Suchergebnisse

International audience ; Due to economic globalization, tax havens allow owners to place their capital, even virtually, in financial centers that are particularly undemanding in terms of taxation and control over the origin of the funds thus placed. A distinction must be made between tax havens "stricto sensu", regulatory havens, judicial havens and offshore financial centers (OFC). The United Kingdom has the greatest weight in the world, ahead of Switzerland, Luxembourg, Hong Kong, the Cayman Islands, Singapore and the United States. There is even a certain specialization of "tax havens". Until 2010, the United Kingdom or Switzerland were highly recommended by banks, but today investments in Europe are increasingly risky for Europeans themselves. At the initiative of France, a tax of 3% of the turnover (and not the profits) generated by the exploitation of digital activities has been proposed on these companies. However, tax havens" are still very present in the world of financial markets. Most multinational companies use tax havens to optimize their profits. Democracy is clearly in danger.

International audience ; Due to economic globalization, tax havens allow owners to place their capital, even virtually, in financial centers that are particularly undemanding in terms of taxation and control over the origin of the funds thus placed. A distinction must be made between tax havens "stricto sensu", regulatory havens, judicial havens and offshore financial centers (OFC). The United Kingdom has the greatest weight in the world, ahead of Switzerland, Luxembourg, Hong Kong, the Cayman Islands, Singapore and the United States. There is even a certain specialization of "tax havens". Until 2010, the United Kingdom or Switzerland were highly recommended by banks, but today investments in Europe are increasingly risky for Europeans themselves. At the initiative of France, a tax of 3% of the turnover (and not the profits) generated by the exploitation of digital activities has been proposed on these companies. However, tax havens" are still very present in the world of financial markets. Most multinational companies use tax havens to optimize their profits. Democracy is clearly in danger.

The global economic crisis and the subsequent weaker growth are putting under pressure welfare states in the EU. This paper aims at discussing the effects of the crisis at the social level and at identifying whether the classic European welfare state models (Nordic, Continental, Anglo-Saxon and Mediterranean) are still valid in today's economy. An answer will be tried using the mathematical tool of principal components analysis. The results will be observed in graphs where the states taken into consideration respect the classical welfare models or they regroup themselves into new circumstances' adapted models. Even though the classical welfare models are generally still checked up with the analyzed indicators, our analysis reveals the need to theoretically redefining the European welfare state in the aftermath of the crisis and to have a unifying social policy concept. Besides calling into question the financial viability of the current social programmes, the crisis could be also a new opportunity to reconfigure and re-legitimize social policy. ; peer-reviewed

Acknowledgement: The University of Malta would like to acknowledge its gratitude to the Council of the European Communities for their permission to upload this work on OAR@UoM. Further reuse of this document can be made, provided the source is acknowledged. This work was made available with the help of the Publications Office of the European Union, Copyright and Legal Issues Section. ; 1 January - 31 December 1988 ; Compilation of texts part V. General matters that include the Association agreement and related texts; Provisions within the community relating to the association agreement and Provisions within the EEC, for countries Cyprus, Malta and Turkey ; N/A

This comparative report on national care pathways for people with dementia living at home has been produced as part of the 2014 Work Plan of Alzheimer Europe, which has received funding from the European Union in the framework of the Health Programme. Decisions about the broad areas to be addressed were informed by a literature review on the topic. Agreement on the specific sections to be included for each area was reached in a meeting with 16 Alzheimer Europe (AE) member associations at the beginning of 2014. Based on this, a questionnaire was drafted and later reviewed by four members of the group. The final questionnaire was sent out to all AE members. In addition, in countries where AE has no member (i.e. Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia), relevant informants were identified and invited to participate. 29 AE member associations and two external experts returned the questionnaires1. Questionnaires had been completed by the national organisation and, whenever necessary, with the aid of relevant national experts in the field of social policy, medicine and social support2. Organisations were contacted again when necessary to clarify certain issues and information was transferred into a database and analysed. The comparative report was sent to all participating organisations for final approval prior to publication. In addition to this comparative report, a national report for each country has been produced. These national reports are available to the public on the Alzheimer Europe website (http://www.alzheimer-europe.org). ; peer-reviewed

Evaluates extent of success of the Sept. 30, 1998 successor agreement to the Lomé Convention, the EU's trade and aid agreement with developing countries in Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific. Argues that multilateralism, particularly World Trade Organization (WTO) compliance, has undermined Lomé and could damage regional solidarity among developing countries.

