Why have some territories performed better than others in the fight against COVID-19? This paper uses a novel dataset on excess mortality, trust and political polarization for 165 European regions to explore the role of social and political divisions in the remarkable regional differences in excess mortality during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. First, we investigate whether regions characterized by a low social and political trust witnessed a higher excess mortality. Second, we argue that it is not only levels, but also polarization in trust among citizens – in particular, between government supporters and non-supporters – that matters for understanding why people in some regions have adopted more pro-healthy behaviour. Third, we explore the partisan make-up of regional parliaments and the relationship between political division – or what we refer to as 'uncooperative politics'. We hypothesize that the ideological positioning – in particular those that lean more populist – and ideological polarization among political parties is also linked to higher mortality. Accounting for a host of potential confounders, we find robust support that regions with lower levels of both social and political trust are associated with higher excess mortality, along with citizen polarization in institutional trust in some models. On the ideological make-up of regional parliaments, we find that, ceteris paribus, those that lean more 'tan' on the 'GAL-TAN' spectrum yielded higher excess mortality. Moreover, although we find limited evidence of elite polarization driving excess deaths on the left-right or GAL-TAN spectrums, partisan differences on the attitudes towards the European Union demonstrated significantly higher deaths, which we argue proxies for (anti)populism. Overall, we find that both lower citizen-level trust and populist elite-level ideological characteristics of regional parliaments are associated with higher excess mortality in European regions during the first wave of the pandemic.
Why have some territories performed better than others in the fight against COVID‐19? This paper uses a novel dataset on excess mortality, trust and political polarization for 165 European regions to explore the role of social and political divisions in the remarkable regional differences in excess mortality during the first wave of the COVID‐19 pandemic. First, we investigate whether regions characterized by a low social and political trust witnessed a higher excess mortality. Second, we argue that it is not only levels, but also polarization in trust among citizens – in particular, between government supporters and non‐supporters – that matters for understanding why people in some regions have adopted more pro‐healthy behaviour. Third, we explore the partisan make‐up of regional parliaments and the relationship between political division – or what we refer to as 'uncooperative politics'. We hypothesize that the ideological positioning – in particular those that lean more populist – and ideological polarization among political parties is also linked to higher mortality. Accounting for a host of potential confounders, we find robust support that regions with lower levels of both social and political trust are associated with higher excess mortality, along with citizen polarization in institutional trust in some models. On the ideological make‐up of regional parliaments, we find that, ceteris paribus, those that lean more 'tan' on the 'GAL‐TAN' spectrum yielded higher excess mortality. Moreover, although we find limited evidence of elite polarization driving excess deaths on the left‐right or GAL‐TAN spectrums, partisan differences on the attitudes towards the European Union demonstrated significantly higher deaths, which we argue proxies for (anti)populism. Overall, we find that both lower citizen‐level trust and populist elite‐level ideological characteristics of regional parliaments are associated with higher excess mortality in European regions during the first wave of the pandemic.
