Suchergebnisse

South-Eastern European (SEE) countries have recently engaged in a regional integration process, through the establishment of free trade agreements between themselves and with the European Union (EU). This study evaluates the impact of this process on trade and firm performance. Three complementary approaches are used. The first consists in evaluating the degree of trade integration of SEE countries and determining their trade potential with their main partners, i.e. themselves and the EU. The second approach tries to evaluate the evolution of tariffs and nontariffs barriers, faced by SEE countries and estimate their effects on manufactured trade. The third part investigates the impact of trade liberalization on performance of firms in SEE. In particular, we are interested in what extent foreign trade and foreign direct investment contributed to improvements in firm performance. Several interesting results emerge from this study. Concerning our first approach, we find three results. First,Western Balkan countries have reached their trade potential for almost all sectors while Eastern Balkan countries have outreached them. One can therefore expect an increase of trade flows between the Western Balkans and the EU. Second, it seems that preferential trade agreements between SEE countries will have a limited impact on their mutual trade since their trade potentials are already reached. Third, all SEE countries' trade is below its potential with the rest of the world. Concerning our second approach, we find that exports are increasing in all sectors during the period 1996-2000, while bilateral tariffs are decreasing. However, this liberalization process exhibits small effects on trade. On the other hand, we find that nontariff barriers are increasing during the period. Trade liberalization should not be treated as exogenous (Trefler, 1993). Domestic firms, competiting with Balkan exporters, may have increased their lobbying activity for greater protection. As a result, NTBs increase and hurt exports of Balkan countries. In that respect, we find large estimates of NTBs on exports of manufactured goods. Concerning our third approach, we do not find a general pattern of uniformly significant impact of extensive trade flows on individual firm's TFP growth. Specifically, only in Romania and Slovenia, higher propensity to export to advanced markets (EU-15, rest of OECD countries) has a larger impact on TFP growth than exporting to less advanced markets such as new EU members and countries of former Yugoslavia. The role of imports follows a similar path as exporting. Importing from the advanced countries is important for firms in Romania. At the same time, for firms in Romania and Macedonia importing from countries of former Yugoslavia provides a dominating learning effect. For other countries in our sample no learning effects from exporting to and importing from individual geographic regions could be found. Thus, one cannot imply that liberalization of bilateral trade within the region of SEE or with the other regions will have uniformly significant impact on individual firm's performance, but in some of the countries analysed trade liberalization might be an important engine of firms' productivity growth. Our results also indicate some selection process in FDI decisions by parent foreign companies. Foreign parent companies seem to select smaller firms in SEE as well as least productive, less capital and skill intensive firms. However, we find contrasting results on the impact on foreign ownership on TFP growth. Three countries (Bosnia, Croatia and Slovenia) experience faster TFP growth in foreign owned firms. In Romania, in contrast we find faster TFP growth in domestic owned firms, while in Bulgaria no significant differences have been found. However, one can expect that after restructuring these firms would improve their TFP at a much faster rate than purely domestic owned firms.

There has been a widely accepted belief that employment growth is fundamental in the fight against poverty and social exclusion. The existence of working poverty proves that even if employment growth still represents the best way to avoid poverty risk it is not always enough, actions being needed to create not only more jobs, but also better jobs. The aim of this paper is to highlight the main causes and mechanism of working poverty in the EU countries, in the recent economic crisis and recovery period (2007–2012), in order to identify some possible measures that need to be taken so that in-work poverty reduces. The comparative analysis shows that the phenomenon of working poverty has been growing in sixteen EU countries and the prevalence of in-work poverty varies significantly across these countries. The correlation and regression analysis results suggest that gaps in the national human and economic development can be explained by disparities in working poverty rate. Vulnerable and precarious employment represents an important factor behind the high level of working poverty from the EU countries in the analysed period. By taking into consideration the cumulative influence of multiple socio-economic variables, for the 2007–2012 period, results of principal components analysis and cluster analysis highlight that there are common features and differences between the EU Member States according to their working poverty, employment performances, efficiency of welfare state system and the level of human and economic development. The findings of this study can be useful for policy makers in order to reduce the phenomenon of working poverty. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.ee.25.4.6339

This report provides a detailed insight in the official control activities performed by EU Member States, Iceland and Norway. Overall, 97.2% of the 84,341 samples analysed in 2015 were free of quantifiable residues or contained residues within the legally permitted levels. Based on the analytical results provided by the reporting countries, a detailed data analysis was performed regarding pesticide occurrence in the most important food products consumed and the dietary risk related to the exposure of European consumers to pesticide residues. Moreover, the data were analysed with view to identify pesticides and food products that exceeded the legal limits. It also contains the findings on pesticide residues in imported food, organic products, baby food as well as results for animal products. Based on the analysis of the 2015 pesticide monitoring results, EFSA derived a number of recommendations to increase the efficiency of the European control systems to ensure a high level of consumer protection.

