News

Many European borders were closed this spring simply because governments were unable to make agreements about the various national corona measures, and not primarily due to public health considerations. This is the conclusion of the annual Cross-Border Impact Assessment by the Institute for Transnational and Euregional cross-border cooperation and Mobility/ITEM at Maastricht University.

Discoordination at the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak caused numerous bottlenecks in the border regions, which proved to have negative effects on Euregional cooperation. The PANDEMRIC project (Interreg V-A Euregio Maas-Rijn), aimed at promoting Euroregional cooperation in the field of health care, may offer opportunities for optimal cross-border crisis management.

Nine researchers from Maastricht University (UM) are to receive grants this year from the Research Development Fund (RDF) of the Worldwide Universities Network (WUN). A total of 15 research projects were selected out of 31 applications in the 2019-2020 funding round. UM is participating in seven projects that have been awarded grants.

For the research group led by Susan Rutten, professor of Islamic Family Law in a European Context at Maastricht University (UM), in recent weeks, everything has fallen into place. Partly in response to the recommendations of their MARICAP study, the Dutch minister of legal protection Sander Dekker recently proposed a bill to make it possible to bring a swifter end to marital captivity.

The three Liberal Arts colleges of Maastricht University retain their top positions in the Keuzegids Bachelors 2020.

From 1 January 2020, a new Dutch law regarding the legal status of civil servants can prevent certain employees of Dutch universities from working at home. In a change from the current situation, from January on it matters to cross-border workers how much time they work in the office or from home.

The Young Universities for the Future of Europe (YUFE) alliance was present in Brussels yesterday during the kick-off event of the European Universities Initiative. YUFE is one of the 17 alliances of European universities selected by the European Commission to develop and implement the first models for a European University.

The Dutch Research Council (NWO) has awarded Dr Zvezda Vankova of the Faculty of Law a Rubicon grant that allows her to conduct research at the University of Lund (Sweden) for a period of 24 months. The Rubicon programme is intended to give young, highly promising researchers the opportunity to gain international research experience.