[EN] The prevalence of malingering among individuals presenting whiplash-related symptoms is significant and leads to a huge economic loss due to fraudulent injury claims. Various strategies have been proposed to detect malingering and symptoms exaggeration. However, most of them have been not consistently validated and tested to determine their accuracy in detecting feigned whiplash. This study merges two different approaches to detect whiplash malingering (the mechanical approach and the qualitative analysis of the symptomatology) to obtain a malingering detection model based on a wider range of indices, both biomechanical and self-reported. A sample of 46 malingerers and 59 genuine clinical patients was tested using a kinematic test and a self-report questionnaire asking about the presence of rare and impossible symptoms. The collected measures were used to train and validate a linear discriminant analysis (LDA) classification model. Results showed that malingerers were discriminated from genuine clinical patients based on a greater proportion of rare symptoms vs. possible self-reported symptoms and slower but more repeatable neck motions in the biomechanical test. The fivefold cross-validation of the LDA model yielded an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.84, with a sensitivity of 77.8% and a specificity of 84.7%. ; Open access funding provided by Universita degli Studi di Padova within the CRUI-CARE Agreement. This work was supported by funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No 777090 ; Monaro, M.; De Rosario Martínez, H.; Baydal Bertomeu, JM.; Bernal-Lafuente, M.; Masiero, S.; Macía-Calvo, M.; Cantele, F. (2021). A model to differentiate WAD patients and people with abnormal pain behaviour based on Biomechanical and self-reported tests. International Journal of Legal Medicine. 135(4):1637-1646. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00414-021-02572-5 ; S ; 1637 ; 1646 ; 135 ; 4
The contribution aims to illustrate the evolution of national and European legislation on the subject of the protection of unaccompanied minors; the effectiveness of the Italian discipline and the French one in a comparative perspective as well as the European strategy are the core of the analysis. The adoption of the Italian Law 7 Aprile 2017 n. 47, so called Zampa Law, represents an important step towards the recognition of a complete protection of migrant child in the national background; the study on the enforcement of the reform will allow the evaluation of the Italian legal system's efficiency. On the other hand, I will analyze the remedies offered by the French system; in this context the regulation concerning children in civil code gets along with different legal source. Particular attention will be paid to the state of art in the European context looking for common rules or guidelines. The analysis of national and European results will be the objective of some conclusive remarks. ; cinzia.valente@unimore.it ; Università degli Studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy) ; Aït Ahmed L., Gallant E., Meur H., Quelle protection pour les mineurs non accompagnés? Actes du colloque du 21 juin 2018, 2019. ; Albano F., Minori stranieri non accompagnati nella prospettiva dell'autorità garante per l'infanzia e l'adolescenza, "Minorigiustizia" 2017, 3. ; Alikhan S., Floor M., Guardianship Provision Systems for Unaccompanied and Separated Children Seeking Asylum in Europe: Initial Mapping, Geneva, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Bureau for Europe, 2007 in: http://www.un hcr.org.ua/img/uploads/docs/ Guardianship%20 Procedures%20euro-pe_2007_ENG.doc ; Attias D, Khaiat L., Les enfants non accompagnes. 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Standards and promising practices, 2020. ; Cukani E., Soggetti vulnerabili e tutela dei diritti: il caso dei minori stranieri non accompagnati, "Consulta on line", 2019, 2. ; Bonnet D., Delanoe D., Senovilla D., Vuattoux A., Carayon L., Mattiussi J., Przibyl S., Zucconi F., Jeunes en migration, entre defiace et protection, 17 mars 2020. ; De Robbio C., Stranieri e diritto: immigrazione, diritti umani e misure di prevenzione; soggiorno e permanenza nello Stato; lavoro, famiglia e tutela dei minori; reati e trattamento processuale; procedure di espulsione, Pisa 2018. ; Drigo C., La tutela legale: l'esperienza dell'Ufficio del Pubblico Tutore del Veneto, "Peace Human Rights" 2009, 2. ; Eba Nguema N., La protection des mineurs migrants non accompagnè en Europe, "La Revue des droits de l'Homme" 2015, 7. ; EMN (European Migration Network), Policies, Practices and Data on Unaccompanied Minors in the EU Member States and Norway, Synthesis Report, 2015 in https://ec.europa.eu/anti-trafficking/publications/policies-practices-and-data-unaccompanied-minors-eu-member-states-and-norway_en. ; European Commission, Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council, The protection of children in migration, COM(2017) 211 final, Brussels, 12 April 2017. ; European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, Guardianship system for children deprived of parental care in the European Union. 