Suchergebnisse

This article investigates whether the Visegrád Group (VG) is proving capable of a successful transition from preaccession to postaccession cooperation in the expanded European Union (EU). Prior to EU accession, the VG agenda mainly emphasised political cooperation around strategic goals of EU and NATO membership, acting as an incubation chamber and the organising framework for joint policies and actions. The article finds that pessimistic prognoses for postaccession VG cooperation in circulation around the time of EU entry rather underestimated the VG's staying power and its usefulness as a vehicle for serving some of the requirements and challenges of the actuality of the "return to Europe." The postaccession agenda seems to have opened up many new avenues for cooperation on both intra-VG and external affairs, including towards the EU, and seems to have given rise to the kind of substantial practical cooperation agenda that eluded the VG during the preaccession period.

Shalendra D. Sharma is professor of politics at the University of San Francisco.

In anticipation of Croatia's accession to the European Union, this article assesses the way in which the state has come to terms with the Serbian question and the practice of non-discrimination in the justice sector. The first part offers an historical review of the Serbian question in Croatia and the main laws that discriminated against non-Croats during the war and rule of President Franjo Tudjman (1991-1999). The second part evaluates the nature of judicial reform in light of the external demands placed on Croatia to improve relations with the Serbian minority and recent rulings from the European Court of Human Rights, which have questioned the capacity of the Croatian judiciary to provide an effective remedy in cases of human rights violations. Adapted from the source document.

It's curious that Battle in Seattle, Stuart Townsend's movie about the mass riots that disabled the 1999 ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO), was shown at both the Democratic & Republican conventions in 2008. The film not only provided an anachronistic backdrop to the political aphorism of change espoused by both parties, but it served to remind us of the normative nature of political transformation -- that not much has changed since the WTO's failure to launch a new global trade round in Seattle & that although global commerce has been a force for good, it remains unpopular because businesses, politicians, & most notably the WTO have done a bad job selling it. It is easy to trace the beginning of globalization's image problems back to the Seattle riots & to assess the transformational effect those riots & subsequent protests had on its public perception. Less obvious, however, is what transpired within the cloistered meeting rooms of the trade organization nine years ago that caused the WTO to abandon any effort to tell globalization's story. Adapted from the source document.

The aim of this article is to review & evaluate the condition & the development perspectives of the relations between the EU & its Eastern neighbors. The problem is analyzed in the context of the recent discussion on the "Broader Europe" concept. The current dominant model of the relations between the EU & Eastern Europe countries is described in the article using the "circular discourse" & "circular interaction" terms. This article is aimed to reveal the initial theoretical & geo/political preconditions that helped this model to become the dominant theoretical & practical approach in the field of EU -- East Europe relations, to uncover the logics of its functioning & the implications of its realization to Lithuania & the other new EU member states. Adapted from the source document.