Suchergebnisse

The European Union's (EU) Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) stipulates that all member states must unanimously ratify policy proposals through their representatives on the EU Council. Intergovernmentalism, or the need for equal agreement from all member nations, is used by many political scientists and policy analysts to study how the EU achieves its CFSP. However, in European Foreign and Security Policy, Catherine Gegout modifies this theory, arguing instead for analyses based on what she terms 'constrained intergovernmentalism.'Gegout's theory of constrained intergovernmentalism allows for member states, in particular France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, to bargain with one another and to make rational decisions but also takes into account the constraints imposed by the United States, the European Commission, and the precedents set by past decisions. Three in-depth case studies of CFSP decision-making support her argument, as she examines the EU position on China's human rights record, EU sanctions against Serbia, and EU relations with NATO.

Cover Page -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- List of Figures -- List of Tables -- Notes on Contributors -- Preface -- Acknowledgements -- List of Abbreviations -- PART I: INTRODUCTION -- 1 The Eurozone Crisis and Other Policy Challenges in the EU -- PART II: THE EUROZONE CRISIS -- 2 Eurozone: Creeping Decay, Sudden Death or Magical Solution? -- 3 the eurozone crisis and the fiscal treaty: implications for the social dimension and democracy -- 4 britain and monetary union -- PART III: OTHER POLICY DEVELOPMENTS AND CHALLENGES -- 5 the common agricultural policy: the right path versus blind alleys -- 6 new challenges for eu trade policy-making: why is the eu pursuing a comprehensive economic and trade agreement with canada? -- PART IV: DEEPENING, WIDENING OR MULTISPEED INTEGRATION? -- 7 Direct Democracy: Remedying the Democratic Deficit? -- 8 Europe After the Greek Default: Widening, Deepening, or Splitting? -- 9 Chronic Anxiety: Schengen and the Fear of Enlargement -- 10 Crossroads of Integration? The Future of Schengen in the Wake of the Arab Spring -- PART V: CONCLUDING CHAPTER -- 11 Equilibrium, Further Deepening or More 'Variable Geometry': Reflections on the Future of European Integration -- Index.

This book assesses how much influence social movements have on EU policy and the means through which influence is secured. Using wide-ranging case studies of campaigns from GMOs to water rights and Internet freedom, it elucidates the important differences between technical and political campaigns

The European Union is one of the world?s most complex political systems: this makes it a challenge to study. To the uninitiated its institutions seem remote, its remit unclear, its operations difficult to understand and its outputs sometimes perplexing. It combines some attributes of a state with those of an international organisation, yet it closely resembles neither. Its development is shaped by an increasing number of players, including 25 member governments, multiple common EU institutions, clusters of experts, private interests and citizen groups. All converge to influence what the EU is.

This paper performs price comparisons of branded pharmaceutical products in markets of eleven European Union countries. We follow a Laspeyres index approach, using Cyprus as the base country and analyse prices in the private and public markets and also consider biotechnology products separately. We find that Germany, Denmark and Austria demonstrate the highest pharmaceutical prices in the EU, followed by Cyprus. When adjusting for per capita income, Cyprus demonstrates the highest prices. Given that there is no universal health insurance in Cyprus, and that the country is facing a financial crisis, our findings underline possible affordability problems for patients. In order to remove barriers to access to medicines, pharmaceutical pricing regulation could be adjusted and price revisions should take place more frequently, and, most importantly, Cyprus must move in the direction of adopting universal health insurance.

This book investigates the regime of consumer benchmarks in the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive and explores to what extent this regime meets each of the goals of the Directive. In particular, it assesses whether the consumer benchmarks are suitable in terms of achieving the three goals of the Directive: achieving a high level of consumer protection, increasing the smooth functioning of the internal market, and improving competition in the market as such. In addition to providing a thorough analysis of the consumer benchmarks and their relationship to the goals of the Directive, at a mo

This article investigates whether public preferences for European solidarity are associated with vote choices in the 2019 European elections. After multiple crises, the politicisation of European Union affairs has increased, polarising voters and parties between those favouring the redistribution of risks across member states and those prioritising national responsibility in coping with the consequences of the crises. We expect pro-solidarity voters to be more prone to vote for green and radical-left parties and less prone to vote for conservative and radical-right parties. Testing these hypotheses in 10 European Union countries with original survey data, we find that green and radical-left parties profited from European solidarity voting only in some countries, while being pro-solidarity reduced the likelihood of voting for both moderate and radical-right parties in each sample country.

When Malta applied for membership in 1990, both EU consumer law and Maltese consumer law were in their infancy and in a state of evolution. In late 1998, the European Commission allowed Malta to re-ignite its accession application, which had been suspended by the new incoming Labour party government in 1996. As a result, Malta had to start in earnest and haste the negotiation and transposition of an extensive compendium of Directives, decisions and other measures comprised in 29 of the 32 chapters into which the acquis commimautaire was conveniently arranged for accession purposes. The other three chapters were institutional and were not negotiable or transposable. A chapter of EU law dealt with consumer protection, and most of the measures were in the form of minimum directives. 1 New important measures were being adopted at Union (at that time Community) level even while the island's accession procedures were slowly progressing. The directives which required transposition by Malta before accession are listed in Table 6.1 below. While retaining its primary focus on the measures comprised in this Consumer Protection chapter of EU law, this study makes several references to other consumer measures which might arise from other parts and chapters of the acquis. The reference to Metrology under section 15 of this chapter is a case in point. ; peer-reviewed