The JM Centre of Excellence EU FInancial REsilience and REgulation – EUFIRE-RE focuses on developing high performance in research, innovation and practical expertise, both at national and European level, in the field of EU studies, focusing on regulation for financial resilience.
Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi covers a wide area of EU Studies and EUFIRE-RE enhances high performance in research and education in the EU studies, focusing on financial resilience through regulation. EUFIRE-RE is the first JM Centre of Excellence in law and financial regulation at the host institution. It was designed and it is implemented under prof. Mihaela TOFAN’ s direct coordination, who holds the JM Chair European Financial Regulation.
The synergies among research themes and educational actions are emphasized by the development of the financial regulation and the need to reshape European regulation for ensuring resilience. The team of the project includes experts with different level of professional careers and relevant EU financial regulation competences (18 scholars from 5 different universities, 2 from Romania – the host university and University Babes-Bolyai Cluj, Coimbra University from Portugal, Zagreb University from Croatia, and State University of Moldova, Chisinau).
All team members are involved in the activities of the project and their research activities are grouped accordingly to their expertise in 5 research teams, each one responsible for a major area of investigation. The research is pooling the members’ expertise in law, finance, EU studies, banking, consumers, taxation, and big data management, focusing on specific topics of the EU financial regulation for reshaping resilience, promoting constructive debates and exchange of good practices. The events within the project are organized in partnership with other JM chairs and centres of excellence and in continuous cooperation with representatives of the local public administration. The research groups include members with different positions in the academia, the coordination responsibility being usually assumed by a full professor, with extensive expertise in the area of investigation, and joining senior and junior colleagues, with or without JM project experience. Ph.D. Students with interest on the topic of the research will be involved in the research activities. In this way, the previous JM activities will be the base to build new research and cooperation network within JM framework, creating advanced research groups on EU regulation for reshaping financial resilience and building new centres of high expertise on subject crucial for the actual challenges at the EU level.
The project transfers knowledge and best practices equally to academia, students, and public administration decision-makers. The project fosters dialogue between the academic world and society. The local policy makers, civil servants, civil society actors and representatives of the different levels of education will participate in the events of the project (3 workshops, 3 webinars, 3 international conferences, 3 open lectures, 3 roundtables). The website EUFIRE-RE provides information on JM Centre of Excellence activities, objectives and team, research themes and results, topic of courses, calendar, deadlines, target groups, conditions to attend, administrative aspects, events opened to the public. The dissemination strategy of the research results to the public administration representatives is included in the project activities (dissemination bulletin EUFIRE-RE, publication, meetings with invited guests, etc.). The research themes (EU financial resilience for consumers in digital era; EU financial resilience for local communities; EU banking regulation for financial resilience; EU resilient taxation: national and global challenges; EU public procurement and public administration financial resilience) group the team members according to their expertise.
The profile of the staff members guarantees and ensures the high quality of the research results and wide dissemination, developing synergies between different aspects of financial regulation for reshaping resilience in public spending, banking, taxation, etc. The team of the project will be involved in exchange of good practices and research visits and participate in national and international conferences. The partial research results are discussed in the academic events of the project, presented in international academic events, and disseminated. Minimum 5 papers will be published in international open accessed ranked journals, 3 conference proceedings are to be submitted to evaluation for coverage in Conference Proceedings Citation Index (CPCI) by Clarivate Analytics, and one monograph will be published in an international renowned publishing house for social studies/law. The results of the research will be available for the academia and are continuously updated, available for the target groups within the project.
The project proposes activities with relevance for local and national public administration politics. There will be panels in the international conference organized each year of the implementation where the representatives of the local public authorities will be invited, their participation building the ties for cooperation between academia and practitioners, supporting the collection of the relevant data for the research, objective analysis and efficient dissemination of the results. Each of the organized course within the project will include a lecture by a representative of the practitioners with experience on the particular analyzed topic, reflecting the pertinent theoretical approach on the actual challenges for building the financial resilience through regulation.
The project facilitates ongoing dialogue among academics, researchers, students, representatives of local public administration and civil society members. At least 450 undergraduate, graduate and PhD. students are the target group for the courses of the project. EUFIRE-RE will improve their educational experience, optimizing the curricula at the applicant university, offering courses in response to the demand of gaining specialized information on EU financial regulation for reshaping resilience. All the courses will include both face to face and on-line activities, providing wide access to the interested students, from other universities in the country and from other regions. Ph.D. students will be involved in research activities and will be co-authors for papers published in international journals, a kick-off to a research career in the field of EU financial regulation studies. In the first semester, the educational activities proposed by the project are EU Institutional Legal Framework (taught in high schools), EU Banking Regulation (first semester, for undergraduate students), EU Financial Regulation and EU Taxation (second semester, for postgraduate students), and the summer school EU Financial Resilience and Regulation, opened especially to students from other universities in the same city/region, who have not been in contact with EU studies (University of Medical Science, University of Agronomy, Polytechnical University, Arts and Conservatory).