In this paper the authors examine the dynamics of security relations of the three key security actors in the Euro-Atlantic area - NATO, Russia, and the European Union. Based on their findings, and using a comparative analysis of the actors' doctrinal and strategic documents, as well as their observations of contemporary challenges, risks and threats, the authors discuss if, and to what extent, their productive security cooperation is possible, or their positions are opposed in such a way that in short and medium terms only disputes or less or more open conflicts are likely to be expected between them. This leads to a conclusion that a majority of recognized security challenges, risks and threats are shared, as well as that these actors see each other not only as competitors but also as partners in the struggle against those challenges, risks and threats, which opens possibilities of security cooperation.
In June 2010 the European Council adopted the Commission's proposal on the Strategy for employment and growth 'Europe 2020'. Responding to criticism that the previous Lisbon strategy did not succeed, among other reasons, because of its one-sided focus on economic growth and employment, the Commission lays out three mutually reinforcing priorities: smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. The text focuses on new strategic directions, priorities, sector initiatives and Integrated Guidelines in the area of economic end employment policies. Special attention was given to the dynamics of implementation, the tasks of the Union and obligations of the member states in the realisation of the Headline Targets. The importance of ecological and social components was stressed as having an important role in overcoming discovered difficulties and fulfillment of the envisioned goals during the next decade. 'Europe 2020' is the basis for national reform programs which will contain concrete measures to implement the strategy. The Commission has a control function, while the Council will once a year present an assessment of the progress the member states and the Union have achieved. The strategy has a special place in the process of association of new member states and in the assessment of the accomplished progress.
Apart from the former EFTA members (Iceland, Lichtenstein, Norway and Switzerland) and afew former republics of the Soviet Union (Bjelorussia, Moldova and Ukraina) the countries ofthe Western Balkans are the only European states outside of the European Union. They are verykeen to join the Union. The Balkans have always been the poorest part of Europe. The appeal ofthe wealthy European Union is apparent. Access to the largest market in the world, investment,modern technologies and generous regional funds give a hope that by joining the EU the WesternBalkans countries will join the rich club. At the moment performance of the Western Balkancountries does not guarantee that they will become rich by joining the European Union. Theircurrent production and trade structure makes it likely that the Western Balkan countries will belocked in inter-industry trade in which they will export products of low and medium technologicaland developmental level and import products of high technological and developmental level. Thismight lead to divergence rather than convergence between them and the European Union. Inother to overcome this problem the Western Balkan countries need to conduct radical reformsin the public sector, fiscal policy, industrial trade and investment policy. They also need to tacklecorruption, simplify administrative procedure, strenghten property rights and the lawful state. Allthis with the aim to change economic structure and shift from achievements of the second andthird to fourth technological revolution. Only if these reforms are successfuly implemented theWestern Balkan countries can hope to avoid the Greek scenario and possibly experience the Irishscenario.
The Republic of Serbia has already missed several historical chances to join the European Union but is currently in a a position to define and accelerate the process leading to a united Europe, and therefore confirming that it historically, economically, regionally and culturally belongs to the European family of nations. Accession to the EU is one of the most important goals of modern Serbia which realization Serbia will become an organized state, gain political stability and provide intensive economic development. Defining the development strategy of Serbia to join European Union includes the necessary political conditions (stability of democracy and its institutions, respect for fundamental human and minority rights), economic conditions (the existence of a functioning market economy that is able to withstand the pressure of competition in the internal market of the European Union) as well as administrative requirements (the ability of future members to take and apply the primary and secondary EU legislation and to implement the aims of political, economic and monetary union). Joining single market of the European Union opens up opportunities for marketing of domestic products and services, where it should be noted that the export of our companies in the EU amounts to over 50% of total domestic exports. This proves that the European Union is traditionally the most important export market for Serbia. Therefore, the integration of Serbia into the European Union is viewed as the headquarters of growth of the Serbian economy through the growth of export of domestic products to the EU market. The most positive effects are measurable in the area of agriculture, where our country has a surplus in agricultural trade with the EU. Serbia has preferential status for 90% of agricultural products, which should be taken advantage of, so that agrarian reform is going in the direction of maximum increase in production until joining the EU. There are also great chances in car industry, where most of the commercial reorientation is done under the auspices of the European Agreement.
