Suchergebnisse

The European Tourism Indicators System (ETIS) is a product of the European Union (EU) Sustainable Development Strategy, which was formulated with the objectives of promoting economic prosperity, social equity, cohesion, and environmental protection. In this paper, we present an analysis of the results of the implementation of the ETIS during the period 2013-2016, in the Italian tourist destination of South Sardinia. While the implementation of ETIS constitutes a significant advancement in Italy, and more widely in Europe, our findings reveal that an adaptive management approach is necessary for achieving the anticipated objectives and adapting these standardized indicators to different territorial contexts. Difficulties were encountered in both data collection and stakeholders' involvement in the implementation process. Insufficient knowledge, and familiarity with the complex technical aspects of the indicator toolkit among primary stakeholders, was another constraint associated with its implementation. We believe that the findings of this analysis can provide guidelines and inputs for other European countries and tourist destinations that are currently in the process of implementing the ETIS toolkit or similar methodologies. In particular, the pioneering sustainable tourism performance measurement system (STPMS) can be adapted to meet local needs.

This paper evaluates the impact of a vocational training programme on the labour market outcomes of unemployed youth in Latvia. The programme is part of the Youth Guarantee scheme for the period 2014-2020, the largest action launched by the European Union to reduce youth unemployment rate and to support young people aged between 15 and 29 who are not in education, employment or training (NEETs). To estimate the causal effect of participating in the programme on the employment outcomes, we exploit a rule that gives priority for participation to unemployed people under the age of 25 using a fuzzy Regression Discontinuity Design setup. The estimated effects of the programme on the probability of being employed and monthly income up to 3.5 years after registering in the programme are positive but not statistically significant, although we find a strong positive effect of the priority rule on programme participation. This is the first evidence on the impact of a programme within the current Youth Guarantee scheme in Europe and our findings are in line with those from the literature on the evaluation of active labour market policies targeting youth.

About 102.000 people were killed in single vehicle accidents in the 28 European Union countries between 2006 and 2015, representing almost one third of all road accident fatalities in these countries. Single vehicle collision is a type of road accident in which only one vehicle and no other road user is involved. The objective of this research is the analysis of characteristics of single vehicle accidents in European countries through the use of the EU CARE database with disaggregate data on road accidents, as well as of other European data sources (e.g. Eurostat). Time-series data from the EU countries over a period of 10 years (2006-2015) were correlated with basic safety parameters, such as mode of transport, type of road, presence of junction, lighting and weather conditions, seasonality and person related characteristics like age and gender. The results of the analysis allow for an overall assessment of the safety level concerning single vehicle accidents in Europe in comparison to other types of accidents, thus providing useful support to decision makers working for the improvement of safety in the European road network.

There is an urgent need nowadays to reduce energy demand and the current level of greenhouse gas emission and use renewable energy sources increase in energy efficiency. On the other hand, the European Union (EU) countries are largely dependent on energy imports and are vulnerable to disruption in energy supply, which may, in turn, threaten the functioning of their current economic structure. Residential buildings represent a significant part of the energy consumption of the building stock. Only a small part of the building stock is exchanged every year, thus it is essential to increase the energy efficiency of the existing buildings. Present paper focuses on the buildings built with industrialized technology only, and their opportunities in the boundaries of nearly zero-energy regulation. Current paper shows the emergence of panel construction method, and past and present of the 'panel' problem in Hungary with a short outlook to Europe. The study shows as well as the possibilities for meeting the nearly zero and cost optimized requirements for residential buildings by analyzing the renovation scenarios of an existing residential typology.

The synchronization accuracy achieved via the IEEE 1588 Precision Time Protocol (PTP) in packet-based fronthaul networks is substantially impaired by packet delay variation (PDV). Nevertheless, in the particular case of deployment over tree topologies, it is known that PDV can be avoided by controlling the departure of PTP packets such that they experience close to constant delays over the fronthaul. This paper analyzes controlled PTP departure under constraints that are peculiar to a fronthaul scenario of interest and considering that radio traffic itself behaves as background traffic relative to PTP. Since the method involves buffering of radio traffic prior to controlled PTP transmissions, its impact on buffer sizes at the baseband and radio units, and the corresponding increase in fronthaul latency are also analyzed. In the end, results collected through a self-developed FPGA-based testbed are presented. ; This work was supported in part by the Innovation Center, Ericsson Telecomunicac¸ ˜oes S.A., Brazil, CNPq/Capes, Brazil, and by the European Union through the H2020 collaborative Europe/Taiwan research project 5G-CORAL (grant agreement no. 761586).

