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This paper - written for a conference held in Leuven (KUL) in 2001- offers a global analysis of the European Insolvency Regulation. At the time the paper was written, the Regulation was a very recent instrument. The paper reviews the Regulation based on previous experiences at harmonising the law of cross-border insolvencies (such as the European Insolvency Convention and the Istanbul Convention). Particular attention is paid to the issues of jurisdiction (which court has jurisdiction to open insolvency proceedings), jurisdiction conflicts (what happens if two courts decide to exercise jurisdiction simultaneously) and recognition and enforcement of foreign insolvency judgments.

Στην παρούσα εργασία παρατίθενται οδηγίες υπό τη μορφή «οδηγού χρήσης» για τη χρήση του δικτυακού τόπουτης Ευρωπαϊκής Ένωσης, EUR-Lex. Η επίσημη αυτή ιστοσελίδα της Ευρωπαϊκής Ένωσης παρέχει τη δυνατότητα σε οποιονδήποτε έχει πρόσβαση στο διαδίκτυο μέσω ηλεκτρονικού υπολογιστή να προβεί σε αναζήτηση και εύρεση Ευρωπαϊκής νομοθεσίας, όπως Κανονισμών, Αποφάσεων και Οδηγιών. Περιγράφονται με λεπτομέρεια οι διάφοροι τρόποι με τους οποίους μπορεί να γίνει η αναζήτηση της νομοθεσίας, ενώ παράλληλα εξηγείται ο τρόπος αξιολόγησης και διαχείρισης των αποτελεσμάτων της αναζήτησης. Η χρήση του δικτυακού τόπου είναι ελεύθερη (δεν απαιτείται συνδρομή) και αποτελεί ίσως το ευκολότερο και αμεσότερο εργαλείο ενημέρωσης των κτηνιάτρων αναφορικά με την ισχύουσα Ευρωπαϊκή νομοθεσία που αφοράσε όλους τους τομείς της Κτηνιατρικής Επιστήμης. ; This article contains instructions in the form of a "user's manual" for the use of the "EUR-Lex" web site, which is the official European Union site for access to the European Union legislation. Anyone having access to the internet can conduct searches using the "EUR-Lex" website and retrieve results pertaining to the European Union legislation, such as Regulations, Decisions and Directives. This article contains descriptions of the different ways and approaches for conducting searches as well as descriptions and directions on evaluating and further handling the search results. The use of the "Eur-Lex" web site is free of charge (no subscription is necessary). The "Eur-Lex" site is undoubtedly the easiest and most direct tool for accessing the European Legislation in force and constitutes an invaluable resource for veterinarians, who wish to keep up to date with European Union legislation pertaining to all aspects of Veterinary Medicine.

Changes in Dutch attitudes towards the European Union For decades, the Dutch were seen as relatively positive towards the European Union. However, in 2005 a majority of the Dutch population voted against the proposed European Constitution. Therefore, in this article we examine to what extent the Dutch 'no' marks a sudden change in attitudes, or is merely a manifestation of a gradual trend that started at an earlier stage of the European integration process. We raise the question to what extent attitudes towards the European Union have changed in the Netherlands, and further ask to what extent these changes can be attributed to characteristics of the context and the life course. We derive hypotheses from theories on the influence of birth cohort, societal context and life course on attitude changes. In order to test these hypotheses, we employ Eurobarometersurveys of 1973 to 2004, as well as additional data at the contextual level. Our findings suggest that in the Netherlands attitudes towards the European Union have become more negative since the early nineties, after becoming more positive in the preceding years. While characteristics of the birth cohort and the life course do not account for these changes, the development towards more political integration seems to provide an interesting explanation. However, even after adding respondents' characteristics at the individual level to our models, variance in attitudes towards the European Union is hardly explained. Even though differences between social groups exist, attitudes towards the European Union seem to be largely unexplained.