International police and other cooperation is a necessity of the modern world and imperative for the survival of human civilization. The goal of cooperation is that states and the international community unite in opposing crime as the greatest peacetime evil in the world. This is particularly in relation to organized crime, terrorism, and corruption and other most serious forms of crime in contemporary society. Cooperation takes place at the bilateral, regional and multilateral levels. Bilateral cooperation mainly has a trans-border character of neighboring countries, while the regional cooperation between states within certain areas such as the SEE region (Western Balkan) or Europe (e.g. Europol). Multilateral cooperation is mainly on a broader level, e.g. in the field of combating terrorism or through universal organizations (e.g. Interpol). International police cooperation in Europe has a long tradition. One part takes place today in this area through the OSCE, with the caveat that this is a global organization that deals with security issues. The Council of Europe is the next organization through which co-operation began in the past and is partly carried out to this day, given that it brings all European countries together (except Belarus). Cooperation is more intensive still throughout the European Union, its forerunners, the current forms of the organization and present mechanisms (EAW- European surrender and arrest warrant).53 The cooperation in the EU, that takes place through Europol as a specialized agency of the Union is especially current, but with minimal operational competencies. In the SEE region, a significant cooperation between countries of the former Yugoslavia and countries in its neighborhood has been achieved. This cooperation is not only based on bilateral and multilateral acts, but primarily regional documents of which the most important are the International Convention on Police Cooperation in SEE and SELEC Convention. According to these and other acts, all the countries in the region have taken part in regional cooperation, since the fight against crime is the common interest of all. This applies in particular to organized crime, terrorism, corruption and other most serious forms of crime. Extremely important shapes, forms and mechanisms of international police cooperation are: exchange of information, joint investigation teams, joint operational actions, liaison officers, contact points, regional centers for police and customs cooperation, joint police stations and others. To recap, international police cooperation in the world today is an expression of anti-criminal solidarity between states and its prospects are clear, because the danger of crime is global and requires a harmonized response at the international level.
When in 2007, after the rejection of the Constitution for Europe in France and the Netherlands, European politicians defined their mandate to work on the Reform Treaty, they explicitly promised that 'the constitutional concept is . abandoned' and that 'the Treaty of European Union and Treaty on Functioning of the Union will not have a constitutional character.' In its Maastricht and Lisbon decisions, the German Federal Constitutional Court concluded that the European Union did not have a constitution since it did not have demos. The main purpose of this article is to prove the opposite. Accepting Weiler's argumentation that the EU is a political messianic venture par excellence, the author claims that, in addition to pursuing messianic goals, Europe's political elite has for a long time been streaming to root Political Messianism into democracy and position the EU in the global world. The main vehicle to transform the Community/Union from an international to a constitutional legal order has been constitutionalism. Starting from the French revolutionary Declaration, which declared civil rights and in Article 16 proclaimed 'a society in which the observance of the law is not assured, nor the separation of powers defined, has no constitution at all,' the author has showed that the Union has an antirevolutionary, uncodified and evolutive constitution, whose elements are to be found in the Lisbon Treaty and its related documents, the jurisprudence of the European Court of Justice, and to some extent in the constitutional orders of the Member States. The European constitution does not mirror a national constitution in the sense that it is attributable to the people, nor it is a revolutionary product aimed at limiting the government in the name of individual freedom. It is a rule of law-oriented type of constitution, born in the process of constitutionalization and aimed at submitting public power to law on the Union level. From the perspective of modern constitutionalism, the quality of this constitution is a matter of concern, since it has managed to connect the rule of law with the protection of human rights, but has failed to do the same with regard to democracy. Despite some efforts to entrench the democratic principle in the Lisbon Treaty, the present crisis in the Union is to a great extent the result of this failure. The fact that democratic defects at the Union level appear less visible when pitted against the state of affairs in national constitutional systems cannot mitigate this failure. Yet, assuming that the EU will survive the present crisis and having in mind that the Union is 'work in progress', the issue which still remains open is whether the future efforts to eliminate the defects of the European Constitution should be tied to traditional ways of thinking about democratic accountability within nation states, or one should stop thinking in terms of a Westphalian nation-state, and accept that transnational systems can provide a cure for democratic failings in ways that differ from traditional postulates of democracy.