In March 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea, relations between Moscow and the European Union precipitated into their deepest crisis since the end of the Cold War. Throughout 2014 and early 2015, the Ukraine crisis made headlines and emerged as the most urgent security challenge for the EU and its member states. Between 2015 and 2017, however, the international scenario became even more complex, with significant repercussions for Europe-Russia relations. The refugee crisis, escalating civil wars in Syria and Libya, terrorist attacks, Brexit and the weakening of the transatlantic alliance following Donald Trump's election posed new formidable challenges for the EU. Russia sought a role in many of these crises, for instance by proposing an anti-terrorism coalition with the West in the Middle East or by reportedly intervening in some Western election campaigns. This volume zooms in on the debates on Russia in several EU member states that play a key role in the Union's relations with Moscow. It reveals how national perspectives evolved and sometimes diverged due to different assessments of the crises and of Russia's role in them.

Podlasie, a historical and geographical region in north-eastern Poland, serves as both an external (interstate, European Union) and internal (ethnic, religious, linguistic, cultural) borderland. The primary aim of the article is to present historical and political conditions, national and cultural diversification of the Podlasie region, an analysis of current changes in ethnic and religious structure of the inhabitants as well as analysis of the consequences of changes of geopolitical circumstances in mutual relationships between different communities. Borderlands, especially those highly diverse in terms of nationality, religion, language and culture, are often identified with unstable, conflict-prone areas with past and present antagonism between nations sharing them. This belief has intensified over the last few decades when nationalisms, separatist tendencies and historical conflicts got sparked again in numerous regions of Central and Eastern Europe. However, not all European borderlands have to be stereotypically identified with areas of conflict, resentment and even hatred among the peoples inhabiting them. This is the case, among others, in Podlasie, where there are centuries-old traditions of cohabitation of diverse communities.

The information and communication technologies (ICT) are revolutionizing the tourism industry. This research note will make a brief diagnosis of the relationships between tourism and ICT in the European context by presenting an index to characterize the digitization of the tourism sector and its comparison with a reference index, which reflects the introduction of the ICT in every country. The proposed indicator will allow us to know the degree of integration of these ICT in EU countries when talking about tourism accommodation reservations. The results indicate divergent behavior patterns in digital accommodation management and in how ICTs are managed, as well as a different perception of trends between different geographical areas of the European Union. From the comparative analysis of the indicators, we can observe that in the South of Europe/Mediterranean area both the tourism integration and ICT are quite commonly below the European results. In other countries like Holland and Spain, the traditional channels are still used despite of their outstanding digitalization. These patterns provide relevant insights for the companies, especially for the tourism agencies, and allow establishing sector needs within the digital field.

Central and Eastern Europe is a unique region in terms of its social, economic anddemographic trends, particularly because of legacy of the communist system andtransformation to a market system. The transition coincided with a rapiddemographic change in which younger generation was able to reorganise themselvesrelatively easily whereas older people found this change much more difficult. Thispaper builds a picture of well-being of older population in eight Eastern Europeancountries: Albania, Armenia, Georgia, Moldova, Montenegro, Serbia, Turkey andUkraine and compares it to eight other European Union (EU) member States of thesame region. We used the Global AgeWatch Index – an analytical framework ofZaidi (2013 ) offering comparative analysis of older people's well-being across theworld. It is extended by gender-specific analysis for two domains: health status andcapability. The results show that the combined Index value of eight Eastern andSouth-Eastern non-EU countries is considerably below the average observed foreight EU member States, however, in some individual indicators, some of the non-EU states performed better than the EU countries. The evidence summarised can beused to assess the position of the region and points to areas where policy changes arenecessary.

Never as in this moment has reflecting on Germany also meant reflecting on Europe. There is not one aspect of the current European public debate that is not also present in the German political agenda. Anti-European populism, migration's management, sustainable economic growth, relations between Member States and European Union, change of leadership in established political parties, fragmentation of the electorate, difficulty in the achievement of stable and lasting government majorities: all these elements are on the agenda in Berlin as in Rome, Paris, Madrid, Brussels. This is the reason why studying the "German case" is also useful to fully understand the nature of the phenomena described above in a national, comparative and supranational dimension. The papers published in this volume are the results of the contributions made to the Conference "Which Germany after the Vote? Post-electoral Reflections on the Largest European Democracy" held in Rome on February 9, 2018 in the Faculty of Economics of Sapienza University of Rome, edited by Professors Beniamino Caravita, Andrea De Petris and Roberto Miccú and organized by the Department of Economics and Law and the PhD in Public, Comparative and International Law of Sapienza University of Rome.