In May 2011, the Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance, the Université Catholique de Louvain and the Tax Institute of the University of Liège convened a conference in the Palais des Académies in Brussels to discuss basic topics of European tax law. Starting from the fact that the judicature of the European Court of Justice regarding the impact of the fundamental freedoms on the tax systems of the Member States is largely built on a non-discrimination approach, renowned experts from all over Europe were invited to present their views on further reaching aspects of the Internal Market and its consequences for the validity of national tax provisions. The overarching goal was to flesh out to what extent a substantive "allocation of taxing powers" within the European Union is on its way to a convincing overall framework. We were happy that many high-level speakers and further participants joined us for two days, sharing their views and proposals for the future development of this area. This book contains enlarged and updated versions of the speeches delivered on that occasion.

In May 2011, the Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance, the Université Catholique de Louvain and the Tax Institute of the University of Liège convened a conference in the Palais des Académies in Brussels to discuss basic topics of European tax law. Starting from the fact that the judicature of the European Court of Justice regarding the impact of the fundamental freedoms on the tax systems of the Member States is largely built on a non-discrimination approach, renowned experts from all over Europe were invited to present their views on further reaching aspects of the Internal Market and its consequences for the validity of national tax provisions. The overarching goal was to flesh out to what extent a substantive "allocation of taxing powers" within the European Union is on its way to a convincing overall framework. We were happy that many high-level speakers and further participants joined us for two days, sharing their views and proposals for the future development of this area. This book contains enlarged and updated versions of the speeches delivered on that occasion.

Defence date: 10 December 2012 ; Examining Board: Professor Stefano Guzzini, Uppsala University and Danish Institute for International Affairs; Professor Friedrich V. Kratochwil, formely EUI (Supervisor); Professor Ulrich Krotz, RSCA/EUI; Professor Antje Wiener, Hamburg University. ; First made available online on 24 November 2015. ; The European Union (EU) turns increasingly to negative sanctions - a classical tool of international relations and the sharpest expression of the EU's common foreign and security policy (CFSP) - in response to a variety of norm violations in world politics. This thesis investigates how the EU positions itself and receives a position on the world scene by using sanctions. Regardless of whether sanctions successfully induce target change or not, they signal distance to some actors and proximity to others. In recognition of sanctions' deeply relational character beyond the sender-target polarity, the thesis juxtaposes the EU's self-understandings with the perceptions of a significant bystander: the African Union (AU). The thesis exposes patterns of disagreement and consensus as concerns logics of action, autonomy and volume of the sanctions policy, as well as policy linkages between sanctions and other external actions. It combines qualitative and quantitative analysis of European Parliament debates on sanctions between 1999 and 2012 with scrutiny of official documents and semi-structured interviews at the AU headquarters in Addis Ababa. The analysis reveals that self-oriented justifications dominate EU discourse on sanctions. Policymakers are concerned with how to successfully inflict harm on the targets, but mechanisms for making targets change are discussed only exceptionally. Instead, proponents and critics reason about sanctions in terms of the good or bad they do to the EU as a sender, and in particular to the Union's credibility as an international actor. This thesis disputes the artificial separation between material and symbolic types of sanctions, to instead demonstrate the need to distinguish between primarily self-oriented and primarily target-oriented sanctions. While the AU draws on the European experience in institution building and has high esteem of the EU's resource capacity, it favours ideational autonomy in its own sanctions doctrine against unconstitutional changes of government. AU perceptions show that the EU has a credibility deficit as an external sender of sanctions. Deep-rooted historical impressions of Europe subsist and are strongly associated with the former colonial powers. The EU's use of sanctions seems to add to these impressions rather than to challenge them.

Continuing our general description of the activities of the Central Tracing Agency at the headquarters of the ICRC at Geneva, we would point out that requests for information concerning military personnel and civilians of East European origin, missing during the course of the Second World War continue to reach Geneva in fairly large numbers.

