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Through the public procurement rules, protection of competition, equality of choice & transparency of the procedure in relationships between the public & private sectors are provided, to the greatest extent possible, in the EU rules. All the contractual relationships between the public & private sectors cannot be subject to strict & formal rules on public procurement primarily due to the special nature of business operations, complexity & duration of the relationships. Concessions or public-private partnerships of a concessionary nature are excluded from the legal regime that applies to public procurement. This paper analyses the contractual relationships of the concessionary nature & the EU efforts for ensuring a certain degree of equal treatment of private partners entering into public-private partnerships. Adapted from the source document.

Abstract. The challenge of ensuring the space environment's long-term sustainability in the context of the exploration and commercialisation of outer space raises several important issues and dimensions with respect to both international environmental law and sustainable development. The research question analyses the extent to which such exploration benefits humanity and expands the province of all humankind. In this article, historical achievements of the international legal framework governing the area of space exploration are presented. Opportunities for further developing and strengthening this framework to ensure the cooperative, transparent, inclusive and equitable development of space exploration are deliberated, notably those that do not limit the interests and opportunities of space-faring countries. The key finding and proposition of this article is that while discussing the need to improve and strengthen the international regulatory framework, developing countries' needs and interests should also be effectively incorporated. More equitable, inclusive and sustainable development is as much in the interest of developed countries as it is of developing countries. Keywords: The Outer Space Treaty, space law, UNCOPUOS, space commercialisation, Sustainable Development Goals, inclusive and balanced development, international environmental law

The democratisation and economic growth of the Asian Tigers, specifically South Korea and Taiwan, brought structural changes to the academic systems of these countries, particularly in the fields of political science and international relations. The article aims to provide a comprehensive and hybrid view on the regularity of political science in the academic environments (university systems) of East Asian countries with a focus on South Korea and Taiwan through the observational analysis method and a historical-sociological mechanism. The findings are summarised, where it is argued that the pentagonal democratic citizenship system (legal, political, cultural, social, economic) as well as the establishing of structural and updated political-economic relations with the main powers in the international system are the two crtitcial factors that have contributed to the adjustment of political science in East Asian countries, including South Korea and Taiwan. The article concludes that, along with the international and domestic developments in South Korea and Taiwan, political science underwent structural changes and is becoming more regulated and structured. Keywords: South Korea, Taiwan, political science, democracy, institution

This paper deals with the spatial relationship between national and European regional policies. Spatial coherence of these two types of policies in two CEE countries - in the Czech Republic and Slovakia - is discussed. Our findings point at a higher spatial coherence of national and European regional policy in Slovakia. Thus, there is a higher financial allocation per 1 inhabitant in the nationally delimitated areas of special interest in Slovakia compared with the Czech Republic. Three aspects are discussed in this regard. First, different strategies of the delimitation of the areas of special interest in the both countries are emphasised. Second, different strategies of the implementation of the areas of special interest in programming documents in the both countries are upheld. Third, the factor of territorial absorption capacity is mentioned. We claim that the three aspects should be considered in achieving a higher spatial coherence of national and European regional policies. Adapted from the source document.

In the article we report a series of experiments
with volunteers designed to detect differences in behavioural characteristics among Slovenian, Dutch and
international students. Using eight standard tasks from
experimental economics, we investigate the differences
using experimental measures of solidarity, trust, cooperation, positive and negative reciprocity, competition,
honesty, and risk attitudes. No significant cohort effects
in any of the eight decisions are found when we compare the Slovenian and international cohorts. Still, when
comparing the Dutch and Slovenian cohorts, Dutch
students are found to exhibit lower levels of solidarity,
generosity and honesty. This points to differences in sociality between institutionally similar yet ideologically distant countries like Slovenia and the Netherlands.
Keywords: cross-national study, experimental economics, game theory, sociality

The special legal nature of the concession contract (as one of the legal transactions) which represents a legal framework where the public & private interests meet (two parties cooperate for mutual benefit) is characterized by intertwining of general rules of obligation law & special legal institutes that originate from the sphere of public law. The legal nature of the contractual relationships that arise between administrative & private entities requires special regulation of individual institutes that should reflect the public interest as an important guiding principle for concluding these contracts, & a special legal position of a public law entity as a holder of this public interest. Despite adoption of the new Public-Private Partnership Act in the legislative regulation of the concession contract that still remains variously regulated in previously adopted special provisions of sectoral laws, there are still some deficiencies & dilemmas that are more or less effectively dealt with in the contractual practice. For the legal positions that are classically civil at first sight, the legislator or court practice have laid down special modified rules of civil law in most developed countries. In the course of time, these rules became part of public law/administrative law. Thus, the French legal order has best developed the rules of the public contractual law & the legal institute of the administrative contract that the Slovenian administrative theoreticians try more & more to introduce also into our legal order. References. Adapted from the source document.

