The European Union (EU) is assumed to suffer from a democratic deficit. It is often posited that in the EU there is only a weak and indirect connection between public preferences and policy change. This article investigates empirically whether any relationship exists between public support for European integration and EU policy output (1973—2008). Using a new indicator of policy output — the volume of important legislation produced in a semester — I discover a surprising relationship between public support and legislative production. Employing vector autoregression (VAR), I demonstrate that public EU support Granger-causes legislative output but not vice versa, and that the relationship is strong up to the middle of the 1990s but non-existent afterwards. The effect is robust to the inclusion of indicators of the state of the economy and government preferences. In addition, I discover that the average level of EU support in the Council of Ministers follows unemployment levels with a four-year delay.
The quest for safe energy in the EU is inspiring a zero-nuclear power policy and a move towards renewable sources. Nuclear power eradication is being taken prudently so as not create negative externalities, even though not all countries are available for such an advance. The transition towards carbon-free electrification is analysed through the interactions between the electricity sources, the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices and carbon dioxide emissions in European nuclear power producing countries (European Union members states and Switzerland), based on monthly data, from January 2014 to December 2018. An Autoregressive Distributed Lag model was executed using the Driscoll and Kraay estimator with fixed effects, enabling the long-run and short-run impacts to be reported. The results affirm that CO2 continues to be emitted by the electricity system, albeit the substitution effect from renewable sources to fossil fuels. The key findings are that nuclear energy can be useful to accommodate renewable electricity into the system, and supportive fossil generation for renewable sources leads to a higher prices for consumers. ; A busca por energia segura na UE está a inspirar uma política de energia nuclear-zero e uma mudança para fontes renováveis. A erradicação da energia nuclear está a ser tomada com prudência para não criar externalidades negativas, mesmo que nem todos os países estejam disponíveis para esse avanço. A transição para a eletrificação sem emissões de carbono é analisada através das interações entre as fontes de eletricidade, o Índice Harmonizado de Preços no Consumidor e as emissões de dióxido de carbono nos países produtores europeus de energia nuclear (estados membros da União Europeia e Suíça), com base em dados mensais, a partir de janeiro de 2014 até dezembro de 2018. Um modelo Autoregressive Distributed Lag foi executado usando o estimador Driscoll e Kraay com efeitos fixos, permitindo que os impactos de longo e curto prazo sejam reportados. Os resultados afirmam que o CO2 continua a ser emitido pelo sistema elétrico, embora o efeito de substituição de fontes renováveis por combustíveis fósseis. As principais conclusões são de que a energia nuclear pode ser útil para acomodar eletricidade renovável no sistema, e a geração elétrica a partir de combustíveis fósseis para suporte às fontes renováveis leva a preços mais altos para os consumidores.
The article outlines the prerequisites for expanding the scope of destructive information activities in the Internet, examines the nature and types of measures of information and psychological influence in the Internet. The authors analyze the European Union's Strategic Communications activities (2015-2019) aimed at preventing and counteracting EU-wide information and psychological impact in the World Wide Web. Keywords: destructive information activity in the Internet, propaganda, misinformation, strategic communications. References1. Action Plan against Disinformation [Електронний ресурс]. – Режим доступу: https://eeas.europa.eu/headquarters/headquarters-homepage/54866/action-plan-against-disinformation_en (дата звернення 28.07.2019)2. Action Plan on Strategic Communication // European External Action Service. – June 2015 – 5 р. [Електронний ресурс]. – Режим доступу: http://archive.eapcsf.eu/assets/files/ Action%20PLan.pdf (дата звернення 28.07.2019)3. Code of Practice on Disinformation [Електронний ресурс]. – Режим доступу: https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/code-practice-disinformation (дата звернення 28.07.2019)4. European Council conclusions on the MFF, climate change, disinformation and hybrid threats, external relations, enlargement and the European Semester, Press release, 20 June 2019 [Електронний ресурс]. – Режим доступу: https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2019/06/20/european-council-conclusions-20-june-2019/ (дата звернення 28.07.2019)5. European