Suchergebnisse

The European Union has a long experience in tobacco tax harmonization, which provides useful lessons learned. In the European Union, tobacco tax harmonization took place in stages, and currently all Member States have agreed upon definitions, tax base, and minimum excise duty rates for all product categories of manufactured tobacco. Tobacco tax harmonization pursues several different objectives, among which some might appear contradictory at first sight. This is the case in the European Union, where ensuring collection of revenues and ensuring a high level of health protection are, among others, objectives of tobacco tax harmonization. Reaching the objective to ensure a high level of health protection implies a declining consumption and thus declining revenues. It therefore seems impossible to reach both objectives with the same legal provisions. However, experience in the European Union proves otherwise. Lower tobacco consumption and the decrease in revenue this would otherwise generate have been compensated by increased rates, thereby reaching both objectives.

Costas Lapavitsas's The Left Case Against the EU (Polity, 2019) is recognized as the leading work advocating Lexit, the left-wing case for Brexit, and for nations leaving the European Union more generally. In light of current Conservative British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's commitment to exit the European Union by October 31, even if it means a no-deal Brexit, the role of the left takes on growing importance. Moreover, this raises issues of the European Union generally, including the dominance of neoliberalism within it and the question of German hegemony. Here, Neil Davidson offers an assessment of Lapavitsas's book.

Abstract. This article reviews the place which the comparative study of European countries has occupied in the development of political science as an academic discipline, and discusses how single country studies can contribute towards the construction of new models for cross‐national research. Particular attention is paid to the contribution made by the late Stein Rokkan to this development.

The objective of the article is to assess the extent to which party ideology and strategic incentives account for political parties' attitudes to European integration in one of the East Central European EU-applicant countries, Hungary. Starting with general propositions regarding the relationship between particular ideological strands and orientations to European integration, the main focus of the article is on individual parties' policies and rhetoric on the EU as shaped by the dynamic context of the party system. The Hungarian case suggests that, while ideology structures underlying attitudes to integration, parties' predispositions are not directly translated into a corresponding policy of supporting or rejecting membership per se: the parties are constrained by their own early pro-European rhetoric as well as short-term competitive pressures and the need to be acceptable as coalition partners.