Cervical cancer is the fourth most frequently occurring cancer in women around the world and can affect them during their reproductive years. Since the development of the Papanicolaou (Pap) test, screening has been essential in identifying cervical cancer at a treatable stage. With the identification of the human papillomavirus (HPV) as the causative agent of essentially all cervical cancer cases, HPV molecular screening tests and HPV vaccines for primary prevention against the virus have been developed. Accordingly, comparative studies were designed to assess the performance of cervical cancer screening methods in order to devise the best screening strategy possible. This review critically assesses the current cervical cancer screening methods as well as the implementation of HPV vaccination in Europe. The most recent European Guidelines and recommendations for organized population-based programs with HPV testing as the primary screening method are also presented. Lastly, the current landscape of cervical cancer screening programs is assessed for both European Union member states and some associated countries, in regard to the transition towards population-based screening programs with primary HPV testing.

The modification process of the European Union's institutional order appears to be permanent. One of the elements of this tendency is the position of the European Council, which is especially interesting in the field of stimulating external EU activities. The aim of this analysis is to explore the EC's engagement in initiating foreign relations, taking the eastern neighborhood as an example. The paper reviews the European Council's meetings in the period of 2008–2016, concluding that the EC actively responded to external challenges and created a political impetus for the actions of other institutions. The internal debate initiated by the member states from Central and Eastern Europe resulted in the formulation of the Eastern Partnership initiative that the European Council approved and adopted, giving it a political impetus within the European Union. This caused a specific reaction in the neighborhood. The process of association of some eastern partners was accompanied by the need to deal with the challenging response from Russia, which resorted, among other things, to military measures. The European Council's involvement in external actions in the East became a self-deepening process with a changing profile and priorities.

Cervical cancer is the fourth most frequently occurring cancer in women around the world and can affect them during their reproductive years. Since the development of the Papanicolaou (Pap) test, screening has been essential in identifying cervical cancer at a treatable stage. With the identification of the human papillomavirus (HPV) as the causative agent of essentially all cervical cancer cases, HPV molecular screening tests and HPV vaccines for primary prevention against the virus have been developed. Accordingly, comparative studies were designed to assess the performance of cervical cancer screening methods in order to devise the best screening strategy possible. This review critically assesses the current cervical cancer screening methods as well as the implementation of HPV vaccination in Europe. The most recent European Guidelines and recommendations for organized population-based programs with HPV testing as the primary screening method are also presented. Lastly, the current landscape of cervical cancer screening programs is assessed for both European Union member states and some associated countries, in regard to the transition towards population-based screening programs with primary HPV testing.

Exploiting changes in the geography of economic integration in Europe, this paper uses detailed bilateral trade data for 50 sectors to carry out an econometric ex post evaluation of the trade cost effects of the United Kingdom's various arrangements with the European Union. The analysis reveals important heterogeneity across agreements, sectors, and within pairs. In particular, the EU's eastward enlargement or the EU-Korea trade agreement have lowered the UK's outward trade costs only relatively modestly. These asymmetries matter for the size and distribution of the welfare effects of Brexit – the withdrawal of the UK from EU agreements resulting into a return of trade costs to the situation quo ante. We make this point with the help of a modern multi-sector trade model that is able to capture inter- and intranational production networks. In line with other papers, the welfare costs of Brexit are higher in the UK than in most other EU countries. However, the considered asymmetries tend to attenuate overall costs while giving rise to substantial heterogeneity between EU27 members and sectors.

I would like to thank the organiser for inviting me to participate in this important conference – the ASIAN Conference on Comparative Law 2018 – with the theme "Comparative law and Legal Culture in Asia". This conference is certainly timely considering what is happening around us on the world stage. One inference that we could make from Brexit (namely the success of the referendum for United Kingdom to leave the European Union) and the support received by the far right populist political parties in Europe, (such as the National Front in France) is that nationalism is on the rise. Of course, nationalism helps the creation of states in the first place and thus is not necessarily a terrible thing. Moreover, nationalism could be used to harness unity and cohesiveness in a nation in order to be a developed country, so that the agenda for development could be executed and achieved. However, the language of nationalism that one could hear from some parts of the world is about superiority and exclusion. Thus, a conference on Comparative Law is nothing but timely.