In deze bijdrage wordt naar aanleiding van het gewijzigde voorstel voor een Europese betalingsbevelprocedure (2006) aandacht besteed aan de harmonisatie van het IPR en procesrecht in de Europese Unie, de totstandkoming van de Europese betalings-bevelprocedure, doelstelling en toepassingsgebied van de voorgestelde verordening, het verloop van de procedure en de gevolgen voor Nederland. Tot slot wordt gewezen op het belang van de coherentie van het Europees procesrecht, dat op deelgebieden en in ver-schillende instrumenten momenteel tot stand wordt gebracht. Abstract: [European Civil Procedure under Construction. The (amended) proposal for a European Order for Payment Procedure] On the occasion of the publication of the amended proposal for a European Order for Payment Procedure (2006) attention is paid to the harmonisation of Private International Law and Procedural Law in the European Union, the bringing about of the European Order for Payment Procedure, the objectives and scope of the proposed regulation, the course of the proceedings and its impact in the Netherlands. It is pointed out that it is important to ensure the coherence of European procedural law, since it is being brought about in pieces and in different instruments.

Introduction:The foregoing chapters of this book have demonstrated the extent to which national civil servants are involved in EU-related activities, and the dynamics of national administrative activities in the context of the EU. This chapter shifts the focus from national civil servants working on the European Union to national civil servants working for the European Union. This is a class of national civil servants for whom finding a balance between national and European interests in their work is a permanent, although sometimes implicit feature of their daily professional activities. The duality of national and European roles is perhaps the most exacerbated for the seconded national experts (SNEs), i.e. national civil servants who are temporarily working for EU institutions, in particular those seconded to the European Commission.2 On the one hand, Commission SNEs have to be loyal to the Commission and represent European interests in this supranational organ of the EU. On the other hand, their employer is still the member-state government, and they are expected to return to their home organization after their secondment term ends. The SNEs are thus practically torn between two employers: their daily employer under whose supervision they work (the Commission) and the national employer who sent them on the secondment and continues to pay their salaries (the member-state).

After the Vienna Congress in 1815, the Allied ministers did not return home, but continued their negotiations in Paris. They deliberated on the measure of reparation payments and arrear payments that France owed to the other European states. The new peace also rested on financial securities. The United Kingdom of the Netherlands assumed a large part in these conferences, since through the mass of private claims it was France's largest creditor. In this article we demonstrate how, as one of the essentials of the new concert diplomacy of 1815, smaller powers such as the Netherlands were allowed to weigh in on the Four Powers' deliberations in Paris. The political conundrums regarding these financial securities and reparationshave not been charted and analysed before. Through previously unstudied sources,such as the minutes of the Paris Ministerial Conference, we discuss the influence a secondary power could exert provided they deployed smart financial experts. Under that condition large political and financial gains could be made.

Ten years ago, now, the Eurozone began to shake on its foundations. This article traces the genesis of the crisis and the present state of affairs. As to the causes of the global financial crisis in 2008, I argue that contrary to common understanding, the financial crisis had its deeper causes in a decades old tendency towards crisis in the real economy, produced by the continuous overaccumulation of capital which can only return profits by undertaking speculative short-term investments (a phenomenon known as 'financialisation'). I then trace how the global financial crisis morphed into a crisis of public deficits and debt in 2010-2011, particularly in the Eurozone. Three factors are shown to be responsible: financialization, design faults in the European monetary union, and the neo-mercantilist strategy of especially Germany and the Netherlands. The paper next looks at the five main traits of the policy responses in the Eurozone: bailing out governments and banks through creating emergency funds; imposition of austerity and budget discipline for member state governments; attempting to create and complete a Eurozone banking union; subsequently the European Central Bank engaged on an unprecedented scale in 'quantitative easing'; and finally, institutional reform in an attempt to repair the most pressing design faults of the EMU. The paper concludes that the underlying structural factors leading up to the crisis have only been addressed incompletely: the overaccumulation of capital continues, the completion of the banking union is in an impasse, quantitative easing has mostly just intensified financialization by pushing up asset prizes, and institutional reform has taken the form of a fundamentally undemocratic attempt at monetary and political union by stealth. The broader legitimacy of the European project has been substantially undermined, and Europe is not in a better position than eight years ago in case of a new global crisis.

