I. Overview

The EU is currently facing a series of internal and external challenges and tensions. Several situations illustrate this. The Member States of the Eurozone have been converging and centralizing in economic and financial measures, with the adoption of the new Stability Pact and the strengthening of the structure of budgetary supervision. However, some essential features are still missing in order to assure a sustainable European Economic and Monetary Union, and a political agreement for that purpose is still far from granted. Meanwhile a proposal concerning the retreat of a Member State from the Eurozone will be submitted to a referendum. Moreover, some important aspects of the EU policies in the fields of asylum and immigration have been overtly challenged by certain Member-States. Also, there have been signs of regional tensions in individual Member-States, either by opposition to EU transatlantic trade deals, such as the CETA case with Walloon, or by new attempts of regional independence. Finally, in 2017 there will be the beginning of the first retreat procedure of a Member State from the EU with the United Kingdom triggering Article 50 TEU.
Sixty years after the signing of the Treaty of Rome and twenty-five years after Maastricht, the EU may be living a true moment of “constitutional mutation” that may dramatically change its identity. Therefore, this is the right time to address the EU federal experience from an historic perspective and to analyse the role which such an acquis may play in the shaping of the future EU.
The purpose of this conference is to tackle the following three questions. First, how should we evaluate the EU federal experience, sixty years after the signing of the Treaty of Rome? Second, which are the main challenges facing the EU in the light of its federal experience? Third, do these challenges and respective answers suggest that the European federal dream is over, or just undergoing a new form of development?

II. Conference Topics
We invite the submission of abstracts and papers that relate in general with the overview of the conference, and that particularly address one or more of the following topics (resume):
1. EU and federalism on the 60 years of the Treaty of Rome: a connection throughout time
2. Federalism now: a current and general assessment of the EU as a federal system
3. Federal challenges in the Eurozone
4. Federal challenges in the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice


III. Participation

Interested participants should submit an abstract of no more than 500 words to federalismconference@fd.unl.pt and mariateresamamede@gmail.com or through the conference webpage at http://federalismconference.cedis.fd.unl.pt/ until 1 April 2017.
Abstracts selection will be announced by 15 April 2017. Full papers of no more than 7500 words (including footnotes) should be submitted by 19 May 2017.
Participants will be responsible for their own travel and accommodation expenses.