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Touzenis, UNESCO 2010. ; Fulchiron H., La circulation des personnes et de leur statut dans un monde globalisé, 2019. ; Fulchiron H., Malaurie P., Droit de la famille, 7 ed., Paris 2020. ; Gelblat A., Medard Inghilterra R., L'interet superieur de l'enfant: radiographie d'une exigence constitutionelle, "La Reveu des droit de l'homme" 2019, 19. ; Giovannetti M., l'accoglienza incompiuta. Le politiche dei comuni italiani verso un sistema di protezione nazionale per i minori stranieri non accompagnati, Bologna 2008. ; Giovannetti M., Percorsi di accoglienza e di esclusione dei minori non accompagnati, "Diritto, Immigrazione e cittadinanza" 2008, 2. ; Guarnier T., La condizione giuridica dei minori stranieri non accompagnati in Italia: inadeguatezze e rischi del sistema di accoglienza, [in:] Temi attuali sui diritti sociali in un'ottica multidisciplinare, M. C. De Cicco, A. Latino, Napoli 2016. ; House of Lords, European Union Committee, Children in Crisis: Unaccompanied Migrant Children in the EU, 2016, in https://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201617/ldselect/ldeucom/34/34.pdf. ; Julien-Laferriere F., Droit des etrangers, Paris 2000. ; Kanics J., Senovilla Hernández D., Protected or merely tolerated? Models of reception and regularization of unaccompanied and separated children in Europe, [in:] Migrationg alone. Unaccompanied and separated chindren's migration to Europe, J. Kanics, D. Senovilla Hernández, K. Touzenis, UNESCO 2010. ; Lavaud Legendre B., Tallon A., Mineurs et traite des etres humains en France. De l'identification a la prise en charge. Quelles pratiques? Quelles protetiones?, Chronique sociale 2016. ; Lupo O., Disposizioni a favore dei minori, [in:] Codice degli stranieri commentato. Testo unico dell'immigrazione spiegato articolo per articolo e annotato con la giurisprudenza, U. Terraciano, O. Lupo, Santarcangelo di Romagna 2011. ; Blondel M., Le mineur isolè etranger demandeur d'asile emn France: entre necessitè de protection et resistence seuritaire, "La revue des Droits de l'Homme" 2018, 13. ; Masson B., Mineurs isoles etrangers: le sens d'une appellation, "Migrations Societè" 2010, 22. ; Menjivar C., Undocumented and unaccompanied: children of migration in the European Union and the United States, "Journal of Ethnic and migration studies" 2019, 45. ; Miazzi L., Perin G., Legge 94/2009: peggiora anche la condizione dei minori stranieri in Diritto, "Immigrazione e cittadinanza" 2009, 4. ; Miazzi L., Minori non accompagnati nelle legge 189/2002: un passo avanti e mezzo indietro sulla strada dell'integrazione, "Diritto, Immigrazione e cittadinanza" 2002, 3. ; Ministere de la Justice, Rapport annuel d'activitè 2019, Mission mineurs non accompagnes, mai 2020 in: www.justice.gouv.fr. ; Morgano F., Unaccompnied minors (UAMS) in the European Union, "Osservatorio Nazionale sui minori stranieri non accompagnati" 2020, 4. ; Morozzo Della Rocca P., Gli interventi a protezione dei minori stranieri o appartenenti a gruppi minoritari, [in:] Tutela civile del minore e diritto sociale della famiglia, L. 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F., Peggio se vulnerabili: gli effetti del decreto sicurezza sui minori non accompagnati, "Minorigiustizia" 2019, 1. ; Pisillo Mazzeschi R., Pustorino P., Viviani A., Diritti umani degli immigrati tutela della famiglia e dei minori, Napoli 2010. ; Polli A., I minori stranieri non accompagnati in Italia. Protezione, accoglienza, integrazione: la dimensione quantitativa del fenomeno, [in:] I minori stranieri in Italia, R. Cadin, L. Manca, V. R. 