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This study reviews existing legal, institutional and policy tools and frameworks, relevant to the introduction and adoption of new marine litter clean-up technologies in two regional European seas, the Mediterranean and the Baltic. A combination of desk studies in six countries bordering the Baltic (Estonia, Germany, Sweden) and the Mediterranean (Greece, Italy, Tunisia), and interviews with experts and stakeholders, is used to identify key drivers and barriers to the adoption and diffusion of marine litter technologies. The main conclusion of the study is that the most influential pieces of legislation relevant to marine litter management are top-down EU policies, often forming the basis of regional and national plans. Moreover, the study finds that several drivers of marine litter technologies may at the same time be critical barriers. These factors include public awareness, consumer behaviour, enforcement of legislation, and the rise of SMEs engaged in recycling and eco-labelling of marine litter. ; Research on marine litter in Italy and Greece is mostly funded through European research programmes and funding from the respective Ministries of Environment, and sometimes through private donations. Marine litter collection is typically carried out through campaigns led and organised by environmental NGOs employing volunteers, also sometimes funded by private donors.

AbstractEU social policy has generally been limited to the definition of non‐binding social outcome targets, a governance model known as 'second order output governance'. However, many EU Member States have failed to make progress in fighting poverty. This begs the question of whether a more performant EU‐level involvement in the field of social policy is conceivable. In this paper, we argue that European minimum standards are the place to start, including principles for minimum social security and minimum wages, as i) the European social objectives cannot be attained without guaranteeing adequate incomes to those in and out of work, and ii) social co‐ordination should thus go beyond broad outcome goals such as the reduction of the number of households at risk of poverty or social exclusion. We propose to include policy indicators regarding minimum income protection in the recently revised EU monitoring process of the European Semester.

Following the outbreak of the Great Financial Crisis, numerous reforms were conducted in all areas of the European Union (EU)'s Economic and Monetary Union. These reforms aimed at strengthening the resilience of Member States' economies after they had been put under severe strain by the crisis. They included, among others, the reinforcement of the efforts toward economic coordination in the framework of the European Semester for economic policy coordination, or the creation of the European Banking Union after which competences in the areas of banking supervision and bank resolution have been transferred to the European level. More than a decade after the Great Financial Crisis however, several of these reforms are still underway. This article is an introduction to this Special Issue whose contributions examine the reforms performed to date, as well as those that are currently under discussion, from the perspectives of multilevel (administrative) cooperation and the resort to soft law instruments. Indeed, the procedures newly devised rely heavily on the effective cooperation between national and European institutions as well as on a variety of soft law instruments.

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.

AbstractDespite a substantially unchanged problem load in the last 20 years, EU Member States witnessed a recent surge in pension reforms. Since the Great Recession, external market and political pressures started outcompeting national politics in pension-related decisions. Employing European Commission data on major pension reforms during 2006–2015, we find that governments respond to higher risk premia charged by international financial actors. Macro-policy fundamentals, such as budget deficits, and micro-policy indicators, such as pension spending, instead, only signal the necessity to act. They trigger the reforms in the presence of EU conditionality, that is, in the presence of Excessive Deficit Procedures and Country-Specific Recommendations within the European Semester. These findings deepen our understanding of the Europeanization of social policy, contribute to the literature on the political economy of reforms and testify to the declining role of domestic factors in the politics of the welfare state.

The main goal of the following article is to offer a Foucaultian reading of the economic governance structure of the European Union after the reforms passed and implemented over the last six years. The starting point is a reconstruction of Foucault's analytical framework to scrutinize disciplinary power as well as the respective apparatuses and how this framework has been integrated into the more encompassing governmentality perspective. In the second section I provide a brief survey of the strategic terrain of the European Union as a site of multi-level governance that poses unique challenges from a governing perspective. The following sections are structured according to some key characteristics of disciplinary/governmental power arrangements (visibilization, norm(aliz)ation, prevention, normalizing judgement) which I try to identify in the context of the European Semester, the Six-Pack and the Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure as elements of a broader disciplinary framework. The final section draws on Foucault's famous point about the 'productive failure' of the prison as a disciplinary apparatus that ends up serving ends and purposes quite distinct from the ones officially declared and suggests that we should also consider the European regime of economic discipline and surveillance as one, which is 'failing forward', creating opportunity structures to pursue political projects that may differ markedly from those officially stated.

Introduction As the Spanish Presidency of the Council of the EU takes off on 1 July, the last full semester before next year's European elections, the time has come for setting strategic objectives for the Union for 2024-29. This article underlines the idea that in order to develop a successful European industrial policy in the […]
La entrada European industrial policy: the lessons from NGEU in the new geopolitical framework, 'more funds are not enough' se publicó primero en Elcano Royal Institute.

Cohesion policy is a constant and central area of interest across the European Union. The development and success of European society depends on the social and economic cohesion at the level of all member states. Starting from this assumption, our study will focus on the interdependence between social cohesion and social support, the latter being interpreted and analysed as a means whereby social cohesion may be achieved. Thus, understanding the manifestations of community cohesion at the level of the European communities is an essential element in this investigation, while its main purpose is to build an explanatory model for interpreting social support. Based on such a framework, social cohesion may be analysed and understood. The following measurement scales will be applied to the analysis of social support: the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support, the Survey of Recent Life Experiences, and the Satisfaction with Life Scale. The source of the information is a non-random sample of 1364 respondents. Data processing is based on the implementation of structural equation modelling (SEM) in order to explore the key factors that influence the perception of social support. As mentioned previously, we plan to build an explanatory model that links the perception of social support with life satisfaction and the disturbing factors that are the outcome of life experiences. A set of comparisons is also made using the independent t test and one-way ANOVA. The perception of social support is interpreted from the perspective of the occupational situation, the age category, the educational level and the marital status of respondents. The variables included in the study generally satisfied the goodness of fit indexes in accordance with the recommendations of the literature on SEM models. The conclusions of the study show that social support is at the core of community integration and one of the determinant elements of social cohesion. Everyday life events condition the perception of social support. In turn, the ...

