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Holding the rotating Presidency of the Council of Ministers of the European Union (EU) is a challenging task for any Member State, but in the context of the global financial and eurozone crisis, the perceived decline of EU influence in the world and the growing resentment of EU citizens to austerity measures, the 2012 Danish Presidency was always going to be particularly difficult. As the remark from French President Nicolas Sarkozy to newly elected Danish prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt during the European Council meeting around 2 a.m. on Friday 9 December 2011 suggests, the Danish Presidency began early and in considerable difficulty (Gardner, 2012). Adapted from the source document.

For more than four decades, those who supported the creation of a single patent regime with European-wide legal effects must have felt a lot like Sisyphus, struggling pointlessly towards an unreachable goal. This may be about to change in light of the adoption of the "unitary patent package" by the European Union (EU), provided the thirteen Member States (including France, Germany, and the United Kingdom) ultimately ratify the Unified Patent Court Agreement (UPCA).

The paper discusses the usefulness of the concept of empire in the study of the European Union, the integration process and the development EU's external relations. In order to do so, it reflects critically on the use of this concept in the broader context of contemporary polities and selected European empires of the past. The paper argues that colonial empires are just one type of empires and that another type should be given more scholarly attention. In order to account for the diversity of imperial patterns observed, the paper suggests using two concepts, inwards imperial governance and outwards imperial governance. Using these two concepts instead of one undifferentiated concept of empire makes it possible to shed a different light on the EU's alleged empirehood and its evolution over time. It also offers an analytical tool that can account for differences between different empires of the past as well as between contemporary candidates for empirehood and past empires. ; Funded by the European Research Council (ERC) within the 7th Framework Programme, the BORDERLANDS project is hosted at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute, and directed by Professor Raffaella A. Del Sarto.

The significance and position of high-technology industries within the economy is often considered to be an attribute of the company's maturity. The aim of this study is to compare employment in the high-technology sector in selected European Union and OECD countries and to analyse university-educated workers' job satisfaction in the Czech Republic and Poland. The work will use available data concerning employment and data mining will be carried out. Job satisfaction will be examined through a questionnaire survey. From these results some dependence between employment and job satisfaction could be observed. The employment rate in the Czech Republic is slightly higher and the level of job satisfaction is also slightly higher than in Poland. It can be assumed that the importance of high-technology industries will continue to grow because it is in the interest of the companies themselves to be competitive. At the same time, this is needed for further economic growth and productivity gains, so these directions should be further developed and supported.

In 2011, the European Commission (EC) proposed a new version of the Energy Taxation Directive (ETD), a tax affecting the price of energy products. The main aim was to increase the effectiveness of the instrument through stronger fiscal pressure and to coordinate the environmental taxation with the Emissions Trade System (ETS) introduced in 2005. However, in May 2012 the European Parliament did not approve the reform. Italy, already characterized by high energy taxation rates, has recently expressed a commitment to increase the use of environmental taxation by explicitly referring to the amendments proposed by the EC in 2011. This study analyzes the effect of the 2011 ETD reform on prices in Italy, if it were implemented. The main finding is that the new tax regime would have a low impact on prices. This result implies that the reform would not significantly orient consumption and production towards more environmentally friendly patterns.

Màster en Diplomàcia i Funció Pública Internacional, Centre d'Estudis Internacionals, Universitat de Barcelona, Curs: 2014-2015, Tutor: Fernández Pons, Xavier

This paper offers an alternative account of the frequently observed association between gross domestic product growth and a decline in traditional church attendance. The approach follows Durkheim's focus on the social functions of religion. It is hypothesized that economic prosperity leads to an exchange of the mediators of social activities, rather than to an increase in existential security or rationalization. With income development individuals increasingly engage in consumption-related practices. In turn, traditional religious activities, contexts and symbols lose their significance as mediators for social action. This hypothesis is tested, in competition with the 'updated secularization hypothesis' of Norris and Inglehart, via multilevel analyses. Data are drawn from the European Social Survey and the Eurobarometer, relying on micro and macro units on 82 (NUTS1) regions from 20 European countries. In accordance with the consumption hypothesis, results indicate that increases in gross domestic product lead to religious decline primarily by supplanting the dominant modes of social action. Adapted from the source document.