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Introduction: There are limited data on the potential effects of e-cigarette experimentation on support for tobacco control policies. To bridge this gap, we assessed associations between e-cigarette experimentation and support for tobacco control policies in the European Union 2012-2014. We also investigated variations across tobacco-use status, e-cigarette experimentation and sociodemographic characteristics. Methods: Datasets were used from the Special Eurobarometer for Tobacco surveys performed in 2012 (n=26 751) and 2014 (n=27 801). Tobacco control policies assessed were: banning advertising, policies to keep tobacco out of sight, banning online sales, banning flavors, standardized packaging, tax increases, and policies to reduce illicit trade in tobacco. We use multilevel logistic regression models to assess variations in socio-demographics and tobacco/e-cigarette use with support for these policies in 2014, and examined changes in support for these policies, between 2012 and 2014, separately by tobacco-use status (never, current, and former smokers). Results: Population support for tobacco control policies was high in 2014: policies to reduce illicit trade had the highest level of support at 70.1%, while tax increases were the least likely measure to be supported with 52.3% support. Among never and former smokers, experimentation with e-cigarettes was associated with reduced support for all tobacco control policies assessed. For example, never smokers who had experimented with e-cigarettes were less likely to support either tobacco advertising bans (adjusted odds ratio aOR=0.57, 95% confidence interval 0.46-0.71) or standardized packaging for tobacco (aOR=0.58, 95% CI: 0.47-0.71). Former smokers who had experimented with e-cigarettes were less likely to either support standardized packaging for tobacco (aOR=0.70, 95% CI: 0.60-0.82) or keeping tobacco out of sight (aOR=0.77, 95% CI: 0.65-0.90). Among current smokers, e-cigarette experimentation was not associated with support for the tobacco control policies assessed. Conclusions: E-cigarette experimentation was consistently associated with reduced support for tobacco control policies among never and former smokers but not among current smokers. The implications of these findings for tobacco control are unknown, but the data support concerns that e-cigarette experimentation may affect public support for established tobacco control policies within specific subgroups. Further research is needed to assess potential long-term impacts on tobacco control policies.
Russia is shown to have every reason to seek special consideration of, as well as express its concerns over, the impact of the European Union's (EU) eastern enlargement. The latter relate, in particular, to the current and expected negative repercussions of the changes in the political and economic situation in Europe. Closer study of crucial EU enlargement issues arising as a result of the new member states (NMS) having shifted to the EU common customs tariffs and preferential systems, their adoption of the EU foreign trade regime and the standardization of cargo transit rules and regulations applicable across the EU-25 as a whole demonstrate the need for a comprehensive approach to EU enlargement. That would make for a better understanding of the multifaceted and controversial impact that enlargement will have on the economic transition and industrial restructuring processes in Russia. As the EU penetrates more deeply into the markets of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, Russia's share in bilateral and multilateral trade as well as other joint economic activities could be reduced still further. Russia is trying to promote its own specific vision of European integration based on two pillars the European Union in the West and Russia-initiated integration models in the East (e.g. a Single Economic Space). By taking that route, Russia could retain its political and economic influence in those post-Soviet European countries, where its strategic interests lie. The EU subscribes to a markedly different approach. In late 2002 it began pursuing its European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) that was specifically aimed at the eastern neighbours of the enlarged EU. It has demonstrated its growing political and economic engagement with those CIS member states that are now part of the ENP. The ENP transmits a clear message to Russia; it clearly signals the European Union's specific interests and objectives in Eastern Europe. The policy is quite explicit; it reveals that the EU intends to discuss all issues directly with the counties concerned, while the mediation of Moscow is totally or mostly ignored. As a result, a conflict of interest is becoming increasingly apparent in Eastern Europe, with the EU adhering to its ENP and Russia promoting its integration model. Numerous indicators of the state of relations between Russia and the EU show that however important it may be, economic cooperation is increasingly fraught with ambiguity and competition, which, in the final analysis, can but have a negative impact on the efficiency of that joint relationship.
