Suchergebnisse

The reform of the railways in the EU was followed by strengthening of the position of the industry in the transport market, and at the same time by the necessary support rendered to rail companies that perform important social functions. In this context, the authors distinguish the activities of the committee for social dialogue in the railway transport, which, in cooperation with the European Commission carries out projects and prepares decisions designed to protect the interests of staff, labor rights of wage earners, and simultaneously preserves the opportunity for mutually beneficial cooperation between trade unions, businesses and governments. ; Одним из условий реформ на железных дорогах в странах ЕС стали укрепление позиций отрасли на рынке перевозок, обязательность поддержки компаний, выполняющих социально значимые функции. В этом контексте авторы статьи выделяют деятельность комитета социального диалога на железнодорожном транспорте, который во взаимодействии с Еврокомиссией осуществляет проекты и готовит решения, призванные защищать интересы персонала, трудовые права наёмных работников, и одновременно сохраняет возможность для взаимовыгодного сотрудничества профсоюзов, бизнеса и государства.

The European Union (EU) is a complex political system whose institutional framework encompasses representatives of European citizens, member states, »eurobureaucracy « (Commission and agencies), national parliamentarians and members of public administrations. Such a complex framework is a by-product of reforms the EU has gone through in order to include stakeholders in its decision- making process, with the goal of delivering democratically adopted rules that have legitimacy. The democratic deficit is a sign that the EU lacks full legitimacy. The paper aims to show that comitology system is a source of democratic deficit. It shows the reasons why national public administrations got involved in the decision-making process, and the role they have in overseeing the implementation of adopted measures. The paper also gives the reasons why comitology is a threat to democratic accountability, pointing to the Council as the main source of that threat. Finally, it also suggests ways of reducing the democratic deficit by empowering the representatives of national public administrations to work transparently. ; Europska unija je složen politički sustav čiji institucionalni okvir obuhvaća predstavnike građana Unije i država članica, »eurobirokraciju« putem Europske komisije i raznih agencija, članove nacionalnih parlamenata, kao i službenike javnih uprava država članica. Ovako složeno institucionalno uređenje nusproizvod je stalnih reformi koje Unija provodi kako bi u proces odlučivanja uključila što veći broj dionika, s ciljem da se propisi donose na demokratski način i imaju legitimitet u očima njezinih građana. Demokratski deficit EU znak je da joj nedostaje puni legitimitet koji joj bi trebali dati vlastiti građani. Analizira se netransparentnost pojedinih dijelova procesa odlučivanja, tzv. sustava komitologije, koja je jedan od uzroka demokratskog deficita. Pokazuje se zašto su se javne uprave država članica umiješale u proces odlučivanja na razini EU te uloga koju one imaju pri izradi nacrta propisa i primjeni donesenih mjera, kao i pri nadzoru ispravnog provođenja usvojenih propisa u državama članicama. Objašnjava se razloge radi kojih je komitologija, u svojem današnjem obliku, prijetnja demokratskoj odgovornosti Unije, pokazujući da je trenutačni način rada Europskog vijeća glavni izvor te prijetnje. Navode se mogući načini smanjivanja demokratskog deficita, ne tako da se javne uprave država članica EU isključe iz odlučivanja, već tako da se njihovim predstavnicima omogući transparentan rad.

The decisions of institutions responsible for constitutional control are final and not subject to appeal. Constitutional Courts act independently, and the intervention of other state institutions into their activity is strictly forbidden. They are the supreme guardians of constitutions, but it may appear that nobody is guarding the constitutional courts themselves. Therefore, the Juvenal's quotation in the title of the article indicates the aim to look for some external factors that could influence the development of constitutional jurisprudence, and those which may be considered as certain bounds in regards to the liberty of the judicial construction of constitutional norms. Universal constitutional values, such as the rule of law, democracy, independence or the protection of human rights, are not only enshrined in national constitutions, but also in legal acts adopted at the international level. There are no doubts today concerning the influence of binding international and European legal acts and the respective court judgments regarding the development of constitutional jurisprudence, especially when it has been foreseen by the Constitution itself. The constitutional doctrine has continues to evolve in a direction favourable to international law. However, along with the legally binding sources of international law, there are also soft law norms, adopted in the constitutional field by international organizations or their structures. These norms begin to receive to receive some attention in the rulings of Constitutional Courts, and have the potential to gain more and more significant meaning in the nearest future. The The European Commission for Democracy through Law" (also know as Venice Commission) is the best-known international institution acting in the field of constitutional law. Created as a consultative body to the Council of Europe, the Venice Commission adopts recommendations to the member states, including resolutions, studies and opinions, dealing with different issues of constitutional law. These acts are not legally binding, but knowing that they contain references to the protection of human rights, the promotion of the rule of law and democracy and are based on universally recognized constitutional values, constituting common European constitutional heritage, they could become effective instrumen in ensuring the quality of constitutional jurisprudence and the standard for resolving constitutional justice cases. The jurisprudence of the latter years of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Lithuania has proven that in certain cases, soft law norms are indispensable in order to illustrate or to support a chosen solution and the argumentation of the case.

