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When professionals and students move to other countries to either work or study there, they may need recognition of their qualifications. Different instruments and procedures exist depending on the purpose of mobility. Despite the fact that such instruments mainly aim at facilitating mobility, bottlenecks may nonetheless arise in practice. ITEM briefly sets out some exemplary bottlenecks including suggested solutions related to the recognition of qualifications following from their casuistry and research.

De ITEM quick scan maakt een eerste inschatting mogelijk in hoeverre een onderwerp een verdere beoordeling vergt wat mogelijke grenseffecten betreft. ITEM heeft de quick scan toegepast op beleidsvoornemens die in het Nederlandse Regeerakkoord van 2017 worden genoemd. 

Can certain rules affect the daily lives of border residents? By means of an impact assessment, the impact of certain guidelines can be measured. The ITEM Expertise Centre is committed to mapping the impact of legislation and policies for border regions. In this context, ITEM published its annual Cross-border Impact Assessment 2017 on Friday, November 10, 2017.

Together with artist Marie van Vollenhoven, Dr. Jerry Spanakis and Prof. Dr. Gerhard Weiss were nominated for the Klokhuis Wetenschapsprijs 2017 with their project The Infinity Games. The popular Dutch children’s tv show gives out the award annually (web page in Dutch).

Maastricht University teams have a long tradition of scoring very high in the European Law Moot Court Competition (ELMC). Organized annually since 1988, the ELMC is a bilingual moot court (French-English) focused on topical issues of European Law.

On Friday 22 September, Maastricht University signed a new partnership with the United Nations Social Impact Fund (UNSIF) and nine leading universities worldwide to join the UNSIF Research Council.

Martin Unfried from the Institute for Transnational and Euregional Cross-border cooperation and Mobility / ITEM of Maastricht University was present at the launch conference 'Boosting Growth and Cohesion in EU Border Regions' of the European Commission in Brussels. During the event Unfried gave background information about ITEM’s annual Cross-border Impact Assessment, which was put forward by the Commission as a good practice in regards to the improvement of the legislative process within the European Union.

In an official document of the Commission’s Regional Policy titled Communication “Boosting Growth and Cohesion in EU Border Regions”, the Cross-border Impact Assessment of the ITEM Expertise centre of Maastricht University was put forward as a good practice by the European Commission in order to facilitate the improvement of the legislative process within the European Union.

The thesis ‘Balancing Student Mobility Rights and National Higher Education Autonomy in the European Union’ by Dr. Alexander Hoogenboom, connected to the ITEM Expertise centre and the Faculty of Law of Maastricht University, will be issued by publishing house Brill in the series ‘Nijhoff Studies in European Union Law’ in October 2017.

The Ministry of the Interior has written a response to the report ‘Cross-border workers in Europe’ (Grenswerkers in Europa) in a Letter to Parliament. Furthermore the minister addresses the progress of cross-border cooperation.