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Through an interdisciplinary analysis of the rulings of the Court of Justice of the European Union, this book offers 'thick' descriptions, contextual histories and critical narratives engaging with leading or minor personalities involved behind the scenes of each case. The contributions depart from the notion that EU law and its history should be narrated in a linear and incremental way to show instead that law evolves in a contingent and not determinate manner. The book shows that the effects of judge-made law remain relatively indeterminate and each case can be retold through different contextual narratives, and shows the commitment of the European legal elites to the experience of legal reasoning. The idea to cluster the stories around prominent cases is not to be fully comprehensive, but to re-focus the scholarship and teaching of EU law by moving beyond the black letter and unravel the lawyering techniques to achieve policy results

This article reports on research into the division of paid and unpaid work between men and women in the EU. The research was carried out in the framework of a relevant European Network initiated and coordinated by Tilburg University in which all the countries of the European Union have participated. However, fieldwork research was carried out in seven countries only. The theoretical framework adopted for the research was based on Bourdieu's Theory of Practice. Analysis of the data, which focused on couples with at least one child under the age of 7, shows that in these countries traditional gender roles still largely persist. Men continue to be the main breadwinners, while they spend on average about half the time women do on childcare and even less time on household chores. Moreover, a discrepancy is observed between men's positive attitudes towards sharing housework in theory and the non-division of housework in practice, while public policies have little or no effect on this situation.

Cover; Half-title; Series information; Title page; Copyright information; Table of contents; List of tables; List of figures; Acknowledgments; Introduction; Chapter Outlines; 1 Religion in the Framing of a European Polity; Religion and European Integration as a Process; Neo-Functionalism: Are Gods Part of the Spillover Effect?; Intergovernmentalism: National Religions; Multilevel Governance: A Description of Religious Interest Representations; Neo-Institutionalisms: National Path Dependencies, Deinstitutionalized Religion; Religion and the EU as a Full Polity.

This book examines accountability in the European Union€from different perspectives and€considers whether EU citizens have real opportunities for holding decision-makers accountable.

pt. 1. European law as a process between constitutionalization and democratization -- pt. 2. An ever closer union : an ever larger market: lawyers and the transnational construction of European institutions and markets -- pt. 3. Language as barrier and carrier of European legal integration -- pt. 4. Exceptionalism and normalization : ambiguity and honour in European integration processes.

This dissertation explores the effects of European integration on national level legislatures in European Union member states. Many economic and political decisions previously made by democratically elected national legislatures are now decided at a supranational, or European, level. National legislatures have responded to this change by increasing their oversight of European affairs in order to impose more democratic accountability and transparency into the opaque decision-making process of developing European legislation. While all national legislatures of European Union member states have established European Affairs Committees to help strengthen oversight of European affairs, there is considerable variation in the institutional strength and political control invested in these committees. I argue that the more recently a country joined the European Union, the more quickly the legislature will move to establish an oversight committee for European affairs and the more assertive its European Affairs Committee is likely to be. Cross-sectional statistical analysis shows a strong correlation between the timing of membership and the urgency with which the European Affairs Committee is established. There is also a strong correlation between timing of membership and a legislature's approach to parliamentary oversight of European affairs. Case studies on the German Bundestag, the Irish Oireachtas, and the German Bundesrat explore three different approaches to the oversight of European affairs

The study is dealing with the evolution and the current patterns on marriage and family formation in Greece, as well as the related young population matters, by analyzing the demographic trends during the Post World War II, the temporary attitudes and behavior, especially of young people and the socio-economic factors associated with these trends. To meet these tasks, secondary and survey data are employed, demographic indicators are constructed and descriptive plus non parametric statistics are used. The similarities and differences across Europe are identified as Greece is partly following the southeastern demographic pattern and attitudes towards marriage and family formation, but also the particularities even from the other Mediterranean-Southern countries. The demographic and attitudinal differences among societies are due to the different time period that each of these passed through the certain phases of social and economic transformations. ; peer-reviewed