The decisions of institutions responsible for constitutional control are final and not subject to appeal. Constitutional Courts act independently, and the intervention of other state institutions into their activity is strictly forbidden. They are the supreme guardians of constitutions, but it may appear that nobody is guarding the constitutional courts themselves. Therefore, the Juvenal's quotation in the title of the article indicates the aim to look for some external factors that could influence the development of constitutional jurisprudence, and those which may be considered as certain bounds in regards to the liberty of the judicial construction of constitutional norms. Universal constitutional values, such as the rule of law, democracy, independence or the protection of human rights, are not only enshrined in national constitutions, but also in legal acts adopted at the international level. There are no doubts today concerning the influence of binding international and European legal acts and the respective court judgments regarding the development of constitutional jurisprudence, especially when it has been foreseen by the Constitution itself. The constitutional doctrine has continues to evolve in a direction favourable to international law. However, along with the legally binding sources of international law, there are also soft law norms, adopted in the constitutional field by international organizations or their structures. These norms begin to receive to receive some attention in the rulings of Constitutional Courts, and have the potential to gain more and more significant meaning in the nearest future. The The European Commission for Democracy through Law" (also know as Venice Commission) is the best-known international institution acting in the field of constitutional law. Created as a consultative body to the Council of Europe, the Venice Commission adopts recommendations to the member states, including resolutions, studies and opinions, dealing with different issues of constitutional law. These acts are not legally binding, but knowing that they contain references to the protection of human rights, the promotion of the rule of law and democracy and are based on universally recognized constitutional values, constituting common European constitutional heritage, they could become effective instrumen in ensuring the quality of constitutional jurisprudence and the standard for resolving constitutional justice cases. The jurisprudence of the latter years of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Lithuania has proven that in certain cases, soft law norms are indispensable in order to illustrate or to support a chosen solution and the argumentation of the case.

Do local and regional authorities have an influence on texts adopted in ordinary legislative procedure at European level? Focusing on energy and waste and adopting a definition of influence as the extent to which authorities are taken into account in the successive drafts, the thesis follows the way in which this type of actors mobilizes and tries to influence the Community legislative process throughout its development (from its preparation within the European Commission to trilogues and the adoption of texts). To do so, it relies on a methodology centered on "text writers" and combining process-tracing, attributed influence and textual analysis.Our research shows that, depending on the case at stake, local and regional authorities can be more or less influential, at all levels of the legislative process, and are not necessarily supported by the Commission or the Parliament as an institution. If certain political groups, segments of the Commission or Member States seem more inclined to give them their support depending on the issues (with variability including within each sector), the authorities are actually faced with two obstacles: the interpretation of the principle of subsidiarity by legislators and the objective of a competitive European internal market.In cases where we find, despite of these obstacles, a strong influence of local and regional authorities, we identify specific formulations in legislative texts that make it possible to circumvent these obstacles, and which we have called "editorial parries". We highlight two types of them in our case studies: "parries by mixing", which consist in integrating local and regional authorities into a larger private category, and "parries by invisibizing", which avoid mentioning authorities and their role. These "editorial parries" suggest that local and regional authorities enjoy a step-by-step and relatively low profile influence in the texts, but still real ; Les collectivités territoriales ont-elles une influence sur les textes adoptés en procédure ...

