Suchergebnisse

Abstract We explore the redistributive effects of taxes and benefits in the 27 member states of the European Union (EU) using EUROMOD, the tax-benefit microsimulation model for the EU. As well as describing redistributive effects in aggregate, we assess and compare the effectiveness of eight individual types of policy in reducing income disparities. We derive results for the 27 members of the EU using policies in effect in 2010 and present them for each country separately as well as for the EU as a whole. JEL codes D31, H24, I38.

The primary objective of this study was to establish what factors currently influence trade unions as organisations in South Africa and the European Union and then to compare these factors. To conduct this study a pure literature examination was done. Firstly the levels of trade unionism were established and thereafter the factors contributing to the levels of trade unionism were identified. The difference between a developing country and already developed countries was explained before comparisons were made between South Africa and the European Union. Common factors that influence trade unions as organisations in both the European Union and South Africa include unemployment levels and job insecurity, changes in the employment relationship, work relationships outside the traditional employment relationship and finally the reasons why people join trade unions. Lastly, an interesting finding that emerged was that certain factors influencing trade unions as organisations are unique to specific countries.

Migration and Regional Convergence in the European Union European migration trends in the last decade have been marked by a number of spectacular changes. In the course of the recent enlargement immigration to some EU15 countries from the CEECs has become remarkable. Nevertheless, the vast majority of the EU27 countries are net immigration countries. In face of the important immigration and the cohesion problem, the question arises whether migration had any effect on unemployment and GDP per capita levels in the 2000s. In this paper we use data from the Eurostat Regio Database and estimate whether EU regions reveal a process of convergence in unemployment and income and whether migration plays a role in this process. We further examine whether migration has a different impact on emigration and immigration regions or in converging and diverging regions. While we cannot find a significant impact of migration on unemployment, migration clearly affects per capita income growth.

Defense date: 26/06/2009 ; Examining Board: Bruno De Witte (EUI), Christian Joerges (Supervisor, former EUI, University of Bremen), Hans Lindahl (Tilburg University), Hans-W. David Nelken (University of Macerata) ; First made available online: 27 July 2021 ; This thesis argues for a sociologically observable equilibrium between the competing forces of legal unity and legal diversity within the European Union (EU) in order to conceptualise the contested process of the Europeanisation of law as a contingent, reciprocal one that has no endpoint in either uniformity or discontinuity. The main point of departure is the concept of legal culture, which provides for an institutionally-bounded and territorially-delimited jurisdiction with a unique socio-historical context. Member State legal cultures, within the overarching EU legal space, are conceptualised as a segmentary form of legal system-internal differentiation on the basis of territory, whereby communications originating in and pertaining to a particular Member State are conditioned in terms of the legal-cultural context of that Member State. This thesis argues that this "fragmentation" is a force of diversity within the Europeanisation process, which operates against a unifying force, understood here to be a similarly legal-system internal differentiation on the basis of areas of law and their related epistemic communities. This thesis advances the argument that, instead of viewing the existence of legal diversity within the EU as being essentially problematic for the process of Europeanisation of law, legal diversity should be reconceptualised as a productive counterweight to any purported legal unity in the EU and re-entered into the process in order to maintain its openness. While the concept of legal unity provides the framework for the operation of the Europeanisation process, that of legal diversity within that framework provides the means by which the process remains open-ended and fully contingent. Legal unity, in turn, is positioned as a counterbalance to legal diversity in that it places restraints upon the diversifying forces of both nationalism and fragmentation within the EU, thus maintaining the overarching framework within which the process of Europeanisation can occur. Legal "unity in diversity", conceptualised both as a precondition of the process of the Europeanisation of law and as a default aim, sits in stark contrast to the two main theoretical approaches to the Europeanisation of law, namely deracinated formalism and autochthonous culturalism. This thesis proposes a middle way that avoids the pitfalls of these two extreme schools of thought by operationalising the conundrum of unitas in diversitate in a way that both maintains the critical openness of the ongoing Europeanisation of law process, and facilitates a form of organically-evolving social validity for this process and the resultant legal structure of the EU.

"Serbia and the European Union" published on by Oxford University Press.

This article aims to examine how certain economic and social factors influence short- and long-term performance of small and medium enterprises (SMEs). SMEs'performance is defined by using the value added (VA) by SMEs, as a percent of the total VA by enterprises. The study targets European Union (EU) countries selected by the authors following a cluster analysis procedure. In order to obtain short and long-term influences, an analysis that carries out three types of tests is conducted: testing stationarity, testing cointegration and testing causality between the indicators identified as influencing factors and the variable measuring the performance of SMEs. The novelty and originality of this research are defined in terms of addressing the performance of SMEs from a new perspective, using an econometric basis in a macroeconomic view. From an econometric perspective, the results are among the most varied, both in the long and short-term, however they also have a correspondent economic explanation.

Public television is present in every European country, and it position on the market has been changing during the process of transition from monopoly to oligopoly and further towards monopolistic competition market. In most transition countries of the European Union, this process started in early 1990s and today public television represents only one player on the market. This paper analyzes the position of public television in 8 countries: Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia for the period from 1995 till 2019. The goal of this research is to analyze the changes in the market share of public television, as well as to compare public television position in these 8 countries. This will be done by applying descriptive statistic methods on the data about audience. The audience represents the market share, and it is analyzed on the level of each public TV channel. Countries are further divided into three groups, those with strong, middle and weak position of public television. Additionally, concentration analysis based on HHI will show how similar or different these markets are. The results show that the market power of public television has fallen in the analyzed period. Despite of that, in the majority of the 8 analyzed countries, public television still plays an important role on the market.

This book is an edited version of the unpublished final report of the PRIDE research project that ran from February 1999 to January 2001 and was concerned with partnerships for rural integrated development in Europe. The research focused on the rural development experience of 6 member states of the EU, namely Finland, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, UK, with some reference to the Irish Republic and Luxembourg. After a general introduction (chapter 1), the book provides a literature review and theoretical framework (chapter 2), a consideration of the methodology and the execution of the research (chapter 3), the findings of an extensive survey of 330 partnerships across the 8 countries (chapter 4), a report of the study of practice (chapter 5) and study of impact (chapter 6) undertaken in 24 case study areas, and a number of conclusions and recommendations (chapter 7). The book has a subject index.