Suchergebnisse

In the sweltering temperatures of August 2003 there were over 15,000 fatalities in France, the majority among the elderly. The heatwave (canicule) was the greatest natural catastrophe in Europe for 50 years. Political mismanagement contributed to the death toll and government initially to blame medical services. However, other politico-cultural, societal and psychological factors may have contributed to the failure to protect the most vulnerable citizens. This article identifies 20 obstacles ("pathogens") to ensuring effective response in the face of environmental or weather-related threats, distinguishing between state-institutional and individual-community barriers, most of which have a cultural dimension. These factors require greater consideration by policy-makers to improve preparedness for environmental threats in the EU. The case raises questions about crisis management and how best to reduce risk for elderly populations, illustrating the limits of the state in offering social protection through institutionalised solidarity mechanisms, and recognises calls to strengthen community-capacity.

Space policy is at the cutting edge of current EU policy developments and is a fascinating object of study, involving multiple and diverse actors. It is also an original and contemporary lens for studying European policy-making. This book explores advances in European space policy and their significance for European integration. Using a framing methodology, it addresses central questions in European studies in order to form an interdisciplinary bridge between current research in space policy and contemporary European political studies. It assesses the interests of EU institutions in space and how these institutions perceive space policy. Furthermore, it demonstrates that space is a cross-cutting policy domain affecting a diverse range of EU policy fields, such as security, transport and migration, and underpinning the 21st century European and global economy. In doing so, this volume firmly locates space policy in the field of European Studies. This innovative volume will be of key interest to students and scholars of a range of policy areas including common foreign and security policy, technology policy, transport policy, internal market policies, environmental policy, development aid and disaster-risk management, as well as the EU institutions. --

In 2014, newly elected Commission President Juncker pushed to create the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI), the aim of creating jobs and stimulating growth. With guarantees offered by the fund and the involvement of the European Investment Bank, the plan was to use (sic)21 billion to leverage (sic)315 billion of investment in the European economy. The EFSI legislative process was very fast with legislation emerging in just a year, with the first EFSI regulation appearing in mid-2015. Using policy frame analysis, this article zooms in on the discursive patterns of the European Commission, European Parliament and Council, expecting to find transport infrastructure a key theme given the low investment levels in this sector after the financial crisis in 2008. Analysing key documents at two periods in time, and drawing on interviews with officials, it explores the arguments used to make the case for EFSI and how these changes over time, leading to the extension of EFSI through an amended regulation in December 2017. In so doing, it shows the strategic positions of the institutions during Agenda-setting for EFSI. Moreover, the article explores questions of legitimacy and accountability. It reveals how key events including the Paris Agreement on climate change (December 2015) and Brexit referendum (June 2016) increased the persuasiveness of its framing.

The regulations granting the establishment of EU agencies were meant to ensure institutional independence in order to insulate everyday decision-making from political pressure, vested interests and political short-termism. However, recent events, including managerial resignations and the introduction of new rules concerning conflicts of interest, have brought renewed attention to the autonomy/independence debate. This article goes beyond the traditional de jure/de facto dichotomy of approaches to approaching the question of independence to consider perceptions of agency staff. It seeks to gauge the opinions of members of the European Medicine Agency's Management Board with regard to agency autonomy, distinguishing between four types of independence: legal, financial, administrative, decision-making. It draws on data collected using questionnaires, and interpreted using the expert evaluation method, to rank the importance given to types of independence among sub-sets of stakeholders overseeing the EMA.

The regulations granting the establishment of EU agencies were meant to ensure institutional independence in order to insulate everyday decision-making from political pressure, vested interests and political short-termism. However, recent events, including managerial resignations and the introduction of new rules concerning conflicts of interest, have brought renewed attention to the autonomy/independence debate. This article goes beyond the traditional de jure/de facto dichotomy of approaches to approaching the question of independence to consider perceptions of agency staff. It seeks to gauge the opinions of members of the European Medicine Agency's Management Board with regard to agency autonomy, distinguishing between four types of independence: legal, financial, administrative, decision-making. It draws on data collected using questionnaires, and interpreted using the expert evaluation method, to rank the importance given to types of independence among sub-sets of stakeholders overseeing the EMA.