Few other countries are so interrelated with the world around us in political, economic, and social respects as the Netherlands. This means that the Dutch government needs to be alert in its response to the risks and opportunities presented by a rapidly changing world. Addressing this issue, the Scientific Council for Government Policy (wrr) offers some reflections in this report, guided by the question how the Netherlands can develop a foreign policy strategy that matches the changing power relations in the world and the radically changed character of international relations. The answer to this question is a reorientation. This means making transparent choices, making smarter use of Europe as our dominant arena, and, finally, choosing an approach that makes better use of the growing role of non-state actors. The report's recommendations not only underline the necessity of reorientation but also show how this could be accomplished in practice.

Δεν παρατίθεται περίληψη στα ελληνικά. ; Nassia Yakovaki, The «Traité des trois imposteurs)) and the European Enlightenment The aim of this article is to present the obscure but fascinating story of the production and diffusion of the Traité des trois imposteurs, the best seller of the clandestine literature in Europe during the first half of the 18th century and to discuss the new and to some extent controversial interpretations that the study of this text has provoked as far as the understanding of the European Enlightenment is concerned. The importance of this text derives, first of all, from its subversive ideas: it offers a bold and straightforward attack on all three monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) by rejecting the principle of revelation and by pronouncing their founders as «impostors», while attributing the appearance of organized religions to political interests. Yet, the significance of this text goes beyond its content: the conditions of its production as well as of its circulation offer to modern historical research the chance to explore an «underground universe», peopled by relatively unknown figures, working among the middlemen of the publishing world. These circles —as it seems— had the readiness to respond creatively to a turbulent religious and political environment, to adopt rigid philosophical stands and to step into radical politics. Historical research has recently succeeded in investigating the complicated issues of the origin, dating, authorship and circulation of this notorious text and in disentangling the thread connecting this late 17th century production with the medieval legend of the «imposture». Crucial among these findings is on the one hand the bond that links the Traité with the works of Spinoza and on the other the connection between the production of the text and a group of people in late 17th and early 18th century Holland. The interesting questions concerning the general understanding of the era of «the crisis of the European consciousness» that the historical scholarship about the Traité has raised have already led to the formation of a new, stimulating, yet controversial historiographical trend which elaborates a new interpretation of the Enlightenment, around the idea of an early and radical Enlightenment (Margaret Jacob, 1981 and 2003, Jonathan Israel, 2001).

Δεν παρατίθεται περίληψη στα ελληνικά. ; Yiannis Papatheodorou, a The cruel April of 1944»: Fiction, History and Memory in Straus Tsirkas's Drifting Cities Stratis Tsirkas, a distinguished Greek diaspora novelist in Egypt, published his important and controversial trilogy {The Club, Ariagne, The Bat), in the early '60s. The novel is situated in three colonial Mediterranean cities —Jerusalem, Cairo and Alexandria— drifting towards chaos in a war-torn Middle East, during 1942-1944. As far as the plot is concerned, the trilogy is inscribed to the wider context of postwar European literary «master-narratives» elaborating representations of war, Nazism and resistance, and also opening an agenda to the traumatic phenomena of a discontinuous modernity: violence, social repression, exclusion of the Other. This article discusses the politics of history and memory in Stratis Tsirkas's trilogy Drifting Cities in order to show how he problematizes the tropes of historical representation in a dialogical perspective, by focalizing to the Greek military left underground «movement of April 1944». His historical point of view, which clearly can be identified as the «return of the repressed», is related to the questions of an alternative narration about the past, enriched within a critical and deliberating interpretation of the left collective memory.