Parliament resolution of 23 November 2016 on EU strategic communication to counteract propaganda against it by third parties [Електронний ресурс]. – Режим доступу: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+TA+P8-TA-2016-0441+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN (дата звернення 28.07.2019)6. Global Digital Report 2018 [Електронний ресурс]. – Режим доступу: https://digitalreport.wearesocial.com/ (дата звернення 28.07.2019)Joint Framework on countering hybrid threats. А European Union response [Електронний ресурс]. Режим доступу: http://bit.ly/2t0ywSh (дата звернення 28.07.201 ; В статье обозначены предпосылки расширения масштабов деструктивной информационной деятельности в сети Интернет, рассмотрены сущность и виды мероприятий информационно-психологического воздействия в Интернете. Авторы проанализировали деятельность Европейского Союза по стратегическим коммуникациям (2015-2019 гг.), направленную на предотвращение и противодействие опасному для ЕС информационно-психологическому воздействию во всемирной сети. Ключевые слова: деструктивная информационная деятельность в сети Интернет, пропаганда, дезинформация, стратегические коммуникации. Список использованной литературы1. Action Plan against Disinformation [Електронний ресурс]. – Режим доступу: https://eeas.europa.eu/headquarters/headquarters-homepage/54866/action-plan-against-disinformation_en (дата звернення 28.07.2019)2. Action Plan on Strategic Communication // European External Action Service. – June 2015 – 5 р. [Електронний ресурс]. – Режим доступу: http://archive.eapcsf.eu/assets/files/ Action%20PLan.pdf (дата звернення 28.07.2019)3. Code of Practice on Disinformation [Електронний ресурс]. – Режим доступу: https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/code-practice-disinformation (дата звернення 28.07.2019)4. European Council conclusions on the MFF, climate change, disinformation and hybrid threats, external relations, enlargement and the European Semester, Press release, 20 June 2019 [Електронний ресурс]. – Режим доступу: https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2019/06/20/european-council-conclusions-20-june-2019/ (дата звернення 28.07.2019)5. European Parliament resolution of 23 November 2016 on EU strategic communication to counteract propaganda against it by third parties [Електронний ресурс]. – Режим доступу: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+TA+P8-TA-2016-0441+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN (дата звернення 28.07.2019)6. Global Digital Report 2018 [Електронний ресурс]. – Режим доступу: https://digitalreport.wearesocial.com/ (дата звернення 28.07.2019)Joint Framework on countering hybrid threats. А European Union response [Електронний ресурс]. Режим доступу: http://bit.ly/2t0ywSh (дата звернення 28.07.201 ; У статті окреслено передумови розширення масштабів деструктивної інформаційної діяльності в мережі Інтернет, розглянуто сутність та види заходів інформаційно-психологічного впливу в Інтернеті. Автори проаналізували діяльність Європейського Союзу зі стратегічних комунікацій (2015-2019 рр.), спрямовану на запобігання та протидію небезпечному для ЄС інформаційно-психологічному впливу у всесвітній мережі. Ключові слова: деструктивна інформаційна діяльність у мережі Інтернет, пропаганда, дезінформування, стратегічні комунікації. Список використаної літератури1. Action Plan against Disinformation [Електронний ресурс]. – Режим доступу: https://eeas.europa.eu/headquarters/headquarters-homepage/54866/action-plan-against-disinformation_en (дата звернення 28.07.2019)2. Action Plan on Strategic Communication // European External Action Service. – June 2015 – 5 р. [Електронний ресурс]. – Режим доступу: http://archive.eapcsf.eu/assets/files/ Action%20PLan.pdf (дата звернення 28.07.2019)3. Code of Practice on Disinformation [Електронний ресурс]. – Режим доступу: https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/code-practice-disinformation (дата звернення 28.07.2019)4. European Council conclusions on the MFF, climate change, disinformation and hybrid threats, external relations, enlargement and the European Semester, Press release, 20 June 2019 [Електронний ресурс]. – Режим доступу: https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2019/06/20/european-council-conclusions-20-june-2019/ (дата звернення 28.07.2019)5. European Parliament resolution of 23 November 2016 on EU strategic communication to counteract propaganda against it by third parties [Електронний ресурс]. – Режим доступу: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+TA+P8-TA-2016-0441+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN (дата звернення 28.07.2019)6. Global Digital Report 2018 [Електронний ресурс]. – Режим доступу: https://digitalreport.wearesocial.com/ (дата звернення 28.07.2019)Joint Framework on countering hybrid threats. А European Union response [Електронний ресурс]. Режим доступу: http://bit.ly/2t0ywSh (дата звернення 28.07.2019).
