Suchergebnisse

The article is devoted to the analysis of the constitutional principles and practice of the decentralization reform's implementation in states that are members of EU. For the study purposes France, Portugal and Poland were chosen as EU countries that are part of the group of unitary states that are at the stage of implementing reform of decentralization. However, it is noted that each of them has different results of the decentralization policy's implementation at present. It was determined that, regardless of the effectiveness of the manifestations, decentralization in EU countries is based on shared ideas and values. At the same time, it is established by the authors that the nature of the decentralization process reflects the national characteristics of each state provided for by the legislation of countries in EU. However, it is noted that in the constitutions of EU member states, decentralization of power is secured as the basis of the constitutional order. It is emphasized that each of the analyzed states has secured strategic issues of state's power decentralization in its law, and supplementing the existing legislation with additional legal acts related to the decentralization process contributes to more effective implementation of its key provisions in practice. It is accentuated that the nature of constitutional consolidation's manifestations of the decentralization process was influenced by the legal tradition, national-historical features, the past experience of public authorities' functioning and features of the administrative-territorial organization of states. The processes that are universal for the decentralization policy in the EU member states and that influenced the development of local government in them are identified. The multidimensionality of the decentralization process is emphasized. The characteristic features of political, administrative and fiscal decentralization are specified. The practical aspects of the decentralization reform in France, Portugal and Poland were analyzed using the Decentralization Index, developed by the European Committee of the Regions as part of the analysis of the separation of powers. It was established that the specified measurements of decentralization in each studied country develop asymmetrically, universal factors are the reluctance of central state authorities to transfer part of their powers to local authorities, the desire to maintain influence on the regional level of government, financial limitations of local budgets and the lack of independence in matters of making decisions by local government.

Der Beitrag beschäftigt sich mit dem im Entstehen begriffenen europäischen Raum sozialer Ungleichheit. Er beginnt mit einer kritischen Untersuchung vorherrschender und nicht hinterfragter Sichtweisen nationaler Ungleichheit und der Tendenz, transnationale Ungleichheit zu ignorieren. Er identifiziert dann neue Gruppen, die Teil des europäischen Ungleichheitsregimes sind - darunter EU-Eliten, Transmigranten und Transfergruppen -, und neuen Dimensionen der Strukturierung, die dem Europäisierungsprozess zugeschrieben werden können, wie die Vermarktlichung und Regionalisierung der Ungleichheit. Auf dieser Basis unterstreicht der Beitrag mögliche Verlagerungen gesellschaftlicher Bruchlinien, die zu einer breiteren Rekonfigurierung gesellschaftlicher Konfliktstrukturen führen können. (ICEÜbers)

Soziale Verfassungswerte und ihre Institutionalisierung im Projekt des Wohlfahrtsstaates sind ein kaum zu überschätzender Beitrag Europas in der Evolution moderner Gesellschaften. Soziale Verfassungswerte bewegen sich im Spannungsfeld von Religion und Politik. Die Kontroverse um das "Schröder/Blair-Papier" 1999 und damit zwischen Liberalismus und Sozialstaatlichkeit macht deutlich, was eine "soziale" Politik und soziale Verfassungswerte auszeichnet. Ein Vergleich zwischen Europa und den USA zeigt, dass der Wohlfahrtsstaat ein zentraler Bestandteil der europäisch-kulturellen Werteordnung ist. Die EU muss soziale Mindeststandards garantieren, ohne höhere Standards einzelner Mitgliedsstaaten zu behindern. (ICE2)

"Die EU-Charta verfolgt das Ziel, die existenzielle Staatlichkeit der Europäischen Union voranzutreiben, ohne dass die Völker Europas danach gefragt worden sind, ob sie das wollen. Die Charta missachtet die Freiheit im Grundsatz. Sie schmälert die Bürgerlichkeit der Bürger. Den Untertanen werden keine Rechte belassen. Die Charta minimiert die sozialen und die ökologischen Grundrechte sowie vor allem die Grundrechte der Arbeit. Die Charta kann und soll Teil einer europäischen Verfassung werden. Die bloße Integrationssymbolik rechtfertigt die Charta keinesfalls. Als großer politischer Akt gefährdet die Charta durch ihre Faktizität den Status der Menschen und Bürger in Europa." (Autorenreferat)

