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This study seeks to make a contribution to a limited research on the systemic level of the national coordination of European affairs, which involves both domestic institutions and a permanent representation at the EU and national embassies in the EU member states and other countries. We explore the issue through a case study which concentrates on 1) several middle-sized EU member states and 2) coordination in the field of foreign and security policy. The study argues that the coordination at the systemic level has a rather a centralized character. The elements of decentralization, which can be also identified at the systemic level, are primarily related to information-gathering as well as representation at negotiations. Permanent representations are considerably more involved in coordination than national embassies, however. Adapted from the source document.

The ambition of the paper is to analyze the major characteristics of the Chinese energy policy towards the most important producers of natural gas in Chinas neighborhood. The analytical perspectives of a strategic approach to energy security and state-centric realism are used to work with case studies of Sino-Russian and Sino-Turkmen relations from the energy security perspective. The paper concludes that Chinas energy policy towards the given producers in Russia and Turkmenistan comes significantly close to the selected analytical perspectives and that natural gas has become an important part of the strategic considerations of the Chinese political leadership. This conclusion, however, applies more to Turkmenistan and less to Russia, as in the case of the Sino-Russian relations, both parties fail to achieve a mutual complementarity, and economic thinking prevails over Beijing's strategic interests. Adapted from the source document.

The aim of this article is to explore main linkages among the participation rate, potential output and pension funding system. Based on the existing literature, there are several possibilities how to render the current set-up of the pension system sustainable. This sustainability is conventionally regarded from the perspective of provision of "satisfactory level" of retirement pensions as well as from the perspective of general budgetary impact. In this respect, demographic change is accounted for owing to the common perception that it has a lot to do with how the future pension system should and will look like. It has been found out that if appropriate economic policy measures -- targeting mainly labour market participation rate and long-term unemployment -- are adopted, no need for abrupt changes in the existing social security system framework is actually necessary. Also, the linkages between the participation rate and potential output seem to be relatively strong, so that the economy could be easily considered as significantly influenced by its labour market. The functioning of the latter thus seems to be pivotal for the resolution of some long-term economic capacity concerns, including its dynamics. Adapted from the source document.