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Examines the role of political parties in the development of the EU from two scholarly perspectives -- international relations & comparative politics -- focusing on the relationship between the international & domestic political systems. The emergence & evolution of various "Europarties" (EPs) are traced & institutional & electoral factors that favor or impede EP institutionalization & effectiveness are identified. EPs are classified as transnational, multiparty, & one-party groups & their distribution in the European Parliament, 1979-2001, is analyzed. Tables. K. Hyatt Stewart

Despite the formal equality of women and men in rights, political activity and the decision-making process on public issues remain male-dominated areas. Political priorities are determined by men, and political culture continues to be mainly masculine. Therefore, separate women's political parties, with their own programs aimed at solving gender problems, enable women to represent themselves in the political processes of the country. The article examines the experience of women's parties in three countries: Sweden (Feminist Initiative), Germany (Feminist Party of Germany), and Spain (Feminist Party of Spain). The author also provides and analyzes data on the involvement of women in the top leadership positions of states. It is argued that the study of the differences between women's parties in individual countries makes it possible to assess the level of the problem of women's participation in politics.

Europeanization involves the transposition and implementation of European legislation in EU member states. Whereas EU policy implementation is explicitly recognized as the responsibility of the member states, the new emphasis on benchmarking recognizes that different implementation strategies can be beneficial, provided the outcome is appropriate. New data representing the full EU transport acquis from 1957 to 2004 and the national transposition instruments derived from data bases for Germany, Greece, the UK, Spain and the Netherlands show that only 39 per cent of the acquis was transposed in time. Why do member states not transpose EU directives on time? Logistic and multinomial logistic analysis explains this in terms of the level of complexity of EU directives; the use of national legal instruments that include considerable de facto veto players; and the shorter the transposition time set in the directive, the more delayed the transposition process.

The aim of this study is to evaluate the EU economic position in 1995-2014 as well as the prospective growth potential in the global dimension up to 2025. The subject of the research is real and projected data including: GDP growth rate, main growth factors (labour, labour productivity and Total Factor Productivity), and their input to GDP growth, as well as data showing public debts and budget deficits. The analysis was conducted for the years 1995-2014 and 2015-2025. The authors' basic conclusions are: 1) the technological and economic gap between the European Union and the United States has been deepening; 2) the increasing polarisation of world economic powers and low GDP growth in the European Union limit the EU's chances of maintaining the position as the second centre in the world economy; 3) improving the situation in public finances in the European Union as compared to the US is a factor which could raise GDP growth rates in European countries, however, there are countries whose future is in doubt due to the dramatically poor state of public finances, such as Greece, Italy, Portugal or Ireland; 4) economic growth forecasts indicate a deepening of the economic gap between the largest EU countries and the US.