CfP: COMPSEES-Sonderausgabe zur EU-Integration und Arbeitsproduktivität in Südosteuropa

The process of European Union (EU) accession, even before full membership, can have significant impacts on the productivity of acceding countries. First, negotiations for EU accession encourage (or even bind) these nations to undertake comprehensive economic and institutional reforms to align with EU standards and regulations, fostering the rule of law and credible institutions, hence an environment friendly to citizens’ and businesses’ wellbeing. Additionally, access to the EU's vast single market creates new opportunities for acceding countries to export their goods and services, thus boosting their competitiveness on a global scale. The countries of Southeastern Europe felt the benefits of the single market—at least to an extent—long before they formally joined the EU, through the variety of agreements—promoting free trade and/or customs unions—they had among each other and/or with the EU. Furthermore, the process of EU accession necessitated investments in infrastructure, education, and technology, frequently supported through the pre-accession and structural funds of the EU, which further enhanced the long-term productivity and competitiveness of these nations.

The Special Issue intends to focus a bit more narrowly within this broad field, namely on the nexus between EU integration and labor productivity in Southeastern Europe. The following is a nutshell of the possible directions of the paper topics:

1. Labor Market Reforms: EU accession prompts and accelerates labor market reforms in acceding countries, such as increased flexibility, improved active labor market policies, and enhanced activation. These reforms affect labor productivity.
2. Skills and Education: Accession to the EU may affect investments in education and training to ensure the workforce meets EU standards. This leads to changes in skill levels and labor force productivity.
3. Labor Mobility: The free movement of labor within the EU can encourage labor mobility, allowing workers to seek higher-paying jobs in other EU countries. This can lead to improved productivity as workers move to positions that better match their skills. At the same time, it may impinge the acceding/home countries negatively by creating labor shortages. The Special Issue is primarily interested in the acceding-country perspective.
4. Technology Transfer: EU accession often comes with technology transfer and foreign direct investment, which can enhance labor productivity by introducing more advanced and efficient production methods to acceding countries.

The Special Issue aims to put these sub-topics along with two cross-cutting themes: 1) the distinct patterns that women in the labor market may experience during the process of EU accession (both positive and negative); and 2) the multiple crises (pandemic, stagflation etc.) may affect the EU accession process in ways that could either improve or distort vital productivity trends.

The Special Issue aims at a cross-disciplinary dialogue. We, therefore, invite proposals from economics and cognate disciplines, including sociology, demography, and political science, that address the key questions of this Special Issue. While we want to focus on Southeastern Europe, we also encourage comparative and transregional perspectives.

Comparative Southeast European Studies (COMPSEES) is a quarterly multidisciplinary journal indexed in Scopus and Web of Science and published by DeGruyter Oldenbourg on behalf of the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (IOS), Regensburg, Germany. It is published both digitally, in Open Access, and in print. More details regarding the journal can be found on the journal’s webpage: https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/soeu/html.

Submissions to this Special Issue should be original research articles of up to 9,000 words that have not yet been published elsewhere and are currently not under consideration by any other journal. All submissions to this Special Issue will go through a double-blind peer-review process. Contributions that successfully pass the peer-review process will be published in this Special Issue, tentatively planned for the second quarter of 2025.

Questions regarding the Special Issue can be addressed to Prof. Marjan Petreski (University American College Skopje, North Macedonia), Guest Editor and the Editorial Board Member of Comparative Southeast European Studies, at marjan.petreski@uacs.edu.mk.

Questions regarding the journal submission guidelines and policies can be addressed to Dr. Olga Popova (IOS Regensburg), Associate Editor of Comparative Southeast European Studies, at soe-economics@ios-regensburg.de.

Important dates

The journal submission guidelines are available at the journal’s webpage: https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/soeu/html?lang=en#submit

When submitting, please choose “Special Issue” and note in the cover letter that the submission is intended for a Special Issue, guest-edited by Prof. Marjan Petreski.