The European laws surveilling surveillance may possibly soon become more complex or more uncertain, depending on developments during the next 12-36 months.On the 25th January 2012 the European Commission published two, not one, proposals for new legislation in the ever-growing field of privacy and data protection. One of these two proposals is the mildly-named but potent "Regulation" covering most sectors of activity except for the law enforcement and criminal justice sectors which are proposed to be governed by a separate Directive. Both the Article 29 Working Party and the European Data Protection Supervisor in March 2012 overall welcomed the Draft Regulation, whereas they strongly criticised the Draft Directive which is regarded as being greatly inferior to the Draft Regulation. This level of criticism begs a number of important questions: why is the police and justice sector being handled differently and separately from other sectors? Why does the current (1995) data protection directive allegedly lead to fragmentation to the extent that in 2012 the Commission proposes a Regulation to replace it yet at the same time, almost in the same breath, in 2012 and still in 2013, it is proposing that the Police and Criminal Justice sector be regulated by a Directive? Would the new Directive on Police use of personal data not produce the same level of fragmentation as the old 1995 Directive did in other sectors? Is this not inconsistent? This paper examines whether these new laws are fit-for-purpose by first laying out the realities that the law must presumably set out to regulate. It then examines the problems with the logic and indeed the credibility of some answers provided publicly by the European Commission. After dealing with the logical inconsistencies implicit in the current approach, the paper questions the usefulness of the Draft Directive from a substantive point of view and especially in the wake of the Snowden revelations about the modalities of surveillance being employed world-wide. Utilising summary findings from the PUPIE project, this paper makes the point that, in fact, most of the principles of the Draft Directive are already provided for in the laws of many EU member states so the degree of legislative innovation being proposed is questionable, the harmonization benefits may be minimal, while the allegedly undesirable fragmentation will remain. The paper then traces how, since May 2013, the European debate on data protection was overtaken by,and now benefits from, the revelations made by Edward Snowden. It demonstrates the relative legal impotence of the EU in such matters on account of the fact that matters of national security are reserved to national governments by virtue of Article 4 (2) of the EU Treaty. After analyzing the relevant developments to end October 2013 the paper concludes that the most suitable, and possibly - though not necessarily - the most likely option to European policy-makers is that of pushing for a new Council of Europe convention on Cyber-Security in an effort to balance the privacy and security interests inherent to a debate about surveillance.

Статья посвящена анализу дискуссии, развернувшейся в Европейском Союзе в связи с подготовкой реформы политики сплочения 2013 г. Анализируются ключевые предложения Европейской Комиссии и реакция на них правительств и региональных властей Великобритании, Германии, Испании, Италии и Франции. Обсуждение проекта Еврокомиссии выявило неготовность центральных и региональных элит к расширению полномочий наднациональных органов ЕС в сфере политики сплочения. Дискуссия выявила широкие расхождения в позициях региональных властей. Последние, будучи важными участниками реализации политики сплочения, не смогли оказать существенного воздействия на разработку реформы. ; Cohesion policy aimed at reducing disparities in the development of EU regions is one of the major EU policy areas which in the current financial perspective (2014 to 2020) accounts for about a third of the Union''s budget. This paper focuses on the preparations for the cohesion policy reform of 2013 which determined the substance and shape of the policy for 2014-2020. In particular, the positions of governments and regional authorities of France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK are analyzed. In November 2010 the European Commission put forward its suggestions concerning the reform of the cohesion policy. The key idea was a close link between the cohesion policy and "Europe 2020" strategy, the concept of EU''s economic development for 2010-2020 aimed at ensuring a "smart, sustainable and inclusive" growth of EU''s economy. It was suggested that a practice of signing partnership contracts between the Commission and member states should be introduced. The Commission put forward idea of earmarking a "performance reserve": 5% of cohesion policy''s budget was to be reserved as a reward to the countries and regions demonstrating the most progress in reaching the policy objectives. A new category of funding recipients was envisaged, that of "intermediate regions" with the per capita GDP from 75% to 90% of the EU average. The Commission''s suggestions were met with mixed responses of regional authorities and national governments. Many regions reacted with caution to the idea of making a close link between the cohesion policy and the "Europe 2020" strategy, underlining that the former''s main objective should remain the reduction of economic disparities. Most of the regions were wary about making contracts between the Commission and national governments, perceiving the risks of centralizing the cohesion policy. Many regions insisted on signing trilateral contracts, with regional governments participating on an equal footing. Most of the regions did not endorse the idea of the "performance reserve". The governments of the EU''s major member states voiced opposition to the EU-wide "performance reserve" which would in fact be tantamount to the expansion of the Commission''s prerogatives. Opinions divided on the introduction of a new category of funding recipients, "intermediate regions". Eventually, the European Commission''s major suggestions were approved and laid the foundation for the 2013 reform of the cohesion policy. The idea of the "performance reserve" was rejected. Regional authorities did not obtain a direct access to concluding contracts with the Commission. On the whole, the reactions of the national governments and regional authorities of the EU''s major states to the Commission''s suggestions demonstrated that central and regional elites were not ready for the expansion of EU supranational institutions'' competences in the domain of cohesion policy.

