Gracia Vara Arribas

Gracia Vara Arribas (ES) is a Senior Lecturer at the European Centre for the Regions, EIPA's Antenna in Barcelona. She has worked at EIPA since 1996 and was initially located at its headquarters in Maastricht. In 1999 she was transferred to its Antenna in Barcelona.
Gracia Vara is a lawyer and practised in Spain during the period 1986-1995 in the fields of criminal, commercial and international law. She was a teacher on criminal and international law at the School of Judicial Practice for Young Lawyers (ES) where she was granted the ICEX scholarship by the Spanish Ministry of External Affairs (1990-1991) to conduct comparative studies (NL-ES) of different branches of law for the Spanish Government at its Embassy in The Hague (NL). She gained a Master of Laws (LLM) in comparative, European and international law at the Maastricht University (1995-1996). Since joining EIPA she has been involved in different training and research programmes in Europe and Latin America. She specialises in European law, European institutions and decision making, the principles and tools used in pursuing a better European governance (with particular attention to the role of the Regions and local entities – multilevel governance) and the study of the legislation on Public Procurement and Gender Equality in Europe, its compliance and enforcement. From 1999 to 2007 she was coordinator of the EIPA Cooperation Agreements signed with different Spanish regional governments, and in 2005 she worked as adviser to the High Level Group on European Governance of the rotating EU Presidency (UK) in the field of regional participation in European decision making.
She has published several articles in English and Spanish on multilevel governance, public procurement and gender equality, and she is co-editor of the book written for the UK Presidency of the EU 2005 "Tripartite Arrangements: An Effective Tool for Multilevel Governance?" Since 2006 she has been project leader of the European Commission Criminal Justice programme "The Europeanisation of Prison Management".

EU law and institutions; EU multilevel governance; gender equality law and policies; penitentiary public service models in Europe; European public procurement law and practice.

Droit et institutions de l'Union européenne; gouvernance européenne à plusieurs niveaux; législation et politiques relatives à l'égalité entre les hommes et les femmes; modèles de service pénitentiaire public en Europe; législation et pratiques européennes en matière de marchés publics