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ABSTRACT
This article analyzes the purpose of the action for failure to act under article 265 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). The statements are derived from the analysis of scientific literature, relevant legislation, practice of the European Union Court of Justice (CJEU) and the European Union General Court (EUGC). Useful information has also been obtained from the opinions of general advocates of the CJEU. The article of TFEU 265, which governs the action for failure to act, is very abstract. For this reason, a whole procedure under the article 265 TFEU was developed by the EU courts. The original purpose of the action for failure to act was to constitute whether European Union (EU) institution properly fulfilled its obligations under the EU legislation. However, in the course of case-law, a mere EU institution's express refusal to fulfill its duties became sufficient to constitute that the EU institution acted and therefore action for failure to act became devoid of purpose. This article analyzes whether the action for failure to act has lost its purpose and become an ineffective legal remedy in the system of judicial review in the EU. Additionally, the action for failure to act is compared to similar national actions.

The European Union has been the dominant trade partner of Western Balkan countries for a long time; however, China's trade and economic influence in the region is growing yearly, and its engagement in the region has intensified after the launch of the Belt and Road Initiative. Serbia is the region's most important strategic trading partner for the EU and China. This paper addressed the trade presence of the EU and China in Serbia, examined the trade position of the EU and China in Serbia, the intensity of their mutual foreign trade (TII index), and the trade competitiveness of Serbia's export in selected traded commodities (RCA1 index). The trade position of the EU in Serbia was confirmed as clearly more substantial than that of China, and trade intensity was high. However, China's trade position grew despite its trade exchange intensity, which was well below potential. However, the low values of Serbia's competitiveness index are a severe obstacle to the increase of Serbian exports and some persistent obstacles in the framework of export procedures. The growing passive trade balance in relations with China remains also disturbing.

Duff Cooper fell in love with France during his first visit to Paris in 1900 and he remained faithful to her for the rest of his life. The fact that Paris in 1900 was deeply Anglophobic, because of the Boer war, had no effect upon Cooper's feelings for the city. His affection for France was no fair-weather plant. It was deepened by the experience of nine months in the trenches in the Great War and was, thereafter, proof against all discouragements. As a young Foreign Office clerk in 1923 he did not join in the fashionable disparagement of France inspired by the French occupation of the Ruhr. As Minister of War from 1935 to 1937 he fought for the creation of a British army which would be large enough to play a continental role and later, as First Lord of the Admiralty, he was a leading advocate of Anglo-French co-operation. After his resignation in protest against the Munich agreement, Cooper spent his time fostering the idea of an Anglo-French alliance as the corner-stone of a European combination against Hitler's Germany. His love for France even survived the fall of France in June 1940 and, at a time when many francophiles were repenting of their former faith. Cooper renewed his pledges of devotion. Speaking on the wireless as Minister of Information on the eve of the Franco-German armistice, he declared his faith that France would rise again: 'This is not the first time that a great nation has been defeated and has recovered from defeat. They have fought with heroism against superior numbers and superior weapons; their losses have been terrible.' At the Ministry of Information Cooper was one of the earliest patrons of General de Gaulle and his Free French Movement. Given such a long history of Francophilia what could have been more natural than that he should have been appointed as Britain's first post-war ambassador to France. It was not, however, quite so simple as that.

Over the last decade in European Community politics the principle of subsidiarity has increased in significance as a political value in the debate between federalists, regionalists and sovereign nationalists. This significance culminated in a statement of policy, built around the principle, written into the Treaty of European Union. The statement was agreed on both sides of the political spectrum, not as a symbol of a new ideological convergence but on the basis of the belief, held by all, that the principle would serve their own aims. Clearly, this is not possible, and as a result, a useful political concept which promises so much in fact delivers little, remaining impotent in practical terms and of little consequence, as things presently stand, to future Community developments.