УДК 347.9The purpose of the article is to provide a critical analysis of different approaches towards the notion of "European Civil Procedure", to substantiate by means of legal and judicial practice, research papers a true essence and legal nature of the European Civil Procedure.The methodological basis for the study: general scientific methods (analysis, synthesis, comparison); private and academic (interpretation, comparison, formal-legal).Problems and basic scientific results: the notion of "European Civil Procedure", which describes the process of EU Member States judicial cooperation, bears largely a conventional character. It is not used officially by the organs and institutions of the EU, or its Member States. Moreover, it assumes an unjustified monopolization of the European discourse on the side of EU's initiatives, although Europe is not limited to that association neither in geographical, nor in a legal sense. However, the given notion has become quite colloquial and does not cause any difficulties to the beneficiaries, and thus we may use the terms "European Civil Procedure" (ECP) and "Civil Procedure of the EU" (CP EU) as synonyms.Different approaches towards the nature of the European Civil Procedure claim that it may be regarded as: (1) a separate (communitary) regime of Private International Law (or, otherwise, International Civil Procedure); (2) means to approximate national rules of Civil Pro-cedure; 3) a particular system of judicial decisions recognition; (4) an independent area of supranational law; 5) an aggregate of all or part of the qualities mentioned above.The system of EU Civil Procedure constitutes "federal" procedural law of the Union that functions side-by-side national procedural rules. It governs those relations that go beyond the borders of one Member State, but not the EU itself. Relations between Member States and third nations are still generally out of the federal competence.We need not to forget, however, that a genuine federal center does not only introduce centralized procedures, but also approves mandatory standards for all of the levels of the regulatory system (in other words, pursues approximation). A right of any federal state to exercise such competence does not find any questions due to supremacy of its authority. Still in the EU legal order the principle of its supremacy has a limited application and it is not obvious that the introduction of general norms for the Civil Procedure come within it. The existence of different standards of justice (28 national ones and one supranational) has a negative effect on the unity of the "area of justice", making it illusory. In order to guarantee an equal level of judicial protection everywhere in the EU a procedural "bill of rights" is required, and it needs to be adopted at the "highest level" of the system.Conclusions. The EU Civil Procedure has a dual nature. In its own (narrow) sense it is a body of federal procedural law of the EU that is applied when a cross-border situation of intracommunity character comes into being. In a broader sense, it is also a combination of norms, rules and principles of justice that are adopted by the EU as a federal center for both community-wide and national levels of the judicial system in order to guarantee the unity to the area of justice. In the ideal case, the European area of justice has to be a coherent, unified and internally consistent system. Reality is, however, far from that image, since there are multiple problems of both legal and political nature that hinder the implementa-tion of these brave ideas. ; УДК 347.9Европейский гражданский процесс является понятием в достаточной степени услов-ым. Взгляды на сущность данного института характеризуются разнообразием: 1) особый (коммунитарный) режим международного частного права (или международного гражданского процесса); 2) средство сближения национальных норм гражданского процессуального права; 3) специальная система признания решений; 4) самостоятельная отрасль наднационального права; 5) совокупность всех или части из вышеприведенных качеств. Европейский гражданский процесс имеет двойственную природу. В собственном смысле слова это федеральное процессуальное право Европейского Союза. В более широком значении это совокупность тех правил, норм и принципов отправления правосудия, которые ЕС как федеративный центр принимает и для общефедерального, и для национального уровней судебной системы, обеспечивая единство пространства правосудия.

