EURILHAS Project

PI: Miguel de Oliveira Estanqueiro Rocha (CEHu)

Co-PI: Isabel Maria Freitas Valente (CEIS20)

The project The Insular dimension of Europe and the islands in the European Union: heteronomy, autonomy and sub-sovereignty (EURILHAS) is based at the CEHu of the University of the Azores. It has a partnership with CEIS20 of the University of Coimbra and is funded by the Regional Government of the Azores (M1.1.C/C.S./001/2019/01).

It is an interdisciplinary project, with its core in Political Science.

The project consists of two parts: an exploratory part that aims at mapping the islands of Europe – from the North Sea to the South Pacific – and their organization in terms of their socio-political circumstances. The aim is, in a first phase, after their exhaustive identification, to proceed to the collection of fundamental bibliography on each of them, in order to allow the adoption of a grid capable of making sense of the diversity and heterogeneity characteristic of the European island universe.

Once the material has been compiled and collected, it will be studied, organized and processed in order to reflect on the concepts of autonomy, heteronomy, sub-sovereignty and ultraperiphery.

• To map Europe's islands according to their socio-political arrangements so that we can proceed to the adoption of a grid capable of making sense of the diversity and heterogeneity characteristic of the European island universe;
• Explore the dimensions of insularity in Europe;
• Reflect on the potentialities of the European insular dimension;
• Compare and contrast the political-administrative statutes of the European islands
• To fix, in an analytical register, the place of Europe's islands in the process of European construction and to investigate, in a prospective register, possible futures;
• To scrutinise the idea of outermost regions, its implementation, the historical development it has undergone and the possibilities open to it, both internally, for the respective islanders, and externally, for the European Union itself;
• Record the options adopted by the various European islands in terms of their socio-political organization and their relationship with the European Union, and assess their value and merit for the future;
• To situate Azores within the framework of European island autonomies and, by comparing and contrasting the respective models of social and political organisation, to contribute to the ongoing debate on the future of Azorean autonomy and the revision of the Azorean statute of political and administrative autonomy.

Visit the EURILHAS Project website for more information [in Portuguese].