As the successor to the decade-long Lisbon agenda, Europe 2020 is the European Union's 10-year strategy for 'smart', 'sustainable' and 'inclusive' growth. This article analyses the 'governance architecture' of this new agenda, and, more particularly, its social dimension. Insofar as Europe 2020 has a social dimension it is located within a suite of thematic 'flagship initiatives', as well as within a policy coordination framework that, while building upon the Lisbon agenda's governance architecture, now forms part of the European Semester framework. Whereas the flagship initiatives continue a long tradition of the deployment of non-legislative instruments and EU funds towards the EU's social goals, the role to be played by the 'open method of coordination' as a 'new' post-Lisbon form of EU social governance remains unclear. Indeed, the risk is that political energy will be concentrated on policy coordination as a means of strengthening EU economic governance rather than as a vehicle for articulating a progressive social policy vision.
The European Semester (Semester) was implemented a decade ago. Ample research has addressed the Semester's development, including some major changes in processes and content (Verdun & Zeitlin, 2018). The Covid-19 crisis seems to mark the next stage in the evolution of the Semester. It connects the Semester with the wider Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) and links its country-specific recommendations to conditional financial support. Thus, the next stage of the Semester suggests a stronger and more deliberate interlinkage of different EU tools that jointly guide national socioeconomic policies. It should support both national public investment and reforms while focusing on meeting the EU priority of moving towards a climate-neutral, digitalized, and resilient Europe (De la Porte & Dagnis Jensen, 2021). This article addresses the question of what room the new-style Semester gives to the involvement of national-level actors, such as national parliaments. Therefore, it expands existing analytical frameworks in order to assess the RRF in connection to the Semester, focusing on the degree of obligation, enforcement, and centralisation. Jointly, this outlines the room the RRF gives to the participation of national actors in the Semester. The article concludes that although the national parliaments are not mentioned in the Regulation establishing the RRF, they could claim a role both in developing national plans for accessing financial support as well as in amending and approving reforms.
Background Flavonoids are a group of phenolic secondary plant metabolites that are ubiquitous in plant-based diets. Data from anthropological, observational and intervention studies have shown that many flavonoids are bioactive. For this reason, there is an increasing interest in investigating the potential health effects of these compounds. The translation of these findings into the context of the health of the general public requires detailed information on habitual dietary intake. However, only limited data are currently available for European populations. Objective The objective of this study is to determine the habitual intake and main sources of anthocyanidins, flavanols, flavanones, flavones, flavonols, proanthocyanidins, theaflavins and thearubigins in the European Union. Design We use food consumption data from the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the FLAVIOLA Food Composition Database to estimate intake of flavonoids. Results Mean (±SEM) intake of total flavonoids in Europe was 428±49 mg/d, of which 136±14 mg/d were monomeric compounds. Gallated flavan-3-ols (53±12 mg/d) were the main contributor. The lowest flavonoid intake was observed in Mediterranean countries (monomeric compounds: 95±11 mg/d). The distribution of intake was skewed in many countries, especially in Germany (monomeric flavonoids; mean intake: 181 mg/d; median intake: 3 mg/d). Conclusions The habitual intake of flavonoids in Europe is below the amounts found to have a significant health effect.
