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Purpose – The purpose of the article is to present the development of horizontal aid for environ-mental protection and objectives related to green energy in Poland in comparison with other EU countries in 2009-2017. The above category of state aid in Poland has been characterised in detail, considering its sources, forms, entities providing support as well as the main beneficiaries of aid. Research method – The article utilises the analysis of existing data on horizontal aid for environmental protection and energy objectives in Poland and European Union countries. Results – During the period 2014-2017, as part of horizontal aid in Poland, the majority of aid was granted for environmental protection and energy objectives (in 2014 it accounted for 45% of the total horizontal aid). In the European Union, by comparison, a gradual increase in the share of the abovementioned category of assistance in the total state aid granted in the analysed period is noticeable. The largest share of the studied category in total state aid was recorded in Sweden, Austria and Germany, while the largest increase in the share of this aid in total state aid was seen in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia and Romania. Originality /value / implications /recommendations - As a result of the strategies implemented in the EU states, the aid for environmental protection and energy objectives is currently one of the most important categories of horizontal aid. This article offers a multifaceted analysis of the above assistance in Poland and a detailed comparison of the level of this support in the EU countries.

On May 6, 1955, the Western European Union (WEU) formally came into existence.1 On May 7, the WEU Council held its inaugural meeting in Paris. The Council considered various questions relating to the structure of WEU and, after approving the Interim Commission's report and adopting the draft agreement on the status of WEU and its staff, appointed Louis Goffin (Belgium) Secretary-General of WEU. Admiral Ferreri (Italy) was appointed director of the Agency for the Control of Armaments. The Council also decided, on the basis of studies carried out by a working group established at the nine-power conference in Paris on October 21, 1954, to create a Standing Armaments Committee composed of national representatives and served by a small secretariat. The Standing Committee had the task of "the development of the closest possible co-operation between member countries of Western European Union in the field of armaments, in order to seek the most practical means of using the resources available to these countries for equipping and supplying their forces and of sharing tasks in the best interest of all". In order to promote liaison with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the seat of the Standing Committee was to be Paris; Charles Cristofini (France) was appointed Assistant Secretary-General in charge of the international secretariat of the Standing Committee. The Council further decided that the first meeting of the WEU Assembly should be held in Strasbourg during die same period as the next session of die Consultative Assembly of die Council of Europe and that the WEU Assembly should be composed of die representatives of the Brussels Treaty powers to the Consultative Assembly.

Using a DSGE model calibrated to the euro area, we analyze the international effects of afiscal devaluation (FD) implemented as a revenue-neutral shift from employer's socialcontributions to the Value Added Tax. We find that a FD in 'Southern European countries'has a strong positive effect on output, but mild effects on the trade balance and the realexchange rate. Since the benefits of a FD are small relative to the divergence incompetitiveness, it is best addressed through structural reforms

Several studies have identified the factors that cause public deficits in industrial democracies. They consider that economic, political and institutional factors play an important role in the understanding of those deficits. However, the study of the determinants of excessive deficits remains practically unexplored. Since excessive deficits can have large negative spillover effects when countries are forming a monetary union without a centralised budget –as it is the case for a group of European countries – this paper tries to explore that gap in the literature by identifying the main causes of excessive deficits and the ways of avoiding them. Binary choice models are estimated over a panel of 15 European Union countries for the period 1970-2006, where an excessive deficit is defined as a deficit higher than 3% of GDP. Results show that a weak fiscal stance, low economic growth, the timing of parliamentary elections and majority left-wing governments are the main causes of excessive deficits in the EU countries. Moreover, the institutional constraints imposed after Maastricht over the EU countries' fiscal policy have succeeded in reducing the probability of excessive deficits in Europe, especially in small countries. Therefore, this study concludes that supranational fiscal constraints, national efforts to reduce public debts, growth promoting policies and mechanisms to avoid political opportunism and partisan effects are essential factors for an EU country to avoid excessive deficits. Finally, the results presented in this paper raise the idea that a good strategy for the EU countries to avoid excessive deficits caused by the opportunistic behaviour of their policymakers would be to schedule elections for the beginning or the end of the year. ; Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) - ...