Priorities in addressing research gaps and challenges should follow the order of importance, which in itself would be a matter of defining goals and metrics of importance, e.g. the extent, impact and likelihood of occurrence. For improving assessments of climate change impacts on agriculture for achieving food security and other sustainable development goals across the European continent, the most important research gaps and challenges appear to be the agreement on goals with a wide range of stakeholders from policy, science, producers and society, better reflection of political and societal preferences in the modelling process, and the reflection of economic decisions in farm management within models. These and other challenges could be approached in phase 3 of MACSUR.
A search for the standard model Higgs boson produced in association with a top-quark pair is presented using data samples corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 5.0 fb(-1) (5.1 fb-1) collected in pp collisions at the center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV (8 TeV). Events are considered where the top-quark pair decays to either one lepton+jets (t (t) over bar -> l nu q (q) over bar 'b (b) over bar) or dileptons (t (t) over bar -> l(+)nu l-nu b (b) over bar), being an electron or a muon. The search is optimized for the decay mode H -> b (b) over bar. The largest background to the t (t) over barH signal is top-quark pair production with additional jets. Artificial neural networks are used to discriminate between signal and background events. Combining the results from the 7 TeV and 8 TeV samples, the observed (expected) limit on the cross section for Higgs boson production in association with top-quark pairs for a Higgs boson mass of 125 GeV is 5.8 (5.2) times the standard model expectation. ; The Austrian Federal Ministry of Science and Research and the Austrian Science Fund ; the Belgian Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique, and Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek ; the Brazilian Funding Agencies ; the Bulgarian Ministry of Education and Science; CERN ; the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Ministry of Science and Technology, and National Natural Science Foundation of China ; the Colombian Funding Agency ; the Croatian Ministry of Science, Education and Sport ; the Research Promotion Foundation, Cyprus; the Ministry of Education and Research ; and European Regional Development Fund, Estonia; the Academy of Finland, Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture, and Helsinki Institute of Physics; the Institut National de Physique Nucleaire et de Physique des Particules/CNRS, and Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique et aux Energies Alternatives/CEA, France; the Bundesministerium fur Bildung und Forschung, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, and Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft Deutscher Forschungszentren, Germany; the General Secretariat for Research and Technology, Greece; the National Scientific Research Foundation, and National Office for Research and Technology, Hungary; the Department of Atomic Energy and the Department of Science and Technology, India; the Institute for Studies in Theoretical Physics and Mathematics, Iran; the Science Foundation, Ireland; the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Italy; the Korean Ministry of Education, Science and Technology and the World Class University program of NRF, Republic of Korea; the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences; the Mexican Funding Agencies ; the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, New Zealand; the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission; the Ministry of Science and Higher Education and the National Science Centre, Poland; the Fundac¸ao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia, Portugal; JINR, Dubna; the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, the Federal Agency of Atomic Energy of the Russian Federation, Russian Academy of Sciences, and the Russian Foundation for Basic Research; the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of Serbia; the Secretaria de Estado de Investigacio´n, Desarrollo e Innovacion and Programa Consolider-Ingenio 2010, Spain; the Swiss Funding Agencies ; the National Science Council, Taipei; the Thailand Center of Excellence in Physics, the Institute for the Promotion of Teaching Science and Technology of Thailand, Special Task Force for Activating Research and the National Science and Technology Development Agency of Thailand ; the Scientific and Technical Research Council of Turkey and Turkish Atomic Energy Authority ; the Science and Technology Facilities Council UK; the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. National Science Foundation ; European Union ; the Leventis Foundation ; the A. P. Sloan Foundation ; the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation ; the Belgian Federal Science Policy Office ; the Fonds pour la Formation a` la Recherche dans l'Industrie et dans l'Agriculture (FRIA-Belgium); the Agentschap voor Innovatie door Wetenschap en Technologie (IWTBelgium); the Ministry of Education Youth and Sports (MEYS) of Czech Republic; the Council of Science and Industrial Research India; the Compagnia di San Paolo (Torino); the HOMING PLUS program of Foundation for Polish Science cofinanced by EU Regional Development Fund." ; publisher version
