Gabriela Cretu

Research Area 5

Stay at EEGA: November 2020 – April 2021

Research project: European Integration, Institution-Building and Public Policy in Eastern Europe

Gabriela Cretu obtained a postdoctoral research fellowship from the Leibniz Science Campus EEGA – Eastern Europe Global Area (EEGA) to conduct research at the University of Leipzig, Institute of Political Studies, on a topic addressing the EU`s influence on institutional and policy transformations in Eastern Europe.  Her research interests focus mainly on: institution-building in Eastern Europe, European integration, public policy, minorities, migration. Gabriela Cretu was awarded the PhD Diploma by the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, after the successful defence of her PhD dissertation on public policy in European administrative systems. In it, she addresses the mechanisms that influence public policy management in the context of institutional change. During the last years Cretu has been guest lecturer at the University of Leipzig in the seminar “Europeanization – Comparative case studies”. She worked previously as counsellor to the Romanian Presidency of the EU Council and as teaching and research assistant at the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, in Bucharest.

The aim of the research project Gabriela Cretu proposes as EEGA fellow is to explore and assess the mechanisms, which determine and/or influence the domestic dynamics in Eastern European countries in the context of social policy, within the realm of European integration and European Union enlargement process. Her research seeks to develop an original analysis of domestic change in the context of the EU conditionality that influences the institutional and policy trajectories in Eastern European countries. The effects of conditionality are to be explored in the field of social policy, in order to find appropriate explanations on the institutional and policy changes, as part of the effort to adapt and to comply with the Lisbon Agenda targets. The actual developments on Europeanisation in Eastern Europe and the democratic backsliding that has occurred recently through Central and Eastern Europe are aspects that will be addressed in the research that Gabriela Cretu will develop during her fellowship in Leipzig.