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The first decade of the twenty-first century has seen a complete recast of the regulatory infrastructure for food in the European Union (EU), changing its previously strict market orientation and turning it into an instrument with the primary objective of ensuring food safety. This article contributes to the comparative study of food law by analysing the new body of EU food law and bringing the underlying structure to the forefront. EU food law applies an holistic approach to the food chain, addressing, on the basis of scientific risk analysis: food as a product in terms of its accepted ingredients and thelimits placed on contaminants; the processes of food production, trade and risk management; and the presentation of food in advertising and labelling. The European Commission and the Member States share responsibility forofficial controls, incident management and enforcement.

Preferences and Procedures presents and tests game-theoretic models of European Union legislative decision-making. It is inspired by the idea of linking statistical testing strategies firmly to formal models of EU policymaking. After describing salient features of the EU legislative process and comparing different models of how the EU negotiates new legislative measures, the models' predictive power is evaluated. On a more general level, Preferences and Procedures answers questions regarding the empirically recognizable effects of institutional arrangements on joint bargaining outcomes.

"This book addresses the regulatory capacity of the EU as it responds to the huge challenge of realizing the single market. It explores its weaknesses, the EU regulatory networks, expert committees and EU agencies formed in response, and the exceptionally large and complex transnational regulatory system which has resulted. It defines the EU regulatory space as a multi-faceted phenomenon of institutional expansion whose shape varies across sectors and changes over time. Empirically based on the exploration of how regulatory delegation has emerged and evolved in three key EU policies (food safety, electricity, and telecommunications), the book disentangles and links together the functional, institutional and power-distributional factors and their interplay over time into a unified explanation of the many faces of the EU regulatory space"--Back cover

Organised (international) crime is essentially perceived as a social reality in which legal and criminal structures are integral parts of the same corrupt social, political and economic system operating in two or more states, regardless of the type of actions promoted or the types of organisations of those supporting this system.
The various criteria of the multidimensional concept can be distinguished using a classification on four levels of complexity:
Perpetrators defined by individual characteristics, who participate in the commission of the specific acts of organised crime.
The elements of the structures (groups) linking these individuals.
Power structures subordinate to this structural entity.
The relationship between these illegal structures and the legal structures of society.
The contemporary concept of organised crime (in reality a form of cross-border crime) is heterogeneous and contradictory. If we focus on the general perception of this concept, we can state: organised crime is equal to a formal, homogeneous, multifunctional, criminal organisation that aims to undermine and dominate legal institutions of society, its members acting in two or more states to achieve their criminal purpose.
Organised crime can essentially be defined as that international criminal segment to which relate illegal activities, capable of seriously affecting certain sectors of economic, social and political life in two or more countries, carried out by various methods and means, in a constant, planned and conspiratorial manner, by associations of individuals, with a well-defined internal hierarchy, specialised structures and self-defence mechanisms, in order to obtain illicit profits at particularly high levels. Two main characteristics of the concept of organised crime emerge from the definition:

The degree of social danger of the illegal activities carried out by this criminal segment can seriously affect certain sectors of economic, social and business life.
The constant, organised, planned and well-conspired conduct of these criminal activities carried out in several States.)

The article presents the issue of the development of educational systems in modern European countries. On the basis of the dynamics of our time, provoking the search for and formation of adequate strategies in the educational policy of Europe, the modernization of education in Europe is traced. The factors that significantly determine the priorities of modern education policy, as well as the priority development of one or another aspect of the educational system, aimed at ensuring quality education and sustainable social development, are specified. The article examines various educational initiatives that are being taken in the single European space. Emphasis is placed on the initiatives for: compulsory pre-school education; increasing the duration and quality of the secondary school education; making "higher education equally accessible to all" one of the principles of state strategies; introduction of the practice of adult education; developing criteria for recognizing the results of non-formal and informal education. The article seeks projections of these initiatives in the Bulgarian educational system.