Erisa Zykai

Erisa Zykai holds a Master’s in European Journalism from CUEJ (Strasbourg), and Master’s in European Studies from IEE/ULB (Brussels). Alongside her academic work, she is a Brussels-based journalist covering EU affairs, currently contributing to B2, a French online daily specializing in defense and European geopolitics. Her professional backgrounds includes over two decades in European media, with roles at Radio France Internationale, Euronews, ABCnews tv and Klan tv.

Erisa is a PhD candidate at SMIT, researching the interplay between rational and emotional dimensions in the discursive confrontation between pro-Europeans and Eurosceptic actors. She is focussing on the rational VS emotional logic of debating EU: Twenty years from the European Constitution. At the 75th anniversary of the Schuman declaration, the European Union confronts the normalization of Euroscepticism across multiple Member states and within the European Parliament. What began with the heated debates over the European Constitution in 2005 has, two decades later, elevated Eurosceptic parties into key political actors, even within governing coalitions. Reviving familiar arguments through increasingly emotional rhetoric, these movements make it more urgent than ever to assess the rational versus emotional logic when debating the EU in decisive moments of the European integration.