Abstract The political and financial investments in the implementation of forensic DNA databases and the ethical issues related to their use and expansion justify inquiries into their performance and general utility. The main function of a forensic DNA database is to produce matches between individuals and crime scene stains, which requires a constant input of individual profiles and crime scene stains. This is conditioned, among other factors, by the legislation, namely the criteria for inclusion of profiles and the periods of time and conditions for their retention and/or deletion. This article aims to provide an overview of the different legislative models for DNA databasing in Europe and ponder if wider inclusion criteria – and, consequently, database size – translates into more matches between profiles of crime scene stains and included individuals (performance ratio). The legislation governing forensic DNA databases in 22 countries in the European Union was analysed in order to propose a typology of two major groups of legislative criteria for inclusion/retention of profiles that can be classified as having either expansive effects or restrictive effects. We argue that expansive criteria for inclusion and retention of profiles do not necessarily translate into significant gains in output performance.

The political and financial investments in the implementation of forensic DNA databases and the ethical issues related to their use and expansion justify inquiries into their performance and general utility. The main function of a forensic DNA database is to produce matches between individuals and crime scene stains, which requires a constant input of individual profiles and crime scene stains. This is conditioned, among other factors, by the legislation, namely the criteria for inclusion of profiles and the periods of time and conditions for their retention and/or deletion. This article aims to provide an overview of the different legislative models for DNA databasing in Europe and ponder if wider inclusion criteria – and, consequently, database size – translates into more matches between profiles of crime scene stains and included individuals (performance ratio). The legislation governing forensic DNA databases in 22 countries in the European Union was analysed in order to propose a typology of two major groups of legislative criteria for inclusion/retention of profiles that can be classified as having either expansive effects or restrictive effects. We argue that expansive criteria for inclusion and retention of profiles do not necessarily translate into significant gains in output performance. ; MES -Ministry of Education and Science(SFRH/BPD/34143/2006) ...

The political and financial investments in the implementation of forensic DNA databases and the ethical issues related to their use and expansion justify inquiries into their performance and general utility. The main function of a forensic DNA database is to produce matches between individuals and crime scene stains, which requires a constant input of individual profiles and crime scene stains. This is conditioned, among other factors, by the legislation, namely the criteria for inclusion of profiles and the periods of time and conditions for their retention and/or deletion. This article aims to provide an overview of the different legislative models for DNA databasing in Europe and ponder if wider inclusion criteria – and, consequently, database size – translates into more matches between profiles of crime scene stains and included individuals (performance ratio). The legislation governing forensic DNA databases in 22 countries in the European Union was analysed in order to propose a typology of two major groups of legislative criteria for inclusion/retention of profiles that can be classified as having either expansive effects or restrictive effects. We argue that expansive criteria for inclusion and retention of profiles do not necessarily translate into significant gains in output performance.

The aim of this paper is to analyse main characteristics of the commodity trade between the Western Balkan countries and their major trading partner, the European Union, and the changes that occurred over the previous ten years, since the EU introduced autonomous trade preferences to the region. A ten-year period, from 2001 to 2010, is observed, and Eurostat import and export data at one and two digit SITC levels are used. Aggregate data for the Western Balkans and the EU 27 are observed, although certain comments related to individual WB countries, and also related to the EU's new member states, are made.

The article addresses the system of comitology and delegation in the European Union. It explores such issues like evolution of comitology, contemporary procedures of the control over the European Commission in the process of elaboration of implementing and delegated acts, preferences of legislators regarding control procedures, factors determining the final choice among these procedures. The article shows that the system is based on the "police patrol" model.Should we consider the comitology / delegation procedures as a mechanism of control or discussion (deliberation)? This question is of the greatest theoretical interest. The purpose of this article is to show based on the existing empirical studies, the actual preferences of EU institutions when choosing the procedures of comitology/delegation and the factors influencing the final decision. The article demonstrates that both prior to and after the Lisbon Treaty, the preferences of institutions in choosing procedures differ significantly and can be largely explained by the goal of maximizing their own influence. An empirical analysis of the results of the final choice of procedures demonstrates that the main factors that push toward stricter control procedures are institutional conflict and the complexity of the issue under discussion. These preferences and factors of the choice of procedures allow to conclude that the EU institutions consider the system of comitology and delegation primarily as a mechanism of control over the Commission in the logic of the principal-agent theory.