Mestrado em Economia Monetária e Financeira ; Através da utilização de dados de painel para os países da UE, para o período compreendido entre 1995 e 2019, este trabalho pretende estudar a condução de política monetária, política fiscal e as interações entre as mesmas. O nosso objetivo passa por entender as diferenças que existem entre a zona do euro e os países que não pertencem à mesma, assim como o efeito da crise financeira sobre as mesmas. Os resultados alcançados mostram que a inflação é crucial para a determinação das taxas de juro e que as autoridades fiscais apresentam preocupação no que toca à saúde das finanças públicas. No que toca às interações entre estas duas políticas, há evidência de que a relação existente é de substituição, no entanto sem resposta da autoridade monetária à política fiscal. A crise financeira apresenta um impacto negativo sobre a taxas de juro nominais de curto prazo, assim como sobre o défice primário ajustado ao ciclo, no entanto com uma maior intensidade na zona euro. ; Performing a panel data analysis for the EU countries, for the period between 1995 and 2019, this work studies the individual conduction of monetary and fiscal policies, so as the interactions among them. We aim to understand the differences that exist between the euro area and the non-euro area countries and how the financial crisis affects them. Results show that inflation is crucial for the determination of interest rates and fiscal authorities are concerned with the health of public finances. Concerning the interactions between these two policies, there is evidence that it is a relation of substitutability, however with no response of monetary authorities to fiscal policy. The financial crisis impacted negatively both the short-term nominal interest rates and the cyclically adjusted primary balance, however with a higher degree in the euro area. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

This study explores how environmental knowledge and risk perception influence individuals' sustainable consumption behavior through the mediation of environmental concern and behavioral intention. The study combines constructs from earlier studies to form a novel theoretical model, which is tested and validated with an open data set from the Environment III 2010 module, which was collected by the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP). Our sample consists of respondents from nine countries (N = 11,675) in the European Union (EU) and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA). The model indicates that environmental risk perception and environmental knowledge impact environmental concern significantly. Furthermore, environmental concern strongly influences behavioral intention, and these constructs, in turn, act as mediators of sustainable consumption behavior. The findings indicate that in Europe, sustainable consumption behavior can be associated with environmental concern, which is influenced by increased levels of environmental knowledge and environmental risk perception. The results provide a basis for future analyses once the Environment IV module is released. This will be of particular importance for tracking possible changes in the sustainable consumption behavior of Europeans when transitioning to a green and circular economy that is driven by the European Green Deal and EU Circular Economy Action Plan. ; European Consortium of Innovative Universities (ECIU)

"EU social policy has generally been limited to the de?nition of non-binding social outcome targets, a governance model known as 'second order output governance'. However, many EU Member States have failed to make progress in ?ghting poverty. This begs the question of whether a more performant EU-level involvement in the ?eld of social policy is conceivable. In this paper, we argue that European minimum standards are the place to start, including principles for minimum social security and minimum wages, as i) the European social objectives cannot be attained without guaranteeing adequate incomes to those in and out of work, and ii) social co-ordination should thus go beyond broad outcome goals such as the reduction of the number of households at risk of poverty or social exclusion. We propose to include policy indicators regarding minimum income protection in the recently revised EU monitoring process of the European Semester." (Author's abstract, Published by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons) ((en))

The long-term decline in gross public investment in European Union countries mirrors the trend in other advanced economies, but recent developments have been different: public investment has increased elsewhere, but in the EU it has declined and even collapsed in the most vulnerable countries, exaggerating the output fall. The provisions in the EU fiscal framework to support public investment are very weak.The recently inserted 'investment clause' is almost no help. In the short term, exclusion of national co-funding of EU-supported investments from the fiscal indicators considered in the Stability and Growth Pact would be sensible. In the medium term, the EU fiscal framework should be extended with an asymmetric 'golden rule' to further protect public investment in bad times, while limiting adverse incentives in good times. During a downturn, a European investment programme is needed and the European Semester should encourage greater investment by member states with healthy public finances and low public investment rates. Reform and harmonisation of budgeting, accounting, transparency and project assessment is also needed to improve the quality of public investment.

Refugees of the 2011 Arab Spring placed grave pressure on one of the European Union's most significant achievements: The Schengen Agreement. Established in 1985 and incorporated into the EU treaty framework in 1999, The Schengen Agreement abolishes internal border controls and allows for passport-free travel between Schengen's 26 participating member states. The project symbolizes the idea of an integrated Europe, yet arising nationalist sentiment due to the events of the Arab Spring caused attitudes toward Schengen to shift as countries, like France, reinstated border controls to combat the influx of immigrants. As a result, EU Member States are beginning to question Schengen's level of effectiveness, success and stability as a collective border policy for Europe in the years to come. This thesis attempts to gain a general understanding behind what the Schengen Agreement is, why it was developed, and how the public views Schengen and attitudes toward internal border controls post Arab Spring. By critically examining Schengen from its early stages of agreement against the backdrop of European integration, to its present state operating as the Schengen Zone, the thesis analyzes membership participation in Schengen as well as assesses public attitudes toward the Schengen area to enlighten on why Schengen has become such a hotly debated issue between EU Member States. ; Schengen, European Union, Public Opinion, Arab Spring, European integration, Differentiated Integration, European identity, immigration, asylum, public policy ; A Thesis submitted to the Department of Political Science in partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduation with Honors in the Major. ; Summer Semester, 2013. ; April 19, 2013.