Am 1. Dezember 2009 ist der Vertrag von Lissabon in Kraft getreten. Bereits im Vorfeld hatten Kritiker eine Ratifikation durch Volksabstimmungen in allen Ländern der Europäischen Union gefordert und bemängelt, dass mit dem Vertrag das institutionelle Demokratiedefizit der EU nicht behoben sei. Die Befürworter sahen dagegen (z.B. durch die Stärkung der Rechte des direkt gewählten Europäischen Parlaments, oder die Verankerung des direktdemokratischen Elementes,) in dem Vertragswerk einen wichtigen Schritt in Richtung Demokratisierung Europas.Auf dem von Mehr Demokratie e.V. und der Demokratie-Stiftung an der Universität zu Köln im Juni 2009 veranstalteten Kolloquium "Europäische Demokratie in guter Verfassung?" wurde Fragen und Voraussetzungen einer möglichen Ausgestaltung von Demokratie auf supranationaler europäischer Ebene nachgegangen: Lassen sich unsere Anforderungen an eine Demokratie ohne weiteres auf die "Organisationsform EU" übertragen? Wie könnte ein demokratisches Verfahrensrecht für ein historisch einzigartiges Staatsgebilde aussehen? Das vorliegende Buch dokumentiert die Referate und die Abschlussdiskussion und bietet damit eine Grundlage für die weiteren Diskussionen über die direkte Demokratie in Europa

European Union combines territories of 27 member countries and also economical, trade and financial aspects. It has an essential role in global problems and its importance is increasing equal to adoption of collective decisions in sphere of foreign policy. EU converses with all the world key figures and also with those who have their own opinion about world and their own interests.During the last years the meaning of EU as an independent figure in the modern general European safety system is intensifying. It is important to point that diplomacy stays the basement for mutual foreign and safety policy in EU, so that it is supported by trade, help, safety and defense if it's necessary. This policy is directed firstly to solve the conflicts and reach the international understanding.The topicality of issue. The historical development of Europe witnesses that guaranteeing of safety has been a task of various international political blocks and organizations. Exacerbation of untraditional threats influenced the strengthening of institutional and functional role of international organization in sphere of guaranteeing of safety.Dynamics of international processes points the increasing meaning of regional safety systems in providing of stability in the world. Mutual dependence of regional and global organizations of collective safety and defense is intensifying (UN, NATO, OSCE and EU).The aim of the article is an analyzing of European safety and defense police (ESDP) as policy in process of further closer integration within EU and in the relationships with other international safety organizations.The object of survey is mutual safety and defense policy of EU in the context of new threats to the regional and global safety.The subject of survey – international political specifies of formation and evolution, institutional and practical and international law mechanisms of ESDP since the second half of XX cen. – the beginning of XXI cen.The conclusions In such way, in the last 20 years political and institutional changes in EU has created the premises for the new perception of «purely European» safety space. The development of European safety conception is characterized by complex approach, determination of qualitatively new threats and at the same time emphasizes the accepting of values which are mutual for European countries.1. Earlier in the EU state security relied entirely on the political defensive mechanism of NATO and the political mechanism of OSCE and the UN, the security problems are recently becoming further relevance for European policy and become «internal priority» of the European Union. EU concern for maintaining their own security, the creation of an appropriate system and its organization was implemented in an effort to strengthen the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). However, since its launch CFSP was ineffective political-legal and institutional mechanisms. Therefore, in 1999 the European Union introduced a new, more successful initiative called the European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP).It should be noted that this area of soft security, ie the post-conflict settlement and assist in civil management, and is currently the most successful and best functioning part of ESDP. Scope military solution is still considered controversial by most Member States and has many obstacles to achieve efficient operation.2. The EU strongly and gradually approaching the ability to influence to European and international security. Over the last decade, the EU was able to significantly develop its military component of ESDP as an important link. In particular, the creation and development of military forces allowed the EU to take over peacekeeping missions as in Europe and beyond.3. Enhancing the EU efforts in the area of foreign and security policy was due to the failure of the EU itself resolve the conflict in the Balkans, the knowledge of its own military and technological backwardness, the understanding of the changes in the content and scope of threats and recognition of the need to build an appropriate response strategy. This led to a conceptual change in European security policy and the emergence of initiatives to create a European military instruments of influence on world politics (in the so-called «hard security»).4. Over the last decade, the EU had 23 civilian missions and military operations on three continents. These include the following: peace of the after effects of Tsunami Aceh (Indonesia), the protection of refugees in Chad, the fight against piracy in Somalia and the Horn of Africa. This suggests that the EU's role as a player in the security becomes tangible.As of November 2010 the EU has both thirteen military and civilian missions in 4 regions of the world: the European continent (the Balkans, Moldova / Ukraine), the Middle East, Asia and Africa. Also completed 11 military and civilian operations in the Balkans, the Caucasus, Asia and Africa.While EU operations using inputs NATO. Thus, we can speak of complementary efforts and mutually beneficial cooperation between the EU and NATO.5. In the EU a priority for further development of ESDP recognizes no quantitative growth indicators and qualitative implementation of capacity in this area, which in turn confronts the EU Member States following objectives: reaching consensus on all aspects of common security and defense policy, development and learning new methodologies crisis management, effective use of international cooperation, strengthening the defense industry and military technology.6. Motivation to improve the state of national security, stabilization of the internal and external situation, reducing dependence and further out from the influence of a number of other reasons make our country more actively in the foreign and security policy. The overall process of the EU integration process involves appropriate in all areas and sectors, including security, so further participation in the CFSP has a positive attitude affect the positioning of Ukraine in the security dimension of European geopolitical space. Achieving this goal is possible only in case of joint ownership of all political parties, the government and the President to improve geo-political situation of our country both in Europe and internationally. ; Статья посвящена исследованию проблемы формирования, развития и усовершенствования оборонительной политики и политики безопасности Европейского Союза, совместной внешней политики и политики безопасности.Анализируются основные шаги европейского сообщества в направлении создания собственной, Европейской оборонительной политики и политики безопасности в контексте новых угроз региональной и глобальной безопасности, состояние и трансформация отношений ЕС и НАТО в сфере безопасности. ; Статтю присвячено дослідженню проблеми формування, розбудови та вдосконалення оборонної і безпекової політики Європейського Союзу, спільної зовнішньої та безпекової політики.Аналізуються основні кроки європейського співтовариства в напрямку створення власної, Європейської безпекової та оборонної політики в контексті нових загроз регіональній і глобальній безпеці, стан та трансформація стосунків ЄС і НАТО у сфері безпеки.

