SENSE in transnational transport in the EU Erasmus Project

Project Title

SENSE in transnational transport in the EU

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Transport and mobility; Home and justice affairs (human rights & rule of law)

Project Summary

The SENSE project and its objective
The Erasmus+ SENSE project was comprised of the following partners: Luca Ratti (Univeristy of Luxembourg), Amber Zwanenbrug, Rouben Houwling and Zef Even (Erasmus University Rotterdam), Mijke Houwerzijl (Tilburg University), Herwig Verschueren and Bartłomiej Bednarowicz (University of Antwerp) and Monika Tomaszewska and Michał Szypniewski (University of Gdańsk).

The main objective of the SENSE project was to solve problems arising in the field of EU transnational transportation by providing adequate understanding of the legal setting, not just at a single national level, but also at EU and multinational/comparative level, by developing and implementing state of the art education and by working with innovative tools: a Legal Navigation App. SENSE clarifies the legal aspects of transnational transport from multiple perspectives and educates (future) professionals. Combining state of the art knowledge, students, lecturers and professionals allows entering into a dialogue on actual topics from different national perspectives. This cooperation was to enlarge staff mobility and bridge the world of education with the world of non-educational stakeholders. Jointly, the partner law schools developed an international programme, containing different modules on ‘Cross-Border Road Transport in EU Law Context’ that is accessible to all. In essence, the SENSE Project aspired to make SENSE in transitional transport in the EU. SENSE aimed to make transport more Social, rules better ENforceable, the sector of international transport more Sustainable and because of the Legal Navigation App, all of this will be made Easy.

Rationale behind SENSE
Perhaps surprisingly, there are still great gaps in knowledge and education of the complications in the social and legal policy field concerning EU international transportation. The knowledge present in different Member States is scattered. Cooperation between universities and other stakeholders is scarce and high-quality education is often unavailable. Problems show that Europe urgently needs properly trained professionals able to solve the problems at hand and develop best practices.

First end result: Transnational collaboration in education makes SENSE (teaching modules)
SENSE thus contributed to innovations in the transport sector. Current national programmes in law only provide courses in national law and EU law separately. An integral vision on the interaction of EU freedoms with social rights at the national level is lacking which puts change and innovation on hold. This project educates modern and versatile professionals able to think outside the boundaries of national law. These new professionals will not think and work as “we” and “them” but from an integrated transnational perspective. Operating at the interface of European and national law will broaden the horizon of students and teachers, break traditional patterns in education and bring refreshing insights on how problems are solved in other countries. SENSE focuses on the sector in which the challenges are arguably the greatest and the solutions the most difficult to find. The Strategic Partnership is fully linked with the needs of the transport sector, i.e. based on on-going input from stakeholders. Their positive response proves that this program is an important step in realizing an upgrade of skills and knowledge. The modules will improve the ability of (future) professionals to keep up with new developments (learning to learn) and will be used in the partners’ academic education to improve the quality of the curricula. The free online MOOC is available to everyone (https://www.coursera.org/learn/transport-eu-law) and all the other Project materials are accessible online as well (www.project-sense.eu/teaching-modules/). We have already reached thousands of learners, and with the online open access course remaining available in the future this will only increase further.

Second end result: Legal Navigation App makes even more SENSE
The Project developed a prototype for the Legal Navigation App. The App is designed to monitor exactly in which countries the transnational work is performed and for which time periods. It also provides the legal consequences such as applicable working and resting time, wages and offers further information on how to obtain more help and assistance thanks to the cooperation with the social partners in the transport sector. For more information on the App, please visit: http://www.project-sense.eu/legal-navigation-app/.

The results of our project can be viewed on our website and are presented in the dissemination video, which can be found on: http://www.project-sense.eu.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 274247 Eur

Project Coordinator

UNIVERSITE DU LUXEMBOURG & Country: LU

Project Partners

• UNIVERSITEIT ANTWERPEN
• UNIWERSYTET GDANSKI
• ERASMUS UNIVERSITEIT ROTTERDAM
• STICHTING KATHOLIEKE UNIVERSITEIT BRABANT