AbstractThe EU's social dimension has been strengthened since the mid-2010s. Recent research has shown how Commission entrepreneurship in meta-governance such as the European Pillar of Social Rights and the European Semester turned existing regulation in a more 'social' direction or led to new regulation strengthening Social Europe. This article asks whether the Commission also stands out as the most important actor in initiatives focused exclusively on working conditions and if the European social partners also in these are secondary reactive actors. Focusing on a recent case where the social partners had a treaty-based right to bargain—the Working Conditions Directive—the article confirms the Commission's dominance and the reactivity of the social partners. The choice not to bargain reduces the social partners to lobbyists attempting to influence other key actors. However, the case also shows the limits to Commission entrepreneurship in that EU member states and the European Parliament were able to influence the outcome in important ways.
Does domestic contestation of European Union legitimacy affect the behaviour of the European Commission as an economic and fiscal supervisor? We draw on theories of bureaucratic responsiveness and employ multilevel and topic modelling to examine the extent to which the politicisation of European integration affects the outputs of the European Semester: the Country-Specific Recommendations. We develop two competing sets of hypotheses and test these on an original large-N data set on Commission behaviour with observations covering the period 2011–2017. We detect a twofold effect on the Commission's recommendations: member states that experience greater politicisation receive recommendations that are larger in scope but whose substance is less oriented towards social investment. We argue that this effect is best explained as an outcome of the Commission's institutional risk management strategy of regulatory 'entrenchment'. The supranational agent issues additional recommendations while simultaneously entrenching on a stronger mandate substantively, which allows it to maintain its regulatory reputation and signal regulatory resolve to observing audiences.
The pandemic will completely shake up the EU's economic governance in five ways: EU debt is possible and will become a reality; the EU and the Eurozone get a fiscal capacity; the European Semester will be history; the crisis managament architecture is politically questioned; and the Eurozone loses its relevance for EU decision-making. Taken together, these five lessons from the pandemic will render the old pre-pandemic Eurozone reform agenda obsolete. EU institutions should use the coming 18 months to prepare a new reform agenda for EU economic governance that can deliver tangible results before the next EU long-term budget will be negotiated.
Purpose – Several dimensions of public governance occur while approaching the Shadow Economy (SE) phenomenon. The purpose of this paper is to study the SE by means of the European governance analysis by highlighting the main features of implications of the policy options. A statistical significance on the nexus between public governance and the SE appears with respect to the indicators taken into consideration except for the dimensions related to the tax system, which appear to be moderate in magnitude in terms of their effects.
Design/methodology/approach – In order to evaluate data from 32 European Union countries during 2011, a hierarchical component model (HCM) in the context of the structural equation model (SEM) partial least squares (PLS) is utilised. Two different procedures are considered: a two-stage approach (TSA) and the repeated indicators approach (RIA).
Findings – The two procedures (RIA and TSA) proposed in the model have about the same impact on the SE. Evidence suggests that the manifest variables joined to the regulatory system, business regulation and wealth level significantly affect the SE. In contrast, different dimensions connected to the tax system need to be considered to avoid that there be no significant effects on the SE from taxes.
Research limitations/implications – A critical evaluation of the policy implications of the results are included, by focusing on the effects on the SE.
Practical implications – This paper suggests where more emphasis should be placed when referring to the statistical results in dealing with the SE.
Originality/value – To the authors' knowledge, this is the first attempt to explore the SE while using an HCM (also known as higher order model) performed in a SEM-PLS procedure. The model proposed discerns the relevance and the marginal impact of several dimensions of policy interventions.