Abstract
The ambiguous nature of the internal market allows for EU legislative input on two tensions animating this field since its inception, those being how to divide power between the EU and Member States and how to reconcile the requirements of integration and regulation. The Court can sometimes struggle with accommodating such input with its Treaty interpretation, leading to further tension with the EU legislator. In the internal market for goods, however, it can rely on the Legislative Priority Rule to resolve disputes in a coherent, Treaty-compliant manner. Casting exhaustive EU legislation as the sole norm against which to assess national product measures, to the exclusion of Articles 34–36 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), this longstanding Rule is, from one perspective, a simple procedural tool to establish the Court's framework of reference. In reality, however, invoking (or excluding) the Rule can have a substantive and institutional dimension, as its application (or not) engages the relationships between national, secondary, and primary law and, by extension, the Member States, EU legislator, and Court. On the one hand, the Rule enforces EU primacy by pre-empting national competence in the presence of harmonization. On the other, by suspending direct application of Articles 34–35 TFEU, it also implies deference to the EU legislator, and indirectly to the Member States, which enjoy discretion to set standards and determine how power is shared. As a result, while Member States cannot avoid free movement obligations, they can defend national rules by reference to this EU standard to which they have contributed. There is in other words an alignment under the Rule between the dynamics of Exit and Voice, with the Court exercising boundary control to ensure compliance with primary law. It is on this basis that I have come to identify the Legislative Priority Rule as a sort of 'constitutional compass' to guide the distribution of power in the internal market for goods. Despite this key role, however, its existence and impact remain relatively unknown or at best ignored, reflecting a gap in understanding the Court's toolbox for review and a failure to appreciate the role of secondary legislation in building a stable, Treaty-compliant regulatory system.

