The paper proposes an assessment of citizenship rules in European Union countries. First, it designs an analytical framework in order to evaluate the rules of political membership from a liberal-democratic perspective. Second, it develops a systematic comparative study of the citizenship rules of the 27 member states of the EU. I argue that a liberal-democratic conception of membership requires certain degrees of inclusiveness as well as exclusiveness. Moreover, liberal-democratic membership can be compatible with both major ideological views on membership –ethno-cultural and civic-territorial. It is not the ethnic or civic ideological conception of the polity that renders the rules of membership illiberal, but their unjustified scope.

This article investigates the competitiveness of agri-food exports of the European Union (EU-27) countries on global markets, using the revealed comparative advantage (B) index over the years 2000-11. Panel unit root tests, mobility index and the Kaplan-Meier survival rates of the B index are used. The majority of agri-food products in the EU-27 countries show a comparative disadvantage on global markets. The B indices of the EU-27 countries tend to convergence. Most of the old EU-15 Member States experienced a greater number of agri-food products having a longer duration of revealed comparative advantages than have most of the new EU-12 Member States. Among the most successful Member States in agri-food export competitiveness on global markets are the Netherlands, France and Spain. Adapted from the source document.

Terrorism is widely regarded as a public bad vis-à-vis security - a public good - affecting the subjective well-being of citizens. As studies have shown, citizens' risk-perceptions and risk-assessment are affected by large scale terrorist acts. Reported evidence shows that individuals are often willing to trade-off civil liberties for enhanced security particularly as a post-terrorist attack reaction as well as adopting more conservative views. Within this strand of the literature, this paper examines whether terrorism and in particular mass-casualty terrorist attacks affect citizens' political selfplacement on the left-right scale of the political spectrum. To this effect the Eurobarometer Surveys for twelve European Union countries are utilised and Ordered Probit models are employed for the period 1985-2010 with over 230 thousand observations used in the estimations. On balance, the findings reported herein seem to be pointing to a shift in respondents' self-positioning towards the right of the political spectrum.

The paper presents the results of two research studies carried out in 2003 and 2010 regarding the perception of Polish students on their employment opportunities in European Union. The results show some hope that the scale of young Polish people emigration for economic reasons will decrease; this is considered a positive phenomenon taking into consideration the development potential and the needs of the Polish economy.

The following article is a recent bibliographic review of supplementary healthcare policies in Brazil and EU. The main focus is analyzing healthcare policies for the private sector in Brazil, within the context of Brazil’s Unified National Health System (SUS), with the profile of the private sector in European Union countries, which have long had public systems integrated with social security. Our work is based on research conducted in the second decade of the 21st century. It is our understanding that comparing positions and progress made by the private sector, the growth of private and copayment health insurance and consequently the shrinking of public healthcare systems allows us to better understand the reach and meaning of those changes. We will initially analyze healthcare policies of Europe’s private sector. Then we will discuss the supplementary healthcare system in Brazil, which is the main goal of this paper. Finally, we will compare cases according to progress and delays in private and public healthcare systems.

This paper estimates the tariff equivalent of the border barrier in each bilateral trade among European Union countries. The results show that there are large differences in the border barrier across European Union countries' bilateral trade. In some bilateral trade flows the border barrier has almost disappeared, whereas in other cases it is still equivalent to a 75 per cent tariff. The results also show that some countries have low border barriers in most of their bilateral trade flows with other EU members, whereas other countries persistently present large border barriers.

This paper estimates the tariff equivalent of the border barrier in each bilateral trade among European Union countries. The results show that there are large differences in the border barrier across European Union countries' bilateral trade. In some bilateral trade flows the border barrier has almost disappeared, whereas in other cases it is still equivalent to a 75 per cent tariff. The results also show that some countries have low border barriers in most of their bilateral trade flows with other EU members, whereas other countries persistently present large border barriers.

This paper uses a new data set on budgetary institutions in Europe to examine the impact of fiscal rules and budget procedures in EU countries on public finances. It briefly describes the main pattern of budgetary institutions and their determinants across the EU 15 member states. Empirical evidence for the time period 1985-2004 suggests that the centralisation of budgeting procedures restrains public debt. In countries with one-party governments or coalition governments where parties are closely aligned and where political competition among them is low, this is achieved by the delegation of decision-making power to the minister of finance. Fiscal contracts that require countries to set multi-year targets and that reinforce those targets increase fiscal discipline in countries with ideologically dispersed coalitions and where parties regularly compete against each other.

Abstract: In the European Union countries and neighboring regions, the expansion will produce a redistribution of the labour force between industries and countries. After the Romania’s adhesion to the European Union, the need for an increased productivity, the lack of capital, the competition on the EU market and the low wages have concurred to the intensification of the migration process of the labour force, especially to the West European countries. As example, from over two millions of Romanians working

The aim of this paper is to establish and clarify the relationship between corruption level and development among European Union countries. Out of the estimated model in this paper one can conclude that the level of corruption can explain capital abundance differences among European Union countries. Also, explanatory power of corruption is higher in explaining economic development than in explaining capital abundance, meaning stronger relationship between corruption level and economic development than between corruption level and capital abundance. There is no doubt that reducing corruption would be beneficial for all countries. Since corruption is a wrongdoing, the rule of law enforcement is of utmost importance. However, root causes of corruption, namely the institutional and social environment: recruiting civil servants on a merit basis, salaries in public sector competitive to the ones in private sector, the role of international institutions in the fight against corruption, and some other corruption characteristics are very important to analyze in order to find effective ways to fight corruption. Further research should go into this direction.

For many countries the Industrial Revolution was an opportunity for a dynamic economic development, but it was accompanied by deep social changes. Inequalities between regions have deepened, pollution has increased and also conjunctural fluctuations have intensified. In contemporary view at the social welfare there is a tendency to abandon identifying it with the level of income. Also, the research on the causes of socio-economic success is developing. One of the aspects of the research, which the article refers to, is the role of the institutions (within the meaning of institutional economics) in the socio-economic development. The aim of the paper is to examine the relationship between indicators of institutional environment and indices related to socio-economic development. For the analysis of the institutional environment the indices published by the World Bank under the name of Worldwide Governance Indicators were used. The analysis of socio-economic level of the countries is based on Sustainable Society Index and its components, which include a wide range of factors related to well-being. The analysis was conducted in two stages. The first stage is a general study of the correlation between WGI and SSI for 151 countries from different continents. The second stage includes a more detailed analysis conducted for the European Union, using the cluster method and the analysis of the level of indicators in groups of countries. The study is based on the data from 2010.