Josip Bilić participated in the international UACES 56th Annual Conference 2026

Josip Bilić participated in the international scientific conference UACES 56th Annual Conference 2026, which was held from 7 to 9 September 2026 at Charles University in Prague (Czech Republic).

At the conference, he participated in the following sessions: “European Security: Actorness and Legitimacy” and “Constructing Europe: Daily Practices to EU Free Movement and Borders”. Within the sessions, Josip Bilić presented the results of two projects.

The first paper, entitled “Impact of the Schengen Area on the Everyday Practices in Croatian Border Regions: Comparing Land and Sea Borders”, was created as part of the project “Effects of the Europeanization Process in Selected Urban-Rural Areas of Croatia – HREUURBRUR” and co-authored by Lana Peternel, Nikola Petrović and Filip Fila from the Institute for Social Research in Zagreb. In this paper, the authors deal with the consequences of Croatia's entry into the Schengen Area on everyday practices in border regions, comparing the cases of sea and land borderlands.

The second paper, entitled “The Hour of Europe 2.0: Common Foreign and Security Policy from Maastricht to the Strategic Compass Through the Perspective of the Epistemic Community”, was created as part of a project of the same title in co-authorship with Nikola Petrović and Filip Fila from the Institute for Social Research in Zagreb. In this paper, the authors deal with the way in which the epistemic community defined the Common Foreign and Security Policy of the EU in two crisis periods: during the wars in former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, and during the current crisis caused by the war in Ukraine.