This paper describes and assesses the functioning of differentiated integration arrangements in the field of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). In detail, we describe and study how differentiated institutions work in key EMU policy areas: monetary policy, fiscal surveillance (the Stability and Growth Pact, the Fiscal Compact), financial assistance (the European Stability Mechanism) and policy coordination (including the Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure and the European Semester). We start by presenting the regulatory and organisational dimensions of differentiation as well as their respective accountability mechanisms and procedures. The paper then assesses whether the deeper differentiated integration resulting from the early 2010s EMU reforms has strengthened the functioning of the EMU, as well as the implication for the Union's political unity. We find that the EMU emerged less vulnerable to shocks, and better equipped to tackle future challenges, although some limitations remain, and political unity has weakened.
The COVID-19 outbreak has raised questions about how vulnerable groups experience the pandemic. Research that focuses on the view of individuals with pre-existing mental health conditions is still limited, and so are cross-country comparative surveys. We gathered our sample of qualitative data during the first lockdown after governmental measures against the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus came into force in Austria, Czechia, Germany, and Slovakia. A total of n = 1690 psychotherapists from four middle European countries answered the question of how the COVID-19 pandemic was addressed in sessions by their patients during the early stage of unprecedented public health conditions. We employed a descriptive qualitative methodology to determine themes following levels of the social-ecological model (SEM) regarding how the COVID-19 pandemic affected patients. At the public policy level, stressful environmental conditions concerned the governmental mitigation efforts. At the level of community/society, reported key themes were employment, restricted access to educational and health facilities, socioeconomic consequences, and the pandemic itself. Key themes at the interpersonal level regarded forced proximity, the possibility of infection of loved ones, childcare, and homeschooling. Key themes at the individual level were the possibility of contracting COVID-19, having to stay at home/isolation, and a changing environment. Within the SEM framework, adaptive and maladaptive responses to these stressors were reported, with more similarities than differences between the countries. A quantification of word stems showed that the maladaptive reactions predominated.
The COVID-19 outbreak has raised questions about how vulnerable groups experience the pandemic. Research that focuses on the view of individuals with pre-existing mental health conditions is still limited, and so are cross-country comparative surveys. We gathered our sample of qualitative data during the first lockdown after governmental measures against the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus came into force in Austria, Czechia, Germany, and Slovakia. A total of n = 1690 psychotherapists from four middle European countries answered the question of how the COVID-19 pandemic was addressed in sessions by their patients during the early stage of unprecedented public health conditions. We employed a descriptive qualitative methodology to determine themes following levels of the social-ecological model (SEM) regarding how the COVID-19 pandemic affected patients. At the public policy level, stressful environmental conditions concerned the governmental mitigation efforts. At the level of community/society, reported key themes were employment, restricted access to educational and health facilities, socioeconomic consequences, and the pandemic itself. Key themes at the interpersonal level regarded forced proximity, the possibility of infection of loved ones, childcare, and homeschooling. Key themes at the individual level were the possibility of contracting COVID-19, having to stay at home/isolation, and a changing environment. Within the SEM framework, adaptive and maladaptive responses to these stressors were reported, with more similarities than differences between the countries. A quantification of word stems showed that the maladaptive reactions predominated.
The current instruments in the EU to deal with debt and liquidity crises include among others the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) and the European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism (EFSM). Both are temporary in nature (3 years). In terms of an efficient future crisis management framework one has to ask what follows after the EFSF and the EFSM expire in 3 years time. In this vein, this briefing paper addresses the question of the political and economic medium- to long-term consequences of the recent decisions. Moreover, we assess what needs to be done using this window of opportunity of the coming 3 years. Which institutions need to be formalized, into what format, in order to achieve a coherent whole structure? This briefing paper presents and evaluates alternatives as regards the on-going debate on establishing permanent instruments to support the stability of the euro. Among them are the enhancement of the effectiveness of the Stability and Growth Pact combined with the introduction of a 'European semester' and a macroeconomic surveillance and crisis mechanism, fiscal limits hard-coded into each country's legislation in the form of automatic, binding and unchangeable rules and, as the preferred solution, the European Monetary Fund.