In: Alcohol and alcoholism: the international journal of the Medical Council on Alcoholism (MCA) and the journal of the European Society for Biomedical Research on Alcoholism (ESBRA)
OBJECTIVES: In most European countries, patients seeking medication abortion during the COVID-19 pandemic are still required to attend healthcare settings in person. We assessed whether demand for self-managed medication abortion provided by online telemedicine increased following the emergence of COVID-19. METHODS: We examined 3915 requests for self-managed abortion to online telemedicine service Women on Web (WoW) between 1 January 2019 and 1 June 2020. We used regression discontinuity to compare request rates in eight European countries before and after they implemented lockdown measures to slow COVID-19 transmission. We examined the prevalence of COVID-19 infection, the degree of government-provided economic support, the severity of lockdown travel restrictions and the medication abortion service provision model in countries with and without significant changes in requests. RESULTS: Five countries showed significant increases in requests to WoW, ranging from 28% in Northern Ireland (97 requests vs 75.8 expected requests, p=0.001) to 139% in Portugal (34 requests vs 14.2 expected requests, p<0.001). Two countries showed no significant change in requests, and one country, Great Britain, showed an 88% decrease in requests (1 request vs 8.1 expected requests, p<0.001). Among countries with significant increases in requests, abortion services are provided mainly in person in hospitals or abortion is unavailable and international travel was prohibited during lockdown. By contrast, Great Britain implemented a fully remote no-test telemedicine service. CONCLUSION: These marked changes in requests for self-managed medication abortion during the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrate demand for remote models of care, which could be fulfilled by expanding access to medication abortion by telemedicine.
1\. Introduction 5 2\. Conceptual Clarifications 7 2.1 Mechanisms of Diffusion 7 2.2 How to Analyze Environmental Ideas? 8 3\. Where Did Ideas about the Environment Come from? 9 4\. Which Ideas Were Adopted? The Environmental Action Programme of 1973 12 5\. Which International Models Did the EC Draw on? 15 5.1 UNESCO - Man and the Biosphere 1968 16 5.2 US - National Environmental Policy Act 1969 18 5.3 Council of Europe - European Conservation Year 1970 19 5.4 The UN Conference on the Human Environment 1972 20 5.5 Summary: Which Ideas were Included? 21 6\. How and Why Did the EC Receive and Appropriate Environmental Ideas? 23 7\. Conclusions 26 Literature 29 ; Environmental policy has become an important area of European Union (EU) policy making, even though it had not originally been foreseen in the Treaty of Rome. Its emergence in the early 1970s can be understood as a result of a transfer of the novel policy idea of the environment to the European level. This paper thus inquires into the emergence of a European environmental policy from a diffusion of ideas perspective. Rather than focusing on multi-level policy making it seeks to trace the diffusion of environmental ideas from the level of international organizations to the European Communities (EC) in the early 1970s. It analyzes how and why these new concepts were taken up by the European Communities and adapted to the specific institutional framework of the EC. Starting with a brief introduction into the historical context, the paper first explores the origins of the notion of the environment as a political concept emerging in the context of international organizations at the time. Secondly, an analysis of the first Environmental Action Programme of 1973 will be used to show how the EC conceptualized the environment, including the definition of problems and potential remedies. Thirdly, the origins of these ideas will be traced back to international models, from the UNESCO conference "Man and the Biosphere" in 1968 onwards. In a final step, the paper tries ...
