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A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Both the United States and the European Union (EU) began providing trade preferences to eligible developing countries in the early 1970s. These trade preferences, which reduced tariffs and product quotas, are "nonreciprocal," meaning that beneficiaries need not reciprocate with lower tariffs for donor export countries. This report discusses (1) the volume of U.S. and EU nonreciprocal preferential trade, (2) the U.S. and EU approaches to nonreciprocal trade preferences, (3) the tariff preferences offered by the U.S. and EU nonreciprocal trade programs, and (4) the extent to which U.S. and EU program beneficiaries take advantage of the tariff preferences offered under the programs. GAO found that the volume of imports receiving preferential tariff rates under U.S. and EU nonreciprocal trade preference programs in 1999 represented a relatively small share of total U.S. and EU imports, at two percent ($18 billion) and six percent ($45 billion), respectively. The U.S. and EU approaches to nonreciprocal preferential trade have evolved in similar ways since their inception in the early 1970s. U.S. and EU programs have included increasingly more products, particularly to the poorest countries, and have, over time, relaxed customs requirements that specify where and how products can be made. Despite some program differences, the U.S. and EU nonreciprocal preference arrangements offer relatively similar tariff preferences on average. On the whole, EU programs cover more products than do U.S. programs, but U.S. beneficiary countries use more of their available tariff preferences than do EU beneficiaries."

In May 2014 Poland marked the tenth anniversary since the country's accession to the European Union. The accession was preceded by a long period of political action and negotiations between the Polish and the EU institutions. The process of integration was extremely complex. It covered almost all the necessary economic, legal and civil requirements that had to be met. The aim of the article is to present Poland's institutional framework created for efficient implementation of the process of accession. The considerations involved a special institutional method. The research resulted in identifying both the efficient and less efficient bodies participating in the process of integration.

This paper deals with the assumptions of realization of silver economy in the EU, regarding expected effects related to aging in Europe. Intention is to present differences in size of potential demand formation of population in old and new EU countries. We also examine differences in consumption on EU level as well as in consumption of households in a given age groups. Special attention is paid to Slovakia and main consumption constraints including income inequality in particular regions and among them. The supplemented aspects of technological changes and determinants of consumption with both economical and non-economical character are included. For potential demand analysis we used EU-SILC data and individual data from Social Insurance Agency in Slovakia. In crisis period, problems with economic growth and high level of unemployment rate together with stagnation of wages represent barriers for formation of potential demand. These factors could significantly entail lower levels of average pensions, which could be accompanied with changing consumer preferences, purchasing power, aggregate demand, employment and sectors of production. At the end of the paper we conclude that in the new EU member states there is only little space for real saturation of consumption by goods and services for older people in terms of the concept of silver economy. On the other hand, Germany, Austria, France, Mediterranean, Nordic and Benelux countries represent a significant consumer opportunity in terms of the potential demand of older people aged 50 years and over.

"Comitology: Controlling Everyday Rule-Making in the European Union" published on by Oxford University Press.

This paper examines the impact of the EU Cohesion Policy on the relative development of EU countries as well as on the development of NUTS-2 regions within member states. The main hypothesis is that the Cohesion Fund payments are reducing inequalities between member states, while failing to decrease the regional inequalities within member states in the European Union. The basic conclusion is that Cohesion funds should not be viewed as the only solution for the problem of regional inequalities in the EU, but rather as a complementary policy instrument to national regional policies. However, the problem of creating institutional capacity for the withdrawal of the Cohesion resources remains emphasized, especially in new member states with lower real GDP growth, in order to compete for projects of highest multiplicative effects on the economy.

Changes in tastes and preferences in importing countries as well as the need to keep the environment safe, especially in developed markets, has contributed to a rising trend in the demand for sanitary and phytosanitary measures for quality products. However, the stringency and the preponderance of these measures have effects on trade, particularly for the developing and least developed countries in Africa. The effects often influence the attainment of the development aspirations of these Africa countries, especially employment, poverty reduction and sustainable growth. To this end, this study investigates the export effects of the EU standards for Africa. It uses the two-step Helpman et al. (2008) extensive and intensive trade margins model for two high-value foods and two traditional products. The EU standard requirements for each product are called the 'hurdle to pass' before the product can gain access to the EU market. In all, 52 African countries are considered in an empirical analysis covering the period 1995 to 2012. The study finds that product standards for fish and cocoa are trade-enhancing at the extensive margins, but this is not the case at the intensive margins. However, the standards are trade-inhibiting at both the extensive and intensive margins of exports for vegetables, while the standards are trade-restrictive at the extensive margins and trade-enhancing at the intensive margins for coffee. Thus, the findings suggest that the impacts of standards on exports are commodity-specific due to the significant differences in the costs of compliance, the size of the exporting firms or countries, access to development assistance and the commodity-specific interests of countries. The study recommends development partnerships and alliance policies on the part of Africa, with the development of institutions that can improve the level of standard-compliance in all African exporting markets.

We compare three EU countries that have recently experienced substantial but very different reforms of their systems to support families with children: Austria, Spain and the United Kingdom. The structure of these systems is different: Austria gives emphasis to universal benefits, Spain to tax concessions and the United Kingdom to means-tested benefits. As a first step the paper compares the distributional implications of these three approaches. The recent reforms have reinforced these existing structures while increasing the amount of public resources directed towards children. The second step is to address the question whether the chosen strategies are the best for each country. What would have happened if instead of reinforcing the existing types of policies these countries had completely transformed the architecture of their systems in either of the other two directions? We use EUROMOD, the European tax-benefit microsimulation model that is designed for making cross-country comparisons and answering "what if" questions such as these to explore the effects of budget-neutral alternatives on the position of children in the income distribution as a whole, the proportions gaining and losing and the effects on child poverty. The three factors that can be distinguished – the level of spending, its structure, and the way it impacts in a particular national context – are all important to varying degrees.

Protests against coronavirus policies have occurred in all European countries. The intensity of protest varies strongly, however. We explain this variation by strategic choices that protest organizers make to maintain the protest movement. Specifically, we argue that protest organizers pay heed to the dynamics of the pandemic in their country: the number of protest events is higher when and where mortality rates are lower and containment policies are more stringent. At the same time, the number of protest events is influenced by political factors. Despite the fact that civil liberties facilitate trust in government, these two variables exert opposite effects: while higher trust in government and public administration reduces the number of protest events, stronger civil liberties increase the number of protest events. We find evidence for these hypotheses in an analysis of the number of monthly protest events based on information from ACLED, the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, in 28 European countries between March 2020 and August 2021.