The debate dealt with different issues, such as the role that the European Community Studies Association (ECSA) can play in the development of EU studies within and outside the European Union, the role that universities have in the introduction of EU studies in primary and secondary schools and how to disseminate the results of research on the European Union.

The roundtable was made up of professors from several European universities, such as Péter Balázs from Central European University (Hungary), Amelia Hadfield from Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium), Peter-Christian Müller-Graff from Arbeitskreis Europäische Integration e.V. (Germany), Roman Petrov from the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (Ukraine), and Sonja Puntscher Riekmann from Paris-Lodron Universität Salzburg (Austria).

Enrique Banús has a PhD in Philosophy and Literature from RWTH Aachen University in Germany. He has worked as a professor at RWTH Aachen University, the Universität zu Köln, UniversitätBonnand Universität Paderborn. From 1988 to 2007 he was a professor at the Universidad de Navarra. Since 2001, he has been a member of the European Commission’s Scientific Committee dedicated to intercultural dialogue and in 2003 the European Commission awarded him the ad personam Jean Monnet Chair in European Culture. In 2009 he was re-elected president of the European Community Studies Association (ECSA) for the following two years. At the UIC, he is a professor in the Faculty of Humanities and the Director of the Charlemagne Institute for European Studies. In 2011, he was awarded an honorary degree from the Universitatea din Oradea in Romania.