This article is based on an analysis of the treatment of the European Union in a sample of textbooks from Germany and England. Following contextual remarks about civic education (politische Bildung) in Germany and citizenship education in England and a review of young people's views, we demonstrate that textbooks in Germany and in England largely mirror the prevailing political climate in each country regarding Europe. At the same time, the analysis reveals a disparity between the perspectives presented by the textbooks and young people's views. The textbooks in Germany provide more detail and take a more open approach to Europe than those in England. Finally, we argue that the textbooks may be seen as contributing to a process of socialization rather than one of education when it comes to characterizations of Europe.

The subject of the research problem addressed in the article concerns the importance of institutional and legal (or, more broadly, political) factors of energy transition in the European Union. Following Aleh Cherp and his team, political factors are understood as state objectives, political interests and institutional capabilities and factors of other types. All of them, as a whole, enter into a relationship with other factors, such as socio-technical and techno-economic ones. Referring to F. W. Geels, the European Union can be defined as a kind of socio-technical regime (energy regime), responsive to internal or external threats or adverse events. The main purpose of the analysis is to present the relationship between the institutional and legal, socio-technical, and techno-economic factors. In order to specify the research problem, the research question has been posed of the extent to which institutional and legal factors affect energy transition in the European Union. To answer this question, the analysis relies on the theoretical aspects of energy transition studies, the institutional and legal approach and secondary statistical data.

How can we account for the persistence of exclusion of women from organizational power and leadership in trade unions in spite of their increasing proportion of the labour force and of trade union membership? For a while, often as part of revitalization strategies, trade unions have put in place extensive structural reforms to encourage gender equality, but in practice these do not result in gender proportionality in formal positions in unions. We have to seek for deeper explanations, and this article explores how at a more profound level cultures of exclusionary masculinity are strongly embedded especially in traditional unions and among traditional male leaderships. However, there is also increasing evidence of changing attitudes among younger and more diverse workers and trade unionists, those from different cultural and ethnic groups, migrant workers, men as well as women, as their experiences of increasingly precarious work align with patterns long established by women juggling family and part-time insecure work. An optimistic reading of these changes sees the possibilities for increasing inclusion and gender equity within trade unions.

The United States of Europe considers the post-WWII transition of Europe from a diverse and disparate continent to the economically integrated European Union of today. Initiated by the Benelux Customs Union, and later the European Coal and Steel Cooperation, the six-member European Economic Community was formed in 1957, becoming the EC in 1967, and finally the EU in 1992. This process of Europeanization reached its zenith in 1987 with the approval of the Single European act, creating a single market economy. This was followed in 1993 by the Maastricht Treaty, defining the intra-EU macro- and micro-economic parameters. The inauguration of a single common currency, the euro, on 1st January 1999 was a further innovative step, a process that has enabled the EU-27 to enjoy a competitive share of the world GDP and trade.

Not sufficiently harmonised national pension systems within the European Union distort the allocation of labour and endanger redistributive activities. This paper identifies the most decentralised level of harmonisation which guarantees efficient allocation and enables redistribution. For this, we build on theoretical results to evaluate the realised distribution of the legal power between the European Union and the Member States and the resulting level of harmonisation. We find that harmonisation is sub-optimally low. Binding rules guaranteed by the European Union are needed which means that the Member States have to concede more fundamental responsibilities to the European Union.

This collection of working papers stems from a workshop on 'Current issues on EMU and EBU: A Reflection', which was organised at UM Campus Brussels on 20 May 2019 ; As is well known, the European Union (EU)'s Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) relies on an asymmetric structure introduced in the Maastricht Treaty (1992). The fully integrated Monetary Union in whose framework euro area Member States have attributed exclusive competence to the EU exists next to an Economic Union in which Member States' economic policies are merely coordinated. This imbalance became particularly visible and problematic when the 2007 economic and financial crisis broke out. The need to strengthen the coordination among Member States' economic and fiscal policies, as well as the need to introduce harmonised banking prudential rules and a European Banking Union became particularly acute at that point. The crisis required the adoption of several reforms and the creation of new instruments to save the economy of Member States in difficulty, and beyond this, to ensure the survival of the euro.