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.
The Lisbon Treaty has brought significant changes into the architecture of the European Union. The most important novelty, however, is the establishment of a full unity of the Union structure achieved by creating new and strengthening the existing elements. The new elements of this unity are the disappearance of the European Community, the 'independence' of the European Atomic Energy Community, constituting the European Union as a single entity and the introduction of EU values. At the same time, the Lisbon Treaty has strengthened the existing elements of the common institutional mechanisms, rules on amending the founding treaties and EU membership. However, constituting the Union as a single entity which has replaced and succeeded the European Communities has not abolished the EU elements of diversity. In the areas that differed, even before the adoption of the Lisbon Treaty, from the community pillar, there remain significant differences in the nature and the scope of competences of the Union institutions. This mainly regards the common foreign and security policy, which now includes the defense policy, where the existing model of inter-state cooperation has been only slightly interfered with. In contrast, in the field of police and judicial cooperation in criminal matters, which has become part of a larger Area of Freedom, Security and Justice, the inter-state model of cooperation has been abandoned in some of its most important elements. However, the implementation of some of the important elements of the supranational model has been postponed.
The paper analyzes military capabilities of the European Union, as an important element of the credibility of the EU Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP). It discusses the development of these capabilities, and main problems that go along with the operationalization of these capabilities, as well as the prospects of their further development. Is the intergovernmental approach to the area of the EU security and defense policy a barrier to the development of EU military capabilities? What is the extent of the harmonization between 'military' competences of the EU and national specificities? The paper aims to provide answers to these questions. The first section analyzes the institutionalization of the EU security and defense policy, which includes both the establishment of special political and military structures responsible for the decision-making process within the framework of this policy, and the adoption of specific goals for the development of EU military capabilities. The second section analyzes the main difficulties met in the operationalization of EU military capabilities, concerning the efficiency of decision-making procedures, lack of strategic capabilities, the discord of national reforms regarding the modernization of the armed forces, and duplication of national programs covering the military equipment. The third section discusses the prospects of the development of EU military capabilities in the light of EU member states' military budget cuts. It concludes that the gradual evolution of the EU security and defense policy can be seen as an incentive for coordinating the efforts of the member states in the development of EU military capabilities.
Analysis of efficiency of (judicial) mediation in Serbia and other European countries (Italy, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Denmark) illuminates the causes of poor representation of this legal institution in our country. Analysis of mediation in Italy, culturally most closely resembling country to Serbia, indicates that a legalistic approach to the promotion and implementation of mediation, especially if it is heterogeneous, is not efficient. On the other hand, countries that have implemented a bottom-up approach ('first applied, and then regulate'), such as the Netherlands and Denmark, have developed efficient mediation system. Switzerland, a country that relied on an approach based on the promotion of culture of mediation, has a mediation system that has not been developed to the extent to the developed system of conciliation. In any case, the Italian experience has taught us that the regulation of mediation is not a sure path to success in the implementation of this legal institution; Swiss experience highlights the importance of developing a culture of peaceful settlement of disputes; Dutch and Danish experience emphasizes pragmatism in the promotion and implementation of mediation. Since Serbia lacks an efficient regulatory framework of mediation, culture of peaceful dispute settlement and pragmatism in implementation of this legal institution, it seems that the experiences, for the purpose of analysis, observed countries are more than useful.
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.