Cohesion Policy accounts for the largest area of expenditure in the EU budget. Because of its scope and redistributive nature, evaluation is particularly important. Policy analysis tends to overlook the evaluation stage. Few empirical studies seek to apply theory to EU policy evaluation. This article questions the relevance and usefulness of theorizing evaluation practice, exploring positivist, realist, and constructivist perspectives upon approaches to evaluating Structural Funds Programmes. It illustrates how political science theories can provide scholars with useful insights into the way EU policy evaluation is carried out. It develops a toolkit for analyzing real‐world approaches to evaluation and then applies it to three separate Cohesion Policy programmes. The analysis shows how, from a theoretical perspective – and contrary to the mixed methods rhetoric of the European Commission – positivism remains the dominant approach when evaluating the Structural Funds and considers why this is so, identifying the ability to demonstrate efficiency and effectiveness, cost, influence, and evaluation culture as key characteristics.

In 2014, newly elected Commission President Juncker pushed to create the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI), with the aim of creating jobs and stimulating growth. With guarantees offered by the fund and the involvement of the European Investment Bank, the plan was to use €21 billion to leverage €315 billion of investment in the European economy. The EFSI legislative process was very fast with legislation emerging in just a year, with the first EFSI regulation appearing in mid-2015. Using policy frame analysis, this article zooms in on the discursive patterns of the European Commission, European Parliament and Council, expecting to find transport infrastructure a key theme given the low investment levels in this sector after the financial crisis in 2008. Analysing key documents at two periods in time, and drawing on interviews with officials, it explores the arguments used to make the case for EFSI and how these changed over time, leading to the extension of EFSI through an amended regulation in December 2017. In so doing, it shows the strategic positions of the institutions during Agenda-setting for EFSI. Moreover, the article explores questions of legitimacy and accountability. It reveals how key events including the Paris Agreement on climate change (December 2015) and Brexit referendum (June 2016) increased the persuasiveness of its framing.

Although systematic policy evaluation has been conducted for decades and has been growing strongly within the European Union (EU) institutions and in the member states, it remains largely underexplored in political science literatures. Extant work in political science and public policy typically focuses on elements such as agenda setting, policy shaping, decision making, or implementation rather than evaluation. Although individual pieces of research on evaluation in the EU have started to emerge, most often regarding policy "effectiveness" (one criterion among many in evaluation), a more structured approach is currently missing. This special issue aims to address this gap in political science by focusing on four key focal points: evaluation institutions (including rules and cultures), evaluation actors and interests (including competencies, power, roles and tasks), evaluation design (including research methods and theories, and their impact on policy design and legislation), and finally, evaluation purpose and use (including the relationships between discourse and scientific evidence, political attitudes and strategic use). The special issue considers how each of these elements contributes to an evolving governance system in the EU, where evaluation is playing an increasingly important role in decision making.

Although systematic policy evaluation has been conducted for decades and has been growing strongly within the European Union (EU) institutions and in the member states, it remains largely underexplored in political science literatures. Extant work in political science and public policy typically focuses on elements such as agenda setting, policy shaping, decision making, or implementation rather than evaluation. Although individual pieces of research on evaluation in the EU have started to emerge, most often regarding policy "effectiveness" (one criterion among many in evaluation), a more structured approach is currently missing. This special issue aims to address this gap in political science by focusing on four key focal points: evaluation institutions (including rules and cultures), evaluation actors and interests (including competencies, power, roles and tasks), evaluation design (including research methods and theories, and their impact on policy design and legislation), and finally, evaluation purpose and use (including the relationships between discourse and scientific evidence, political attitudes and strategic use). The special issue considers how each of these elements contributes to an evolving governance system in the EU, where evaluation is playing an increasingly important role in decision making.