This paper show why the standardization of administrative procedure is important for the state legal system that, in the last two decades, the administrative procedure codes were adopted in almost all of the European states. Afterwards author analyzed main driving forces for development of administrative procedural law at the level of the European Union and the Council of Europe. The most important legal sources of European administrative procedural law (basic standards, principles, recommendations and guidelines in this area) are concisely presented but it is clearly indicated that there are certain ambiguities, that these sources don't apply equally to all institutions of the Union, and that they still don't make finished, complete and forever given system that can be automatically transferred to jurisprudence of the member states and candidate countries. Moreover, often administrative process laws of the member states contain rules that are not existing in this kind of regulation at European Union level and that is why the process of adopting the first European Union general law on administrative procedure was initiated, which would further improve the standards of European administrative process in general. When it comes to the general administrative procedure of the Republic of Serbia it has been shown that in spite of the strategic orientation towards the reform of the Law on Administrative Procedure expressed in numerous strategies, our executive authorities in this area have not yet moved beyond the development of the third version of the Draft Law on General administrative Procedure which was afterward adopted by the Government as the Bill. In his final remarks the author concludes stating that the largest number of European standards of administrative process are included in the final version of the Draft, but without eliminating the shortcomings of the existing Law, and without normative adjusting to the circumstances in which the Serbian administration operates, and with unnecessary abandonment of some solutions that have proved to be right in the decades-long practice of administrative authorities.
The main objective of this paper is to determine the level of relevance of the economic development and the level of pollution of thirteen states that joined the European Union (EU) in the last three enlargement rounds (2004, 2007, and 2013), with the length of transitional periods, i.e. the number of regulations that have agreed transitional periods. The initial assumption is that the level of economic development of countries joining the EU and the level of pollution are affecting the length of transitional periods and the number of regulations that are agreed upon transitional periods. Accordingly, the paper points to the level of economic development (measured by GDP) and the level of pollution (emissions measured by CO2/pc and CO2/gdp). All the states are grouped into five regional groups (Mediterranean, Central Europe, the Baltics, South-East Europe and the member states of the former Yugoslavia) . Separate part of the paper analyzes in detail the types of regulations relating to the agreed transitional periods, and the number and length of transitional periods that are contracted by the states of the five groups. For the analysis we used the transitional periods in the field of energy, environment and transport, given their potential importance for CO2 emissions. The final part of the paper analyses perceived relevance between the level of economic development, levels of pollution, the length of transitional periods and the number of regulations that are agreed upon transitional periods.
In his first interview to Croatian media after a long period of silence, in October 1989 the leader of the newly formed Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), Franjo Tudjman, described himself as 'a Croat man, Marxist, Revolutionary and Historian'. Why did he use concepts such as 'Marxist' and 'Revolutionary' at the time when elsewhere in Central and Eastern Europe these concepts became politically incorrect and unpopular? In this article we argue that Tudjman's views on self-determination and secession of Croatia from Yugoslavia were driven by life-long commitment to Leninism and (especially when it comes to the 'national question') Stalinism. When he reappeared in Croatian politics in 1989, Tudjman used the Leninist - not Wilsonian - concept of 'self-determination', which in Lenin's and Stalin's interpretation includes the 'right to secession'. This position enabled him to form an unusual - but logical - coalition with former Communists who were at the same time also nationalists, as well as with anti-Communist separatists. The author analyses the link between Tudjman's politics in the 1990s and Leninist-Stalinist principles of the 'right to self-determination' and 'right to secession'. Adapted from the source document.