarian – Turkish border and that the ‘refugee crisis’ put the national asylum system to the test. What about the Bulgarian integration policies? Did you know that currently refugees in Bulgaria face ‘zero’ integration...