Over the last decades, the EU has faced a number of crises, from financial and economic to migration crises, but also renewed geopolitical tensions, domestic opposition and Brexit. Such challenges have resulted in calls to make arrangements more flexible and adaptable to member states’ different needs and to different policy areas. Differentiation has gained prominence on the European agenda and is a crucial matter in today’s debates on the future of Europe, raising new questions: Is differentiation sustainable and acceptable? Can differentiation instead lead to democratic problems, or ultimately, disintegration?
The DiCE Networking Conference on Brexit aims at mobilizing experts and relevant stakeholders from policy-making, civil society and academia and bring them together for three roundtable debates, as well as a ‘witness panel’ with stakeholder involved in the Brexit negotiations. The conference focuses on the distinction between internal and external differentiation and on the role of Brexit for the future of the EU in general and the effects on differentiation research in particular.