Suchergebnisse

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.

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.

Već više od dve godine traje velika pan-evropska debata o Budućnosti evropske socijal-demokratije (2009-2011) kao pokušaj odgovora na izazove globalne krize, ali i na duboku i dugotrajnu krizu same socijal-demokratije. Dok su tokom 2000. godine socijal-demokrati bila na vlasti u većini evropskih zemalja (11 od 15 članica EU ), danas vladaju u samo nekoliko perifernih zemalja Evrope (4 od 27 članica EU u 2011). Iako u nekoliko velikih zemalja još uvek privlače 20-30% birača, odnosno poseduju koalicioni kapacitet i za osvajanje vlasti, ipak je marginalizacija ključni trend. U traganju za vlastitim identitetom, novom paradigmom, pan-evropska debata problematizuje ključne teme i izazove naše civilizacije, kao što su globalizacija, logika kapitalizma i njegove moguće reforme, smisao i značaj Evropske Unije. Ova debata ponovo vraća u javni diskurs i niz ključnih koncepata na kojima se gradi zamisao o 'dobrom društvu', kao što su društvene vrednosti, kultura, značaj srednje klase i ekološka i socijalna održivost. ; We are in the third year of the pan-european debate on the future of European Social Democracy (ESD). It is a response to the challenges of the global economic crisis, but also a response to the deep internal crisis within the ESD. While the social democrats were in power in the majority of European countries in the year 2000 (11 of 15 EU members), they are rulling parties in only few peripheral countries in 2011 (4 of 27 EU countries). Althouth they are still able to attact 20-30% of voters, and with toghether with their partners are even able to form goverments in some countries, their margananalization is a major trend. This is not only because of electoral defeats, but it is due to membership decline, shaken ties with trade unions, lack of an alternative program in a situation when neoliberalism is shaken and political actors have searching for new formulae. In a search of their own identity, new paradigm and attractive program, pan-european debate critically analyze key issues and challenges of our civilization, such as globalization, nature of capitalism and its possible reforms, meaning and importance of the EU , the role of government regarding markets. This debate has brouth back into public discourse many important concepts that constitute the idea of 'good society,' such as social values (equailty, solidarity, social justice), buth also importance of culture, middle class, and social and environmental sustainability.

The article is based on a critical review of existing literature in the field of political participation and representation of women in democratic institutions and procedures in contemporary society. Then, on the basis of relevant statistical indicators, it provides a state-of-the-art review of the participation of women in executive, legislative and judicial government in the European Union countries. The paper especially highlights the obstacles women face in the candidature for political office and when entering the political arena. It takes into account only the political factors, such as the type and structure of the electoral system, the number of parties in the parliament and their ideological differences, the number of candidates at polling stations, and the candidates' nominations for political offices, which have a crucial influence on the possibility for women to enter the political arena. Gender equality policy in the European Union in recent years has achieved significant success in the direction of larger and more equitable representation of women in all spheres of public life. However, women still do not participate in a sufficient number of institutions of governance and decision-making in economics and politics. The mere numerical, descriptive presence of women in political institutions is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the increase of their political power.

After the failure of the European constitutional process, the question of creating the European identity has become in the center of attention of the academic public again. According to the scientific literature about Europe it is mostly discussed as the set of institutional solutions, but not as the collective cultural space, the dominant paradigm discussing the European identity is the one that sees it as entirely political, indeed. The goal of this work is to show that insisting on creating of purely political European identity has its basic neither in theory nor in practice. In order to document the claim, in this work the author critically investigates different theoretical approaches studying the European identity and analyzing the results of available empirical researches tries to determine a role of cultural, civil and instrumental components in its creation.

Rad pokušava objasniti objektivnu razliku između državnog saveza i saveza država kao oblika federativnog odnosno konfederativnog uređenja odnosa među članicama, odnosno distingvirati između sintagmi statusa države i državnog statusa te uputiti na nužnost razlikovanja ustavnog kontinuiteta koji postoji u uslovima kad država ne mijenja status države i ustavnog diskontinuiteta kad dolazi do preobražaja državnog statusa određenog državnog subjekta. Na primjerima istorijskih i savremenih oblika unija, kroz istorijsku se dinamiku postojanja unija pokazuje da nijedna unija nije mogla niti može pretendovati da apsorbuje osnovne atribute članice/a, država, koje ječine. Ključna pitanja koja se obrađuju sa gledišta savremenog konstitucionalizma u odnosu na teorijski pojam unije su pitanja ustavnog diskontinuiteta do koga dolazi izlaskom članica unije iz njenog sastava, kao i posljedično tome međunarodnog priznanja i osamostaljenja članica unije. ; The paper attempts to explain the objective difference between a state union and a union of states as the respective forms of federative and confederative systems of government. It tries to distinguish between the expressions status of a country and state status and to point out the necessity of distinguishing between constitutional continuity that exists when a country does not change its status and constitutional discontinuity when the state status of a country is changed. The historical and contemporary examples of unions show that no union could have aspired or can aspire to absorb the basic features of its member state(s). The key issues, dealt with from the aspect of contemporary constitutionalism and theoretical idea of a union, are the issues of constitutional discontinuity that occurs when member state(s) decide to leave the unio n, form independent state(s) and demand international recognition

In this paper, we tried to analyze the consequences of the transitional process in the societies of the South-West Balkan, primarily on the example of Serbia. The indicators that we have found by the research clearly speak in favor of the fact that the transition is the cause of peripheralization of these societies. Citizens who entered the transitional processes with hope - imagining them as the accomplishment of the best European values - soon were convinced that the transition is only another manner to place these countries in the position to be exploited by multinational capital and developed, 'old' member of the EU, as well as to serve for squaring accounts in geopolitical games of the creators of the 'new world order'. In the case of the countries of the Western Balkan, the transition had the characteristic that, among other things, it was performed in conditions of political violence: destruction of the joint state of Yugoslavia, civil and religious war in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, aggression of NATO to the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, destabilization of Serbia through the attempt of Kosovo secession, etc., therefore, in the conditions that were extremely antihistorical. While the Europe was uniting, the Balkan was disintegrating. At least two out of the three 'ideas that conquered the world' (Mandelbaum) have been violated: the peace and the democracy. Free market in the conditions when there was no peace and regarding democratically insufficiently consolidated societies could not bring their progress, but on the contrary, as we established, only regression. That is the reason why the destroyed and collided South-Balkan societies, contrary to the European vow of their political elites, are today de facto much further from the European aspirations than they were quarter of the century ago. With their policy, the countries of the West have contributed to De- Europeanization of the South-West Balkan and strengthening of the Euroscepticism with citizens of those countries that still have not joined the EU, like Serbia. In fact, the citizens of Serbia can hardly recognize in the policy of the EU those values that have been usually considered European and which we mentioned at the beginning of this paper.