Suchergebnisse

Throughout time, the European Union's media policy has attempted to strengthen the internal market for audiovisual services through economic and cultural measures. To anticipate or react to the dominance of foreign platforms, the revised Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD) extends its quota regime and obligation to invest in European works to on-demand audiovisual players, also when targeting a foreign market. Through document analysis, this study examines the financial investment obligations on these platforms in 10 European Union states. We found that several countries already target on-demand audiovisual platforms, and some regulations also capture foreign players. However, new policy measures are characterized by significant differences, resulting in fragmentation rather than harmonization. Moreover, the contribution requirements themselves are thus far limited and may offer only partial support to the intra-European circulation of content.

L'articolo analizza alcuni aspetti dei cambiamenti avvenuti nel contesto costituzionale del Regno Unito per effetto della Brexit, con riferimenti al ruolo dell'esecutivo nella forma di governo britannica, al rapporto con le autonomie devolute e alla nuova collocazione internazionale della Gran Bretagna, da leggersi anche alla luce del mutamento degli equilibri geopolitici globali che si sta verificando per effetto del conflitto in Ucraina. ; The article analyses some aspects of the changes that have taken place in the constitutional context of the United Kingdom as a result of Brexit, with references to the role of the executive in the British form of government, the relationship with the devolved autonomies and the new international position of Great Britain, to be read also in the light of the changing global geopolitical balances that are taking place as a result of the conflict in Ukraine.

Sustainability is becoming the main character of the financial industry in Europe, especially after the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) 2019/2088, which came into force on March 10th, 2021. However, despite the top-down indications for disclosing and reporting sustainability practices provided by this new policy, financial actors still lack a comprehensive framework on how to track and measure their social and environmental contributions within the perimeter of this novel institutional context. This paper discusses the implications for financial actors brought by the SDFR and builds a conceptual link with social impact measurement practices. In particular, the article provides a comprehensive framework that identifies strategic approaches and measurement tools for financial actors for building a more sustainable finance, that is a finance focused on the purest dimension of blended value and more attentive to sustainable development.

The Tatra Euroregion – A New Quality in Polish-Slovak CooperationThe Tatra Euroregion is a non-governmental organization which has actively and professionally implemented various trans-frontier operations in the Polish- Slovak borderland for the last fifteen years. Since 1999, the Euroregion has managed European funds for the development of the Polish-Slovak borderland, enabling the implementation of the aims and goals for which it was established; they mainly include cooperation in social and cultural fields. This kind of cooperation is crucial for the borderland's evolution. It provides an effective environment for economic growth and pro-ecological activities, which are still not sufficiently developed there. An important step in the modernization of the Tatra Euroregion is its strategy for 2008–2015. Plans for the near future include organizational transformation of the Euroregion into the European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation.

This paper aims to analyse the constitutional message of the GDPR in the algorithmic society. Although the GDPR does not formally have any constitutional character, it can be said to play a para-constitutional role from a functional point of view: it translates and implements core constitutional principles in the context of the algorithmic society. This paper traces the legislative origin of the GDPR's framework on automated decision-making showing that it aims to enhance a series of key constitutional values, preserving human autonomy, increasing legal certainty, and providing more procedural safeguards. The paper finally highlights how the GDPR is promoting a constitutional message deeply rooted in a new form of 'digital humanism': a conception of the digital society where the human being and her dignity should resolutely outrank machines, technology and, ultimately, economic efficiency.

This paper investigates on long-term challenges faced by local governments. Using empirical evidence from Estonia, this paper aims to help fill a research gap in that there is a lack of a systematic approach on how to analyze common urban challenges via direct involvement of local governments. In terms of conceptual framework, a unique combination of public value theory and mission-oriented innovation is proposed. The data is collected via questionnaire, interviews and workshops involving up to 35 local governments. It is important that instead of current problems relating only to one city, this study focuses on finding shared, long-term challenges and, from them, generates a list of top 10 challenges. This provides valuable input to initiating new research and innovation projects in the key, smart city domains (e.g., energy, mobility, built environment, governance and data).

In recent decades, many works have been devoted to the study of materials and painting techniques used to produce illuminated manuscripts. If the analyses were once largely invasive, the approach has become increasingly more in situ and non-invasive over the years. This work presents the results of the analysis of the Portuguese Charter of Évora, an illuminated manuscript that dates back to 1501, combining an elemental mapping technique (MA-XRF) with the non-invasive imaging techniques of infrared reflectography and digital microscopy. Remarkably, this approach allowed us to obtain unexpected results regarding the chronology of production of the illumination of the view of the City of Évora and of the Charter of Évora itself, posing new questions for art history on the political, social and artistic context of the early 16th century City of Évora.

As the Chinese government has pledged to reach its carbon peak by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060, it is necessary to investigate how regional sustainable development can be achieved. This paper used a 'bottom-up' model to calculate the ferry carbon emissions in Jingning, China, and proposed four measures to reduce carbon emissions, including renewing ferryboats, planting water-level-fluctuating zones, greening the ferries, and installing solar energy. Quantitative analyses were conducted to calculate the possible emissions reduction from 2021 to 2025, with the results indicating that the total emissions could be reduced by 392.67 t. Finally, a new low-carbon ferry concept is proposed, based on simultaneous carbon emission reduction and carbon sink enhancement. This study provided a theoretical and decision-making reference for the operation of green, beautiful, and low-carbon ferries.