While Europe is celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Rome Treaty, there is much doubt about the extent of citizens' emotional attachment to Europe. In this article we examine whether young Belgians show a sense of European citizenship, using a range of questions about the European Union (EU) from a survey administered to more than 6000 secondary school students. We show that a genuine identification with Europe — one that is not purely based on a positive evaluation of the EU from a utilitarian point of view — is related to higher levels of tolerance towards ethnic minorities, Muslims and immigrants. In addition, we will provide an overview of the literature on European citizenship and its potential connection to a higher degree of tolerance towards different cultures.

The Nordic countries constitute an interesting laboratory for the study of differentiated European Integration. Even though Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden share some historical, cultural, socio-economic and political characteristics, all those countries have ultimately opted for a different kind of relationship with the EU. Whereas Finland, a member of the Eurozone since its inception in 1999, has been considered to be part of the Union's 'inner core' for quite some time, Iceland and Norway, in contrast, have opted to remain outside the EU albeit closely associated via the European Economic Area Agreement. The variation of relationships has also been reflected in Nordic parties' positioning vis-à-vis European integration in general and differentiation of European integration in particular. Broadly speaking, party families can be distinguished along traditional (e.g., agrarian, Christian democratic, conservative, and social democratic) and modern (e.g., socialist left, green, and populist radical right) ideological orientations. Although political parties belonging to both the traditional and modern Nordic party families have adopted different stances on European differentiated integration, we would assume—against the backdrop of Nordic cooperation—higher levels of transnational cooperation in European matters. Consequently, this article examines the similarities and differences between parties belonging to the same ideological family, and the extent of transnational party cooperation in the Nordic countries. Drawing on a series of interviews conducted with party representatives as well as on official party documents, this article shows that although institutionalized party cooperation mostly reflects divisions between party families, such institutionalization does not include a common vision for European integration. We conclude that the low level of partisan Nordic integration is primarily caused by domestic-level factors, such as intra-party divisions, government participation and public opinion.

Der "Green Deal" ist ein "grünes Angebot" der Europäischen Kommission. Es richtet sich nicht nur an die 27 EU-Mitgliedstaaten, sondern auch an die Unionsbürger/innen. ; The "Green Deal" is a "green offer" from the European Commission. It is not only aimed at the 27 EU Member States, but also at EU citizens.

The development of a European economic and social model poses serious challenges for European trade unions. On the one hand, demand for a strengthening of the social dimension of the European integration project is growing and it is realised that this cannot be achieved by unilateral action at the national level. On the other hand, the identities and organisational capacities of trade unions are deeply embedded in national welfare state institutions, limiting the leeway for a common European social model. This article presents empirical evidence from over 100 interviews with trade union leaders and politicians from 17 EU Member States on trade unions' positions in various policy fields (economic, social and competition policies). The conclusion is that unions should reflect more critically on their embeddedness in national welfare state arrangements in order to move forward together towards the realisation of a Social Europe.

In the early 1970s, the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) began to revise its trade policy towards the outside world. It needed to counter the European Community's bid to implement its Common Commercial Policy and thereby change East-West trade practices. Foreign trade priorities became at once a crucial issue on the socialist countries' political agenda. The key question was whether they would have to open their system to the global economy - and bear the consequent pressures and competition that this decision entailed. Based on newly declassified archival sources, this study show

Although parliamentary questions are an essential tool of legislative oversight, there is limited research on their variation in holding governments accountable. In this article, we analyse a new dataset of 1393 oral questions posed by Members of the European Parliament during the 8th parliamentary term. After distinguishing between questions asking for information, justification, or rectification of conduct, we explain their variation in connection to the formal oversight relationship between parliaments and scrutinised actors, and to the type of policy activity carried out by the latter. We find that Members of the European Parliament are more likely to address rectification questions and less likely to ask information questions the fewer legal controls they have. Moreover, information questions are more likely to occur in the oversight of policy formulation, while justification questions are prevalent in the oversight of policy execution. The findings flag the importance of structural factors in the practice of legislative oversight.

Abstract
This paper uses firm level data from the World Bank Enterprise surveys conducted in 2019 and from the COVID-19 follow-up surveys conducted in 2020 in eight European countries to investigate the link between exporting before the pandemic and firm survival until 2020. The estimated effect of exports is positive and statistically significant ceteris paribus after controlling for various firm characteristics that are known to be related to firm survival. Furthermore, the size of this estimated effect can be considered to be large on average. Exporting helped firms to survive.