The aim of this report is to analyse employment segregation for women and men in the European labour market at both the sectoral and occupational levels. It provides a comparative analysis of trends in segregation across the 27 EU Member States, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein, and examines the root causes of the phenomenon, the consequences, and current and desirable policy responses. Gender-based employment segregation is so pervasive that distinctions have multiplied in order to facilitate analysis: occupational versus sectoral segregation, overall or horizontal versus vertical segregation, vertical versus hierarchical segregation. Horizontal segregation is understood as under- (over-) representation of a given group in occupations or sectors, not ordered by any criterion, and is often referred to as segregation tout court. Vertical segregation denotes the under- (over-) representation of the group in occupations or sectors at the top of an ordering based on 'desirable' attributes — income, prestige, job stability, etc. Finally, hierarchical segregation stands for under- (over-) representation of the group at the top of occupation-specific ladders. All forms of gender-based segregation are considered in this report, although overall and vertical segregation in occupations receive closest attention. The first part of the report examines levels and change in overall segregation in European countries (Chapter 1). It goes on to review the most important factors that impinge on segregation (Chapter 2) and to assess three main implications, namely undervaluation of women's work, confinement in 'low quality' jobs, and skill shortages (Chapter 3). Policies are reviewed and assessed in Chapter 4. The second part of the report summarises the highlights from case-study research conducted at national level on 10 occupational groups, the evidence from this research being used as a reference throughout the report. ; peer-reviewed

"This book critically examines the origins of today's anti-Islamic rhetoric in Europe with a specific focus on representations of Turkey. Applying a novel theoretical framework that understands collective identities as dramaturgical achievements, it shows that stereotypes of Turks continue to provide an important "Other" against which a supposed European "Self" is contrasted. The book identifies two competing meta-narratives that have long vied for the right to define Christendom and later Europe, and argues that the struggle over these narratives - one tragic, the other comic - have come to a head in Turkey's current bid for EU membership"--

Zugl.: Freiburg (Breisgau), Univ., Diss., 1999

This essay deals with real convergence in the European Union (EU). Real convergence is here defined as convergence of GDP per capita in Purchasing Power Standard. I examine whether there is empirical evidence of real convergence among EU countries or regions and if the current effort towards nominal convergence has slowed real convergence. The main findings are that there has been some real convergence at the country level, mainly before the mid- 1970s, but not much evidence of real convergence is found at the regional level. I also find that the convergence criteria set in the Treaty of Maastricht may have slowed real convergence in the European ...

Acknowledgement: The University of Malta would like to acknowledge its gratitude to the European Commission, Directorate-General for Justice and Consumers 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. ; The promotion of the protection of the rights of the child is one of the objectives of the EU on which the Treaty of Lisbon has put further emphasis. This report is part of a study to collect data on children's involvement in criminal, civil and administrative judicial proceedings in the EU. It supports the implementation of the 2011 EU Agenda for the rights of the child, which identified the lack of reliable, comparable and official data on the situation of children in the Member States (MS). The main aim was to gather and publish all available international and national data available - data are published here: www.childreninjudicialproceedings.eu. The study also gathered information on legislation and policy to support interpretation of the data. For each of the two strands of civil and administrative justice, there are 29 (two each for the UK) individual Member State contextual overviews that describe national legislation and policy covering children's involvement in proceedings relating to the areas of family, employment, asylum, migration, education, health, placement in care, administrative sanctions and offences committed by children below the minimum age of criminal responsibility (MACR) ; N/A

This paper aims at identifying the factors that have influenced changes in the level of industrial CO2 emissions. By means of an algebraic decomposition method the observed changes are analyzed into four different factors: output level, energy intensity, fuel mix and structural change. The application study refers to the industrial sector of European Union countries. The results show that CO2 emissions are possible to decrease without negatively affecting economic growth. In this sense, they confirm the decoupling of economic growth from energy consumption realized in the developed countries and prove that this detachment holds true also for the atmospheric emissions associated with energy use. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. JEL classification: Q40.