New project of TACR: Motivating Czechs for a career in EU institutions

From May 2023, academics from the Faculty of International Relations of the Prague University of Economics and Business will start working on a project within the TACR Beta 2 Programme entitled Motivating Czechs for a Career in EU Institutions. The project team is composed of experts from the Faculty of International Relations of the Prague University of Economics and Business in cooperation with colleagues from the University of Mining and Metallurgy – Technical University of Ostrava and the MEDIAN agency.

Project objective:

The primary objective of the research is to determine the motivation (including the factors that influence this motivation) of selected target groups of Czechs who are applying or could potentially apply for a job in the EU institutions.The research will also include findings on the awareness of the selected target groups about career opportunities in the EU institutions or about the different information channels, as well as their preferences in communicating this agenda. The analysis will also focus on the general availability, quality and completeness of information on career opportunities in the EU in general.

Research team from the University of Economics in Prague:

doc. Mgr. Mgr. Ing. Radka Druláková, Ph.D. – Principal Investigator
doc. JUDr. Nicole Grmelová, Ph.D., FIR (Department of Business and European Law)
doc. Ing. Pavel Hnát, Ph.D., FIR (Department of International Economic Relations)
Mgr. Ing. Kateřina Kočí, Ph.D., FIR (Department of International and Diplomatic Studies)
Mgr. Jarolím Antal, Ph.D., FIR (Department of International Economic Relations)
Mgr. Ing. Petr Tomčiak, FIR (Department of Business and European Law)

Solution time:

15 May – 31 October 2023

Identification number:

TIRDUVCR932MT10

Solution team from the Prague University of Economics and Business:

doc. Ing. Mgr. Radka Druláková, Ph.D.

Doc. Druláková is an associate professor at the Department of International and Diplomatic Studies. She has been working at the Department since 1998 and has been the Deputy Head of the Department since 2013. Since 2016 she has been the Vice-Dean for Science and Doctoral Studies at the Faculty of International Relations. She is the guarantor of the Bachelor’s degree programme International Studies and Diplomacy and its English version International and Diplomatic Studies. Since 2019 she has been a member of the panel P408 Legal Sciences, Political Science of the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic, since 2021, its chair and a member of the disciplinary committee OK4 – Social Sciences and Humanities. For the National Accreditation Office for Higher Education, she serves as an evaluator in the field of education 20 Political Science. Her professional interests include foreign policy analysis, the internal security of the European Union and international sanctions policy. She teaches courses in Contemporary International Relations, Foreign Policy Formation and Analysis, and Internal and External Security of the European Union. In 2020, she was the head of the research team of the TACR grant project entitled Setting up a coordination mechanism in the framework of the EU Council Presidency: preparations and course from the perspective of selected Member States, lessons learned and recommendations for CZ PRES 2022. In 2021, she was the head of the research team of the TACR grant project entitled The EU Council Presidency Trio: what can we expect from our partners?

doc. JUDr. Nicole Grmelová, Ph.D.

Doc. Grmelová has worked at the Department of Business and European Law since 2002. Since 2021 she has been the Head of the Department. She graduated from the Faculty of Law of Charles University in Prague (Mgr., JUDr.) and the Faculty of Law of the University of Seville (Lda.). She holds a Ph.D. degree from the Faculty of International Relations of the Prague University of Economics and Business. After successfully defending her habilitation thesis, she was appointed Associate Professor of Business Law at the Prague University of Economics and Business in 2018. From 2004 to 2008, she worked as a lawyer-linguist at the European Parliament. From 2009 to 2012, she worked externally with the Court of Justice of the EU as a lawyer-linguist. She mainly teaches courses on EU law and institutions in Czech, English and Spanish. Her domestic and international publications focus on proceedings before the Court of Justice of the European Union and out-of-court dispute resolution (European Ombudsman, SOLVIT and mediation).

doc. Ing. Pavel Hnát, Ph.D.

Doc. Hnát is an Associate Professor at the Department of International Economic Relations and, from 2022, the Vice-Rector of the Prague University of Economics and Business for Pedagogy and Quality Management. From 2012 to 2022, he was Vice Dean of the Faculty of International Relations for Teaching. He teaches courses in World Economics, Regionalism in the World Economy and International Economic Relations. He was appointed Associate Professor in 2014 in the field of International Business. In 2009, he obtained his PhD in European Studies, defending his dissertation on the Global Political Economy of New Regionalism and the European Union; for this work, he received the 2009 Best Doctoral Dissertation Award at the Faculty of International Relations of the Prague University of Economics and Business. He specializes in New Regionalism, Comparative Regionalism and the position of the European Union in the global economy. In 2007, he completed a one-month study stay at Renmin University of China in Beijing. He is also a member of the Centre for European Studies and a member of the editorial board of the journal Contemporary Europe. Hnát is the supervisor of the Master’s programme in European Economic Integration. In 2019 and 2020, he was a researcher of the TACR project entitled Targeting investment support in the Czech Republic with regard to the expected impacts of technological change. Between 2020 and 2022, he was a member of three research teams of the TACR project focusing on the EU Presidency.

Mgr. Ing. Kateřina Kočí, Ph.D.

Dr Kočí is an assistant professor at the Department of International and Diplomatic Studies. She teaches courses in International Relations, Ethics, Responsibility and Sustainability in Modern Society, EU in the World and Contemporary World Politics, both in English and Czech. As a researcher, she focuses on topics related to EU activism, the EU Common Foreign and Security Policy, the Central European region in the EU and gender in diplomacy. In these research areas, she has recently published as author or co-author an article on Central Europe (Oxford Bibliographies, 2019), a chapter in Inside Diplomacy. How to address gender inequality in the diplomatic service (Grada, 2020) and the articles Quo Vadis, V4? What is the potential of the Czech Republic to promote its interests within the framework of the V4? (Studia Politologiczne, 2020) and Personnel policy as a state tool to promote interests in international organisations: a case study of the Czech Republic (Acta Politologica, 2021). Since 2017, she has also coordinated the Sports Diplomacy Programme, on which the FIR VŠE cooperates with the Czech Olympic Committee.

Mgr. Jarolím Antal, Ph.D.

Dr Antal has been an assistant professor at the Department of International Economic Relations since 2014. He lectures European Economic Integration and teaches seminars in the World Economics course at the Department. He is the Director of the Centre for European Studies and the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Contemporary Europe. In 2019 and 2020, he was a member of the research team of the TACR project entitled Targeting investment support in the Czech Republic with regard to the expected impacts of technological change. In 2020, he was a member of the research team of the TACR project entitled Setting up a coordination mechanism within the EU Presidency: preparations and course from the perspective of selected Member States, lessons learned and recommendations for CZ PRES 2022.

Mgr. Ing. Petr Tomčiak

Mr Tomčiak is a PhD student at the Department of Business and European Law. He graduated from the Faculty of Law of Charles University and the Faculty of International Relations of the Prague University of Economics and Business. During his Master’s studies he received the Josef Hlávka Prize. He is interested in European law, finance, and financial regulation. His experience includes the Ministry of Finance of the Czech Republic, the Council of the European Union, where he served as a national expert during the Presidency, and the consultancy EY.