As part of the 2026 Council for European Studies (CES) Conference in Dublin, our Centre of Excellence EUMERGENCIES organised a two-part mini-symposium entitled « Unity and Disunity in Times of Emergencies ».

The symposium took place on June 17, 2026, and featured two panels bringing together researchers from UCLouvain Saint-Louis Bruxelles (Insitute for european Studies) to explore narratives, framing strategies, and the construction of communities in times of crisis.

Programme Overview

Panel I: Narratives and Framing

Date: June 17, 2026 Time: 2:00 PM – 3:30 PM Location: O’Connor Building – L2.21

Chair: Teresa Cabrita (UCLouvain Saint-Louis Bruxelles; Max Planck Institute)
Discussant: Florence Delmotte (FNRS; UCLouvain Saint-Louis Bruxelles)

Presentations:

Permanent State of Emergency at the EU’s Borders: Framing Migration in the Pact on Migration and Asylum | Denis Duez (UCLouvain Saint-Louis Bruxelles)
Who Says It’s Urgent? A Discursive Analysis of “Emergency” Frames in the European Parliament | Samuel Defacqz (UCLouvain Saint-Louis Bruxelles; Université Laval), Elisa Reymond (UCLouvain Saint-Louis Bruxelles), and Thomas Laloux (FNRS)
Democracies under Threat: How Emergencies Expand the EU’s Scope of Action | Cecilia Rizcallah (UCLouvain Saint-Louis Bruxelles)
EU Trade Policy in Turbulent Times: The European Parliament’s Responsiveness to Civil Society Framing Strategies | Elisa Reymond (UCLouvain Saint-Louis Bruxelles) and Laurie Beaudonnet (Université de Montréal)

Panel II: Constructing Communities

Date: June 17, 2026 Time: 4:00 PM – 5:30 PM Location: O’Connor Building – L2.21

Chair: Denis Duez (UCLouvain Saint-Louis Bruxelles)

Presentations:

The Protection of Which Persons in the Event of Disasters? EU Law and the Outer Limits of Solidarity | Teresa Cabrita (UCLouvain Saint-Louis Bruxelles; Max Planck Institute)
How Generations and National Communities Frame EU Emergencies: A View from Below | Florence Delmotte (FNRS; UCLouvain Saint-Louis Bruxelles) and Katharine Throssell (UCLouvain Saint-Louis Bruxelles)
The ‘Identity Politics’ Crisis and the European Anti-Woke Community | Martin Deleixhe (Université Libre de Bruxelles)
The Voiceless Victims in the EU’s Framing of the Climate and Environmental Emergency: The Case of the 2024 Environmental Crime Directive | Agathe Piquet (Bordeaux University)

The 2026 CES Conference in Dublin

The Council for European Studies (CES) Conference 2026, held in Dublin, addressed the overarching theme « Integrity, Solidarity, and Unity: Hopes and Realities of the European Future ». This theme resonated with the EUMERGENCIES Centre’s focus on how crises challenge—and sometimes reinforce—European cohesion. The conference provided a multidisciplinary platform to examine the social, political, and legal dimensions of emergencies, from migration and trade policy to climate governance and democratic resilience.

For further details, the full programme of the mini-symposium is available for download: [Download the full programme (PDF)]