The course will take place throughout November 2021. It has 32 teaching hours consisting of lectures and seminars. Course sessions will take place on Wednesday afternoons and Friday mornings through the Zoom platform. All course participants will have access to the RGSL study portal, where course materials will be available. Participants are expected to fulfil the assignments as well as pass an exam to be rewarded with 1.5 ECTS for course completion.
Although predominantly economic in its form, the EU is a political project by its very nature. This course will address European integration from a political-economic perspective. It aims to reveal the impact of both political and economic factors in shaping the Single Market and the Single Currency, the euro. What opportunities and constraints do the interactions between political and economic logic create for different European actors? What can other states learn from the EU’s experience? This course is interactive with ample opportunity for classroom discussion.
Course is taught by PhD cand. Aldis Austers. Aldis Austers was awarded a degree of engineering in administration of business foreign relations at Riga Technical University in 1995 and a degree of master of advanced international studies at the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna in 1998. During his career as a diplomat at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, from 1995 to 2002, Austers was posted at the Mission of Latvia to the EU, where he was responsible for economic cooperation affairs between Latvia and the EU, and the coordination of Latvia’s accession negotiations to the EU. From 2003 to 2011 Austers worked for the Bank of Latvia as a specialized attaché in the rank of counselor at the Permanent Representation of Latvia to the EU and was in charge of financial regulation, monetary policy, the exchange rate, and general economic policy affairs.
Currently, Austers is a researcher at Latvia’s Institute of International Affairs and at the Institute of European Policies Research of the Latvian Academy of Sciences. Austers is also a guest lecturer at the Riga Graduate School of Law and at the University of Latvia. His fields of interest include monetary economics, political economics, the migration of people, and European integration.
Eligible candidates for RGSL online specialised courses are professionals from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, with at least two years of work experience in the public sector, non-governmental organisations or academia.
All specialised online courses are free of charge. The project is implemented in cooperation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Latvia and the United States government.
Apply here until 24 October 23:59 EET:
More information about the courses here: