Interactive Syllabus

Lecturer:

Petr Kaniok, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

Department of International Relations and European Studies

Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University, Brno

Phone: 549 493 571

Email: kaniok@fss.muni.cz

Office hours: Office hours (Spring 2022) Monday 10.00 - 11.00 (room 446), Tuesday 10.00 - 11.00 (MS Teams). 

 Course Objectives and Description

This course aims at providing students with detailed knowledge and understanding of the decision-making system within the European Union (EU). The most essential part of this course is devoted to the lecturers that introduce the most important EU institutions as the European Council, the Council of the EU, the European Parliament or the European Court of Justice. Apart from this, several lectures focus on cross cutting topics related to the EU institutions as is for example interplay between domestic and EU levels of decision making process, or functioning of the most used and most important EU decision making procedures. Students are also encouraged to follow and monitor real life of the most important EU institutions and analyze them in terms of EU democracy.

During this term, the course will be taught in flipped format using Zoom application. For each week (week 2 – 9), students will have pre-recorded video .ppt presentations covering particular topic available in the interactive outline (is.muni.cz). It is recommended to watch the video prior class for particular topic takes place.  The contact meetings will be used for students´ questions on particular topic and for discussion on EU institutions weekly news (see below). Each meeting will start at 12.00 and will last approximately 60-90 minutes.

In case of seminars (classes 11 and 12), the contact meetings will last standard 100 minutes (as there will not be any pre-recorded lecture) starting at 12.00 and ending at 13.40. There will be no pre-recorded lectures for these two weeks. 

 Assignments and Grading

The grading is based on the following assignments:

Institutional monitor: Students will choose one of three major EU institutions (the European Parliament, the European Commission, the Council of the EU and the European Council) in order to monitor its real activities during the term. For each week (from week 2 until week 9 included), each student will be required to submit 400 words lasting report on:

a)       what particular institution did in previous week,

b)      what can be considered as the most important event related to this institution during this week

Each submission will be graded on F/P basis with 2 points. Each submission has to be uploaded until Saturday 12.00 prior forthcoming class – delayed submissions will be graded as failed with 0 points. Students discussing their weekly reports will get 1 bonus point for each presentation during classes.  Overall value up to 16 points + 8 bonus points for activity during class discussions.

Students are encourage to use official websites of the institutions as well as sources as politico.eu, euractiv.com, eurobserver.com or news agencies as reuters.com.

Seminar papers: Students are requested to submit two seminar papers on classes 11 and 12. Each paper should be around 1500 words long (references excluded, footnotes included) and should cope with assigned task. Each paper has to be uploaded until Saturday 12.00 prior seminar – delayed submissions won´t be accepted. Each paper will be graded from 0-5 points, overall value up to 10 points.

Final exam: The exam will consist of six questions per 5 points. The questions will be focused on topics included in the assigned readings/class sessions. Overall value up to 30 points. 

In sum, students can achieve 56 points (+ 8 bonus points). The grading scale is as follows: F 0-30, E 31-36, D 37-41, C 42-46, B 47-51, A 52-56.