"Der Beitrag, fasst die Ergebnisse ebenso wie die Nichtergebnisse von Sozialdialogen auf Branchenebene zusammen. Dabei werden zwei Entwicklungsphasen unterschieden: Bis 1998, fanden Sozialdialoge innerhalb etablierter Rahmenbedingungen statt, ohne jedoch zu weitreichenden, d.h. bindenden Ergebnissen zu, führen (Kap.2). Ende 1998 schaffte die Kommission diese alten, heterogenen Strukturen ab und, führte neue, vereinheitlichte ein. Das Ziel dieser prozeduralen Restrukturierung lag in der Vergrößerung der Zahl sowie Verbesserung der Qualität sowie der stärkeren Fokussierung auf Arbeitsmarkt- und Beschäftigungsprobleme (Kap. 3). Die entscheidende Frage ist, ob diese politischen Hoffnungen tatsächlich eintreten. Erhebliche, aktuelle Probleme werden sowohl durch die unterschiedlichen Interessen der korporativen Akteure (Kap. 4) als auch durch Fragen der prozeduralen Strukturierung (Kap.5) verursacht. Schließlich erfolgt ein Ausblick auf die jüngste offizielle Sicht der Kommission sowie auf mögliche Beiträge sektoraler Sozialdialoge zur Entwicklung europäischer Arbeitsbeziehungen (Kap. 6)." (Autorenreferat)

The EC Consumer Law Compendium presents the results of a wide-ranging study prepared for the European Commission. This Compendium provides the reader with the necessary information for conductiong pan-European cross-border consumer transactins ... (Quelle: Text Verlagseinband / Verlag)

This report presents a European-wide case study for assessing EU Member State's readiness for Open Access (OA) policy implementation – and specifically for the European Commission H2020 policy. Aspects like the availability of OA infrastructure, the awareness of OA and the availability of harmonised working procedures and coordination mechanisms are analysed, providing the means to assess the situation of specific countries.

Colloque avec actes et comité de lecture. Internationale. ; International audience ; Within the European Union, road transport is responsible for about 20% of all CO2 emissions. To reduce these gas emissions, the European Union is introducing stringent standards defining the acceptable limits for exhaust emission of new vehicles sold in EU member states. Thus, transport industries have to develop lightweight vehicles maintaining quality and safety in order to comply with these stringent gas emission regulations. Composites are offering the possibility to build lightweight structures with an important capacity of energy absorption, but they are still relatively new material. Their mechanical behavior is not fully understood and mastered, and manufacturing processes remain principally manual work and simulations as well as monitoring systems have to be adapted for composites. As composites appear to be promising materials for transport sectors, the European Commission supported the MADMAX project (Advanced material Textiles for Reinforced Structures for Complex Lightweight Applications) which contributes to the development of a European ?Know-How? platform and database for excellence in high performing fibers and resins, textile reinforcing structures and sensor monitoring composite structures, fostering the transfer of scientific results to civil transport markets and especially to SME's. The objective of the MADMAX project was to organize a cluster of private and academic laboratories supported by key manufacturers from transport sectors and to investigate the possibility of benchmarking specific composites. The main outcomes of this project will be presented. Raw materials, textile reinforcement structures, characterization methods, modelling methods for manufacturing processes and service life simulations, manufacturing processes, joining techniques, and structural health monitoring of composites were the issues covered by the project.