In June, Koen van Zon participated in the 4th annual conference on Law and Policy in European Integration, hosted by the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History in Frankfurt. In his contribution, Koen presented the case study of the European cosmetics directive as an example of how different societal actors (industry, consumer and environmental…

On 22 June 2021, Liesbeth van de Grift presented a paper on consumer activism and representation at the Council of European Studies Conference. She participated in the panel ‘Europe as a Space for Transformative Politics in the 1970s’ organized by Sarah Farmer (University of California, Irvine), together with Steven Milder (University of Groningen) and Keith…

The largest farmers’ demonstration in postwar European history, in protest against reform of the Common Agricultural Policy, turns 5o today. Alessandra Schimmel argues in this blog that it prompts us to consider other groups’ criticism of this policy as well. Since the early 1970s, European consumer groups have repeatedly raised their concerns about the Common Agricultural Policy, addressing its failure…

In the latest publication from the project, Koen van Zon studies the development of consumer governance on the European single market from the 1960s onward. The EU single market is the largest economy in the world, with high standards for protection, so one would perhaps expect that consumers, as its ‘demos’, occupied a central role…

On February 4th, Liesbeth van de Grift will join in a debate on the question of the role of expertise in governing the EU. The discussion is part of an online conference organised by the Dutch Research Council. After a column spoken by Caroline de Gruyter, Europe correspondent for the newspaper NRC, Liesbeth and colleagues Cees…

Nu vaccins volop in de aandacht staan, dook Koen van Zon in de geschiedenis van de regulering van vaccinveiligheid. Daarbij stuitte hij op het softenonschandaal uit de jaren ’60. In deze video gaat hij met hoogleraar privaatrecht Elbert de Jong in gesprek over de vraag wie de verantwoordelijkheid draagt voor veilige vaccins. Voor de blog…

Conference ‘Towards A Social History of European Integration’ 18-19 October 2021, Utrecht Fishermen blocking the port of Calais, consumer groups lobbying the European Commission, fair-trade activists criticising European trade policies, and farmers and their tractors taking to the streets in Brussels: these are all examples of actors and stories that do not often make it…

Op woensdag 2 december 2020 was Koen van Zon te gast in De Nieuws BV om te praten over de regulering van medicijnveiligheid in het kader van het aankomende coronavaccin. De aanleiding was zijn blog Why comparisons between the corona vaccine and thalidomide do not hold: a historical take on public health scandals and the regulation…

As tests for several vaccines against the corona virus enter their final stages, sceptics raise concerns about the vaccine’s safety. They argue that the unprecedented speed with which the vaccines have been developed and the commercial interests that are at stake may come with risks to public health. In this context, one historical scandal continues…

On 8 and 9 September 2020, the online workshop ‘The Contested Consumer’ brought together academics from history, social and political sciences to discuss the topics of consumerism and consumer governance from an interdisciplinary perspective. The aim of the workshop was to overcome internal fragmentation with academics studying the institutional developments regarding consumer protection from a…