The socio-economic factors are of key importance during all phases of wildfire management that include prevention, suppression and restoration. However, modeling these factors, at the proper spatial and temporal scale to understand fire regimes is still challenging. This study analyses socio-economic drivers of wildfire occurrence in central Spain. This site represents a good example of how human activities play a key role over wildfires in the European Mediterranean basin. Generalized Linear Models (GLM) and machine learning Maximum Entropy models (Maxent) predicted wildfire occurrence in the 1980s and also in the 2000s to identify changes between each period in the socio-economic drivers affecting wildfire occurrence. GLM base their estimation on wildfire presence-absence observations whereas Maxent on wildfire presence-only. According to indicators like sensitivity or commission error Maxent outperformed GLM in both periods. It achieved a sensitivity of 38.9% and a commission error of 43.9% for the 1980s, and 67.3% and 17.9% for the 2000s. Instead, GLM obtained 23.33, 64.97, 9.41 and 18.34%, respectively. However GLM performed steadier than Maxent in terms of the overall fit. Both models explained wildfires from predictors such as population density and Wildland Urban Interface (WUI), but differed in their relative contribution. As a result of the urban sprawl and an abandonment of rural areas, predictors like WUI and distance to roads increased their contribution to both models in the 2000s, whereas Forest-Grassland Interface (FGI) influence decreased. This study demonstrates that human component can be modelled with a spatio-temporal dimension to integrate it into wildfire risk assessment. ; This research received funding from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement 243888 (FUME Project). ; Peer reviewed
The article attempts to find out the reasons for the failure of the collective security system in Europe, developed to counter German revisionism in the second half of the 1920s – early 1930s. Research literature tends to consider collective security not just as a diplomatic tool, but as a quality of international system developed after the First World War based on the idea of indivisible security with universal international organization presiding over it to deal with problems of war and peace. The principle of the balance of power and war itself as a means of international politics thus lost their legitimacy.Historians agree that the system proved unsuitable for the challenges of the early 1930s, demonstrated by the Ethiopian War and the Rhineland Crisis. Two alternative ways eventually developed to deal with the inconsistences of the early collective security system: «appeasement» project, initiated by British diplomacy; and the Soviet idea of military-political deterrence through coalition building. Modern historiography views «appeasement» as the idea presupposing the creation of a European Directory, which would have taken on the functions of resolving international contradictions. Historians see the reasons for its failure in an incorrect assessment of Hitler's policy due to thinking in the spirit of collective security. The position of the USSR is more contested among historians. In recent works, however, there appears the consensus that the reason for the failure of the project of a military-political alliance aimed at containing Germany was the unwillingness of the West to strategic interaction with Moscow and its adherence to the principles of «new diplomacy» at a time when it already lost their relevance.
In recent years the concept of the circular economy gained prominence in EU policy-making. The circular economy promotes a future in which linear 'make-use-dispose' cultures are replaced by more circular models. In this paper, we use the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries to ask how an imaginary of circularity has been assembled and stabilized, which imaginative resources were drawn on, and how goals, priorities, benefits and risks haven been merged with discourses of innovation, sustainability and growth. Drawing on policy documents and interviews with policy officers of the European Commission, we argue that the monitoring framework and indicator development function as a site collective imagination in which desirable 'circular' futures are co-produced. These futures are imagined to provide novel opportunities for the private sector and to generate jobs and economic growth while at the same time improving the natural environment as measured by selected environmental indicators. ; publishedVersion
The book is concerned with the main issues that arise for general commodity taxation in the internal market: the choice of a new international tax principle and the question of tax rate harmonization. The book provides a thorough discussion of these issues and evaluates the choices made by the European Community from a welfare-theoretic perspective by comparing them to feasible alternatives. The discussion integrates a large number of recent theoretical and policy-oriented contributions which have so far not been collected and summarized in a single volume. Special features of the book are that (a) the analysis combines elements of international trade theory and public finance, two economic disciplines which are rarely integrated; (b) a dual general equilibrium framework is used throughout the analysis, (c) a second-best setting is consistently employed, incorporating relevant policy constraints and integrating conflicting arguments in a single analytical framework, (d) part of the theoretical analysis is supplemented by a computable general equilibrium approach. The book shows that well-known international trademodels can be extended to model alternative principles for taxing international trade but also international differences in preferences for public goods and different views of government behavior - issues which are directly relevant for the discussion of tax rateharmonization but are rarely treated in an analytical way
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