The European Union has caused a fusion of international and national politics. Macro-ecomonic decisions and legal principles are decided through an interaction between national political systems and European institutions such as the European Commission, the European Parliament and the European Court of Justice. EU-Studies seek into the European institutions for understanding the processes behind the decisions and the rationalies behind the politics of the Union and the member states' adaptation.

The content of the subject

EU-Studies consists of three modules of six months' duration and the subject should be combined with another subject at RU. Normally, you start at EU-Studies after finishing one of RU's four basic studies.

EU-Studies is taught in English and about half of the students have an international background. The programme involves the students' different national experiences and insight in the teaching.

The programme takes the EU institutions as its starting point.  The structure of the institutions, the development, the legal foundation, the decision procedure and the interaction with the surroundings are all key issues. The institutions, meaning within the frames of the EU-treaty and the political landscape includes the former great powers, the affluent smaller states in the North, the new members in the East and the Mediterranean countries with their particular political-economic features. However, the European political landscape includes business, the unions and diffent kinds of interests often represented by powerful lobbies as well in the national capitals as in Bruxelles.