AbstractEuropean environmental governance has radically transformed over the past two decades. While traditionally enforcement of environmental law has been the responsibility of public authorities (public authorities of the EU Member States, themselves policed by the European Commission), this paradigm has now taken a democratic turn. Led by changes in international environmental law and in particular the UNECE Aarhus Convention (UNECE, United Nations Economic Commission for Europe Convention (1998). Convention on access to information, public participation in decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (the Aarhus Convention), signed on June 25, 1998.), EU law now gives important legal rights to members of the public and environmental non-governmental organisations ("ENGOs") to become involved in environmental governance, by means of accessing environmental information, participating in environmental decision-making and bringing legal proceedings. While doctrinal legal and regulatory scholarship on this embrace of "bottom-up" private environmental governance is now substantial, there has been relatively little quantitative research in the field. This article represents a first step in mapping this evolution of environmental governance laws in the EU. We employ a leximetrics methodology, coding over 6000 environmental governance laws from three levels of legal sources (international, EU and national), to provide the first systematic data showing the transformation of European environmental governance regimes. We develop the Nature Governance Index ("NGI") to measure how the enforcement tools deployed in international, EU and national law have changed over time, from the birth of the EU's flagship nature conservation law, the 1992 Habitats Directive (Directive 92/43/EEC). At the national level, we focus on three EU Member States (France, Ireland and the Netherlands) to enable a fine-grained measurement of the changes in national nature governance laws over time. This article introduces our unique datasets and the NGI, describes the process used to collect the datasets and its limitations, and compares the evolution in laws at the international, EU and national levels over the 23-year period from 1992–2015. Our findings provide strong empirical confirmation of the democratic turn in European environmental governance, while revealing the significant divergences between legal systems that remain absent express harmonisation of the Aarhus Convention's principles in EU law. Our data also set the foundations for future quantitative legal research, enabling deeper analysis of the relationships between the different levels of multilevel environmental governance.

Abstract
Background
Circular economy (CE) is a development priority of the European Union and it is part of the EU industrial strategy. The transition to a more circular economy is an essential contribution to the EU's efforts to develop a sustainable, low carbon, resource-efficient and competitive economy. The author focuses her CE-related reflections and research in this paper on the macro-level (research subjects: 28 EU countries), the level which is least represented in scholarly publications addressing CE (as follows from the analysis of literature in the Scopus database). This study aims to fill this gap partially. The aim of this paper is to identify and group the EU-28 countries according to their advancement towards circular economy. CE indicators proposed by the European Commission were used for the analysis. Given the research subjects and after an analysis of the literature they were concluded to be the most adequate. The theoretical part was based on an analysis of the literature, whereas the empirical work used the principal components analysis, hierarchical and k-means clustering and a grade correspondence-cluster analysis.

Results
On the basis of the research, the existence of a "two-speed Europe" was identified in terms of EU countries' advancement towards CE. Leading countries, those most advanced in pursuing operation according to CE principles, include Germany, Belgium, Spain, France, Italy, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. The second pole accommodates EU countries in which transformation towards CE is happening at the slowest pace. This group includes mainly countries of the Central and Eastern Europe and the countries of the south of Europe.

Conclusions
Differentiated levels of advancement of individual countries towards CE result inter alia from the adoption by some of the latter of different development strategies for their economies' transitioning to circular economy (according to recommendations of EU ministers at the Environment Council in June 2016) and also from the differences occurring in social and economic development (it is mostly noticeable between the EU-15 and the EU-13 countries). Unfortunately, as can be concluded from the effects obtained so far, only a few of the adopted development strategies may be considered effective in meeting the challenges of circular economy according to the European Union's standards.