Informal Governance in the European Union, Christiansen, Thomas and
Simona Piattoni, eds., Celtenham (UK) and Northampton, MA (USA): Edward
Elgar, 2003, pp. viii, 274.The nature of governance in the European Union (EU), the production of
authoritative decisions through a plurality of actors and institutional
arrangements, has been at the centre of recent scholarly debates. While at
first sight many of its institutions resemble their national counterparts
the EU seems to have established a system of governance sui
generis with modes of decision-making that reflect the distinct
institutional distribution of power and the complex multi-level game of
accommodating interests in the regional, national and European arena.
Thomas Christiansen and Simona Piattoni have focused on one critical
aspect of this evolving mode of decision-making, namely, the role of
informal governance. It is defined as the operation of networks and actors
pursuing common goals through regular, though not codified and not
publicly sanctioned exchanges in the institutional context of the EU.

With EU enlargement, peculiar Central European ideas and traditions of integration emerged in European politics. In the discussions on a European constitution, the representatives of the new member states surprised the "old" Europe with meanings of Europe that were situated far beyond the canonised Western concepts of pragmatic political integration. Central European politicians and political essayists discussed a canon of cultural and religious European values and the role of the nations in the European Union. Research on the contemporary history of Central Europe brings light into the traditions and the development of Central European meanings of Europe. Before 1989 and East of the "Iron curtain", Europe rather served as a place of desire than as a concrete concept, a mechanism of integration or an institutional framework. The cases of Poland and the Czech Republic (respectively the former Czechoslovakia) show that the salient feature of their meanings of Europe in history is the high significance of the nation. In the Eastern bloc, Europe was construed along terms of culture and civilisation. Party officials, dissidents and journalists framed Europe nationally. Regarding ideas of integration, 1989 stands for continuity in Central European meanings of Europe. The historical East-West difference in the "thinking of Europe" and former mappings of Europe in the new member countries re-shape the present new European Union. Exclusive meanings of Europe in Central Europe challenge policies of integration, migration, citizenship and governance. There is a drift towards demarcating a European self and towards defining a collective in cultural terms. This trend strengthens the paradigm of neighbourhood vis-à-vis transnationalisation and unification in the E.U. In the debates on the foreign relations of the Union, exponents of a cultural European identity address questions of self-demarcation and self-delimitation.

The adoption of the euro in 1999 by 11 member states of the European Union created a single currency area second in economic size only to the United States. The euro zone's monetary policy is now set by the European Central Bank (ECB) and its Governing Council rather than by individual national central banks. This CESifo volume examines issues that have arisen in the first years of ECB monetary policy and analyzes the effect that current ECB policy strategy and structures may have in the future. After a detailed description and assessment of ECB monetary policy making that focuses on such issues as price stability and the predictability of policy decisions, the book turns to two important issues faced by European central bankers: the transparency and credibility of decision making and the ECB's decentralized structure. After showing that transparency in decision making enhances credibility, the book discusses the ECB's efforts at openness, its political independence as guaranteed by law, and its ultimate accountability. The book then considers the effects of the decentralized ECB structure, focusing on business cycle synchronization, inflation differentials, and differences in monetary policy transmission in light of the enlargement of the monetary union. The book also discusses options for ECB institutional reforms, including centralization, vote weighting, and cross-border regional banks.

The European Union after Brexit addresses the forces and mechanisms at work during an unprecedented transformation of the European polity. How will the EU operate without one of its key diplomatic and international military partners? What will happen to its priorities, internal balance(s) of power and legislation without the reliably liberal and Eurosceptic United Kingdom? In general, what happens when an 'ever closer union' founded on a virtuous circle of economic, social, and political integration is called into question? Though this volume is largely positive about the future of the EU after Brexit, it suggests that the process of European integration has gone into reverse, with Brexit coming amidst a series of developments that have disrupted the optimistic trajectory of integration. Covering topics such as international trade, freedom of movement, and security relations, this book answers a need for a one-stop source of strong research-based discussions of Brexit.