Field of specialisation

European institutions and decision-making processes; comparative regional cooperation and integration.

Professional experience

Dr Edward Best (UK) is Head of the European Decision-Making Unit and acting head of the European Policies Unit at EIPA Maastricht, and honorary Senior Fellow of Maastricht University. He specialises in European institutions and the political aspects of European integration, as well as comparative regionalism and the management of regional organizations. He has been responsible for successive framework contracts to provide training services to the EU institutions on European governance, and has given regular courses in the European Commission and EU Agencies. He has been a consultant for the European Commission, the United Nations, the Inter-American Development Bank and the Helsinki Commission.

He is the author of Understanding EU Decision-Making (Springer 2016) and EU Law-Making in Principle and Practice (Routledge 2014), both published with the support of the Publications Office of the EU. He is co-editor of The Institutions of the Enlarged European Union (Edward Elgar 2008) with Thomas Christiansen and Pierpaolo Settembri, and of Rethinking the European Union: IGC 2000 and Beyond (EIPA 2000) with Mark Gray and Alexander Stubb, and has published numerous articles on the EU and institutional arrangements for regional integration.