There are two distant conceptual cousins that analyse the external mobilisation of subnational entities, one being European Studies – Multi-Level Governance and the other International Relations – Paradiplomacy. The article first aims to analyse each concept against the dimensions of the politik to determine the conceptual focus and find more pronounced differences in the policy and politics dimensions. The second aim is to identify the theoretical bedrock underpinning both concepts. This article proposes the analogous theory of Neo-Medievalism, establishing that it has some application here; in this sense, the two concepts may be better at explaining wider territorial reconfiguration underway in Europe. Keywords: Paradiplomacy, Multi-Level Governance, Neo-Medievalism, European Union

The specific characteristics of life course and past experiences of LGBT+ old people require knowledge and awareness on the part of carers. In this paper, an international perspective to shed light on key issues in the field of inclusive care for LGBT+ older people is used, with a particular focus on the Slovenian context, drawing extensively on the findings of the European project "Being me" (2018–2020). In the project, we aimed to explore best practice in the area of education and to develop online learning materials and tools for social and health care workers. Among the principles and approaches that guided our research, the focus was put on intersectionality, resilience, strengths perspective, life stories, and collaboration with LGBT+ old people in all phases of the project.

Abstract. The article deals with the wide range of mechanisms in support of civil society institutions–government interaction in the context of developing and implementing European integration reforms in Ukraine. The
authors identified 6 strategic documents and 20 areas
of reform related to the process of European integration,
as well as the key issues concerning implementation of
the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the
EU. The authors conclude that positive trends are visible in recent decades in the institutional development
of Ukrainian civil society, which has become a driving
force of the country's European integration aspirations.
In this setting, civil society institutions (CSIs) work with
government agencies, engage in informal advocacy,
conduct monitoring policies, perform and publish policy analysis and recommendations, and work with and
lobby international agencies and other actors.

The existing empirical studies examined the impact of different variables, such as common language, economic, cultural and geographical factors, on migration. However, none of the studies deals with the social security systems including their coordination as a relevant explanatory factor. The paper focuses on the social security systems in Europe, their mutual coordination and their influence on international migration. The influence of social systems on economic migration can be twofold: influencing the labour migration, i.e. migrants who move for work, and also influencing the benefit migration, i.e. migrants who move in order to receive social benefits. We present the advanced migration model extended by the factors of social security coordination. The main finding is that the labour migration prevails significantly over the benefit migration. Role of social systems as social magnets was not proved to be statistically significant. Adapted from the source document.

The article is concerned with typology of differentiated author's opinions on the world economy phenomena, as internationalization, integration and globalization. The author examines, from the international political economy point of view, their differences and formulates three phases of internationalization process. The author defines also the relation of these phenomena to the process of integration and regionalization in the world economy and pays attention to frequently discussed topic of global governance as well. The author further examines the possibilities of measuring globalization process intensity on both world wide and national economy levels. The article assigns a set of characteristic features or indicators making possible to define main limits of when a given national economy can be hold as being incorporated and in what rate into the globalization process. This step of identification of globalization intensity rate is very important, as starting point, when a strategy of adaptation to globalization trends is needed to be formulated, evidently, closely with the competitiveness growth and catching-up strategy elaboration. Adapted from the source document.

nternational tobacco smuggling remains an important concern for governments, tobacco manufactur-ers and health experts alike. While often linked to other forms of illegal activities, it also directly impacts govern-ment tax and health policies. Knowledge of factors that contribute to illicit tobacco trade and the existence of smug-gling routes is strongly hampered by the lack of reliable data on bilateral flows of illicit tobacco. Therefore, recon-structing the trafficking routes and estimating the size of cross-border illicit flows are crucial steps for gaining bet-ter understanding of these crimes and enforcing actions aimed at countering them. This study is the first to use grav-ity estimation techniques to decompose aggregate illicit cig-arette inflows for which data are available into their bilat-eral components. Our approach is a simple and effective method that can serve as a complement to other methods of pinpointing international trafficking flows such as empty discarded pack data or network analysis to help in the fight against illicit tobacco flows. Policymakers, customs officials as well as law enforcement can employ the presented meth-ods as an additional tool in the fight against illicit trade. Keywords: bilateral illicit cigarette trade, gravity model, predictive estimation