Suchergebnisse

What has been the impact of the EU on UK central government? This book explores the?Europeanisation? of the work of civil servants and ministers and how they engage with the EU. Drawing on fresh empirical evidence, the volume offers the first comprehensive analysis of the spreading impact of European integration across government. The study is placed in the context of political divisions over the EU but outlines the often neglected way in which the EU has transformed the business of government. It charts the process from the Macmillan government?s 1961 application to join the European Communi

This article applies Barnett and Duvall's taxonomy of power to European Union (EU)–Russia relations aiming to understand power in its complexity and without a priori theoretical assumptions. Four different types of power – compulsory, institutional, structural and productive – feature simultaneously. It is argued that non-compulsory forms of power are key to understanding the logic of competition in EU–Russia relations in the decade preceding the 2014 Ukraine crisis, despite receiving limited scholarly attention. First, a struggle over institutional power, the capacity to control the conditions of the other actor indirectly, appeared from rivalling integration projects and competing norm diffusion. Secondly, power relations were strongly characterised by constitutive forms of power – structural and productive – in particular the capacity to produce and recognise identities, such as Europeanness. In both fields, the EU held a hegemonic position, which Russia increasingly challenged. The geopolitical reading of the change in regime in Ukraine in 2014 prompted Moscow to a radical change of strategy, by shifting the emphasis in the confrontation to compulsory power. Attempts at direct control, from annexation to sanctions, now dominate relations. Where Russia seeks to prevent the Euro-Atlantic community from gaining effective control over Ukraine through destabilisation, this can be labelled 'negative' compulsory power.

Economic hardship accompanying large recessions can lead families to terminate unplanned pregnancies. To assess whether abortions have risen during the recession, we collected crude abortion data from 2000 to 2012 from Eurostat for countries that had legal abortions and complete data. Declining trends in abortion ratios between 2000 and 2009 have been reversing. Excess abortions between 2010 and 2012 totaled 10.6 abortions per 1000 pregnancies ending in abortion or birth or 6701 additional abortions (95% CI 1190-9240) with stronger effects in younger ages. Economic shocks may increase recourse to abortion. Further research should explore causal pathways and protective factors.

In an era of aging of the European Union population, it is crucial to take care of human resources in various spheres of their life. The potential of young people is particularly important, as their economic activity creates the basis of maintaining the European welfare state model. However, the labour market situation of young people is difficult. Moreover, the phenomena, which have recently attracted increasing attention, are remaining for young people without employment, education or training (NEET). The occurrence of NEET's resources is harmful at micro level - due to pauperization of European households as well as for the whole economy due to insufficient usage of human resources. The paper aim is to compare how the situation of young people differs in the European Union labour markets.The paper was based on both the desk-research of literature as well as the analysis of selected economic indicators of young people (aged 15-29 years). The indicator analysis was made through the usage of cluster analysis (Ward's method and k-means method). The data was gathered from the databases of Eurostat. The selected indicators determine the labour market situation of young people in the EU countries and they are derived from two years – 2006 and 2014.Ward's and k-means methods allowed for dividing the EU countries into three groups. It occurred that the groups in 2006 have a completely different composition of countries than in 2014, which was mainly determined by crisis influences on the labour markets as well as directions of conducted reforms. Additionally, the k-means method allowed for comparison of selected groups on the basis of chosen variables and determination of countries with the best and the worst situation of young people.

The article analyses the role of the Commission, the Parliament, and the Council in the two main legislative procedures in the European Union: co-operation and co-decision (I). We use the legislative history of some 5.000 parliamentary amendments. These procedures have been the subject of a great deal of theoretical debate. According to conventional wisdom the co-decision procedure increases the powers of the European Parliament. Revisionist approaches, however, suggest that the conditional agenda-setting powers accorded to the Parliament by the co-operation procedure are more important than the veto powers ascribed by co-decision. Our analysis demonstrates not only that both claims are correct, but also why. On the aggregate there is a higher success rate of parliamentary amendments under co-decision (I) than under co-operation, just as the data published by the EP indicate. However, controlling for one of the conditions of conditional agenda setting (agreement by the Commission under co-operation), conditional agenda setting empowers the EP more than veto powers. Finally, control of Commission behaviour in both procedures indicates no difference in acceptance rates between co-operation and co-decision. Our analysis explains why all three points above are true. The answer hinges on the activity of the Commission, which was more hostile to parliamentary amendments during the 1989-94 period (more amendments were rejected during this period than during any other period under both co-operation and co-decision). In addition, the power of the Commission has declined under co-decision (because it can be and is more frequently overruled by the other two players, whether its opinion is positive or negative). (British Journal of Political Science / FUB)

As in nearly all European Union (EU) policy areas, scholars have turned to analysing the role of national parliaments, in addition to that of the European Parliament (EP), in trade politics. Yet, there is limited understanding of how the parliamentarians at the two levels interact. This article fills the gap by conceptualizing these interactions as a continuum ranging between cooperation, coexistence and competition. We use this continuum to explore multilevel party interactions in EU trade talks and show how cooperation compels politicization – national parliamentarians mainly interact with their European colleagues in salient matters. However, we argue that the impact of politicization on multilevel relations between parliamentarians in the EP and national parliaments is conditioned by party-level factors. Hence, we account for how and why politicization triggers multilevel party cooperation across parliaments in the EU through ideological orientation, government position and policy preferences and show how this takes place in the case of trade. ; Guri Rosén has received funding from the Research Council of Norway (project number 303100). Open access funding provided by the University of Vienna. ; publishedVersion