The European political map has been constantly changing since the World War II. The Czechoslavakia and Yugoslavia dissolved, Germany reunited and the European Union (EU) has been expanding. The original European Economic Community (EEC) has grown from 6 to 27 members and the process has been on-going. Enlargement is a permanent and continuous item on the EU agenda and by far one of the most speculated policies. Enlargement policy aims at preparing the countries concerned to become full members of the EU when they, as well as the EU, are ready. Therefore, EU has provided a well-designed institutional framework for enlargement. Nevertheless, it doesn't necessarily mean that EU enlarges only. Even though United Kingdom's EU departure represents the sharpest challenge of recent times, the cases of Algeria, Greenland and Saint Barthélémy show that withdrawal from the EU and the institutions that preceded it, is not an absolutely new phenomenon. The objective of this article is to depict and to compare the institutional framework and the historical background of the enlargement and withdrawing facts. A discussion of theorization falls outside the scope of this illustrative paper and it is aimed to provoke thinking. ; : İkinci Dünya Savaşı'ndan bu yana Avrupa'nın siyasi haritası devamlı değişmektedir. Çekoslavakya ve Yugoslavya dağılırken, Almanya birleşirken, Avrupa Birliği (AB) devamlı suretle genişlemektedir. 6 üyeyle kurulan Avrupa Ekonomik Topluluğu (AET) 27 üyeli bir topluluğa evrilirken, süreç de devam etmektedir. Genişleme, kalıcı ve sürekli bir unsur olarak her daim Avrupa gündemindedir ve en çok speküle edilen politika alanlarından da biridir. Genişleme politikası, ilgili ülkelerin AB'ye tam üye olmaya hazırlanmaları ve AB'nin de buna hazırlıklı olmasıdır. Bu nedenle, AB genişleme konusunda iyi tasarlanmış bir kurumsal çerçeveye sahiptir. Öte taraftan "AB sadece genişlemektedir" demek de doğru bir önerme değildir. Birleşik Krallık'ın (BK) AB'den ayrılması son zamanların en keskin sınamalarından biri olsa da Cezayir, Grönland ve Saint Barthélémy vakaları, AB'den ve onun selefi kurumlardan çıkış konusunun tamamıyla yeni bir fenomen olmadığını göstermektedir. Bu makalenin amacı, AB bağlamındaki katılım ve çıkış olgularının kurumsal çerçevelerini ve tarihsel arka planlarını ortaya koyarak bir kıyasa imkân vermektir. Kuramsal tartışmalar, betimleyici bu çalışmanın maksadı dışındadır ve özünde düşünceyi teşvik hedeflenmektedir.

Political instability in the Middle East and North Africa in the early 2010s, accompanied by an escalation of the terrorist threat and uncontrolled migration, caused serious concern in the European Union about the situation in the Arab world. As a consequence, the EU has noticeably increased assistance to Iraq, providing Baghdad with substantial support in the fight against the Islamic State, preventing the humanitarian crisis, stabilizing the situation and promoting post-conflict reconstruction. However, these efforts have not yet been explored in depth by the Russian experts, who traditionally focus on the EU relations with the Southern Mediterranean countries.The author aims to reveal the logic behind the evolution of the European Union's policy towards Iraq since 2014, as well as its impact on the EU assistance programmes to this country. The paper consists of three sections: the first one outlines the evolution of the EU strategic priorities in Iraq during 2014–2019, the second covers the major assistance programmes implemented by the European Union, both bilaterally and multilaterally, in Iraq; the third examines the EU reaction to the rising tensions in Iraq at the turn of 2019–2020.The author concludes that the EU's growing interest in Iraq in recent years stems not only from concerns about transformation of this country into a source of cross-border challenges and threats, but also from the conviction of the EU officials that Iraq might potentially become the cornerstone of a new regional security architecture. On the basis of these considerations, the EU provides a comprehensive support to Iraq, including both humanitarian aid and development assistance aimed primarily at eliminating the fundamental causes of instability and radicalization. At the same time while demonstrating its commitment to develop cooperation with both government agencies and non-governmental organizations, the EU clearly prefers to assist Iraq through international organizations, rather than directly. Although the EU's ability to influence Baghdad remains limited, compared to that of the US and regional actors, the European Union is perceived in Iraq as a neutral player and this might facilitate the achievement of its policy objectives. However, taking into account such factors as a high level of corruption in Iraq, substantial resources for reconstruction already available for the country, as well as Brussels' focus on Syria, the scope of the EU's further involvement in Iraq remains unclear.