The current maturity of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) has made their deployment practical and cost-effective, such that many scientific, industrial and military applications now include AUV operations. However, the logistical difficulties and high costs of operating at sea are still critical limiting factors in further technology development, the benchmarking of new techniques and the reproducibility of research results. To overcome this problem, this paper presents a freely available dataset suitable to test control, navigation, sensor processing algorithms and others tasks. This dataset combines AUV navigation data, sidescan sonar, multibeam echosounder data and seafloor camera image data, and associated sensor acquisition metadata to provide a detailed characterisation of surveys carried out by the National Oceanography Centre (NOC) in the Greater Haig Fras Marine Conservation Zone (MCZ) of the U.K in 2015.

After the annexation of Crimea in 2014, many EU–Russia projects such as the concept of Strategic Partnerships, negotiations on the New Basic Agreement, and the abolishment of visa regime, among other important issues, were suspended. On top of that, the parties involved imposed mutual sanctions which seriously damaged bilateral trade relationships. The present article aims to analyse EU–Russia bilateral trade under the sanctions and low oil prices together with such factors as the growth of Russian and the EU's GDPs per capita, geographical distance between parties and devaluation of Russian currency by applying a gravity model. Moreover, the model allows us to carry out simulations of circumstances as they would likely have unfolded had the sanctions not been imposed and if oil prices had remained at a reasonable level.

Surplus foods are fresh raw material of food that has not been processed, and a large number of surplus foods are discarded and wasted every day. As a new business model, a surplus food blind box can attract consumers to purchase to reduce food waste. The main purpose of this study is to find out how to improve consumers' degree of cognition of surplus food blind box to improve the purchase intention. Therefore, this study analyzes the relevant factors affecting consumers' purchase intention of surplus food blind box, and through conceptualization and hypothesis verification, establishes a perceived model of consumers' purchase intention of surplus food blind box that can be used for future research. The results can be used by relevant practitioners, consumers, governments, and researchers to reduce food waste.

This piece outlines the concept of emergency politics as it may be applied to EU politics, distinguishing it from more familiar terms such as crisis management. We define emergency politics as a mode of politics in which actions departing from convention are rationalised as necessary responses to exceptional and urgent threats. Arguably, the many crises affecting the EU in the recent past have made this mode increasingly salient. To capture its various expressions, the article presents a new typology of the forms that emergency politics can take in this setting, identifying four in particular: supranational, multilateral, unilateral and domestic. It connects these to the events of the last decade, spanning eurozone economics, migration, and Covid-19. We conclude by considering the variable consequences of these different types of emergency politics, in particular for the EU's normative and sociological legitimacy.

Dictators rely on coercive forces to remain in office, as violence is the ultimate arbiter of power in these regimes. However, coercive forces also can remove the dictator from office in a coup. This presents the dictator with a dilemma. One way to address this dilemma is to personalize the security forces. This paper argues that personalizing the security forces decreases coup risk by: (a) linking the security elites' fate more closely to the leader's and (b) increasing the informational advantage the leader has over security elites. Using a new measure of the personalization of security apparatus, I show that personalization decreases coup risk in dictatorships, but this stabilizing effect of personalization disappears after the dictator's exit from office. This study documents how dictators transform the security apparatus to stabilize their rule, with implications for how dictatorships survive and collapse.

As the Chinese government has pledged to reach its carbon peak by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060, it is necessary to investigate how regional sustainable development can be achieved. This paper used a 'bottom-up' model to calculate the ferry carbon emissions in Jingning, China, and proposed four measures to reduce carbon emissions, including renewing ferryboats, planting water-level-fluctuating zones, greening the ferries, and installing solar energy. Quantitative analyses were conducted to calculate the possible emissions reduction from 2021 to 2025, with the results indicating that the total emissions could be reduced by 392.67 t. Finally, a new low-carbon ferry concept is proposed, based on simultaneous carbon emission reduction and carbon sink enhancement. This study provided a theoretical and decision-making reference for the operation of green, beautiful, and low-carbon ferries.

Environmental regulation is a tool for teaching social and fiscal development that is carbon neutral. The highly polluting food industry in China is a threat to the country's long-term environmental stability and affects public health in a significant way. Therefore, this study investigates the effect of environmental parameters on environmental quality in China's food industry using the cross-sectionally augmented ARDL (CS-ARDL) model over the period of 2010 to 2019. We find that environmental regulations negatively and significantly impact environmental quality. The U-shape relationship exists between environmental regulation and environmental quality. Moreover, government expenditure on health and technological innovation reduces carbon emissions. The study's findings suggest new policy implications supporting the Porter Hypothesis. Finally, this paper offers policy suggestions for China's food industry to enhance its environmental performance.