Volltext // Exemplar mit der Signatur: München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek -- Belg. 224 w-119,1/27#Beibd.18

Δεν παρατίθεται περίληψη στα ελληνικά. ; Photini Danou, The words of the voiceless Did ordinary men and women in pre-modern England have an opinion about politics? What was "politics" for the common people at a time when they had not any say in choosing who would rule them? Was popular engagement in state politics only to secure subsistence? Were "knife and fork" politics of the masses so separate from issues of "high politics" of the State? Was pre-modern commoners' mentality, "pre-political" as well? This paper discusses early modern popular political awareness. I argue that commoners in Tudor England pursued their own political agenda, by exploiting the sovereign's self-image as the "protector of the poor". However, as I set out to show, in pursuing their political agenda commoners also raised issues on the content of Englishness, common good, patriotism, legitimate governance and the right of resistance. The political identity of the lower strata was not an entity fixed in its essence. On the contrary, plebeian political identity was rather shifting, changeable, and always constituting its content in particular historical contexts. The commoners' commitment to the ideal of the"nation", their loyalty to the government, their allegiance to their Queen, their obedience to her laws, or their active participation in the enforcement of state policies were not unconditional. The ways they practiced their political identity was interrelated to their superiors' behavior and draw its legitimacy from the public transcript of the English Common wealth. Common prosperity, reciprocity, solidarity and, in general, protection of the poorer and weaker members of English society were ideals that constituted the meaning of "common wealth" in the plebeian mind. Those ideals were prerequisites for their giving of devotion and loyalty to the state. Thus, the commoners' political mentality and behavior ranged from national loyalty to indifference or even animosity to state officials; from cooperation and acquiescence to covered or overt forms of opposition and active resistance.

Hans Schippers surveys the position of Hezbollah in Lebanese politics and its relations with Iran and Syria. Hezbollah is an organisation with two faces. Together with Amal it represents the Shia in Lebanon. It participates in elections and the government. However, in the Southern part of the country Hezbollah constitutes a state within a state, with a militia and a social and medical network of its own. Most of the costs of this structure are paid for by Iran. The Shia leadership of Iran also played a vital role in the establishment of the organisation in 1982. Syria acted as the protector of Hezbollah in its agitation against Israel. With the departure of Syrian troops following the Cedar Revolution in the spring of 2005 most non-Shia Lebanese wanted to see the Hezbollah militia, seen as a pro-Syrian force, dissolved. However, this was refused by leader Nasrallah. The militia protected Lebanon against Israeli aggression, he declared. It is unclear what motivated Hezbollah to kidnap the Israeli soldiers. This action seemed to be co-ordinated with Iran and Syria to divert attention from the Iranian troubles with the United Nations about Iran's uranium enrichment programme. However, also solidarity with Hamas and the personality of Nasrallah may have played a role. The War of Summer 2006 made it clear once more that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict maybe exploited by forces not directly involved, like Iran. The strong presence of European soldiers in the new peace force presents an opportunity for the EU to take the initiative for a restart of the peace process in the region. A new Madrid type conference may offer away out of the deadlock.

The standard picture of public governance in the Dutch Republic (1579-1795) is one of consultation with multiple stakeholders, peaceful negotiations with representatives from a range of governmental institutions, and agreements and compromise. This picture has been the subject of much debate among historians and other scholars. One question concerns the extent to which this kind of governance evolved from the traditional practices of water authorities, as these institutions emerged very early, at the end of the thirteenth century. A further question is whether it is correct to assume that these peaceful negotiations did in fact involve participation by a wide range of societal stakeholders. This book contributes to this debate by presenting the results of new research into the development of governance by water authorities prior to 1800. In the late Middle Ages and Early Modern period, these institutions changed as a result of ecological, socio-economic and political developments. The central question is how these developments affected the evolution of and governance within the water authorities. The research focuses on two inter-local water authorities: first, the water authority of the Bunschoten Veen and Velden dikes in the Province of Utrecht; and second, the water authority of Mastenbroek polder in the Province of Overijssel. How were landholders represented in such authorities, and what was the relationship between developments in representation and participation in decision-making? The positions and backgrounds of the board members of these two water authorities were investigated, as well as the process of decision-making. The theoretical framework was provided by theories of consociationalism (Lijphart 1968 and Putnam 1993), in which peaceful governance is defined in terms of consensus politics or politics of accommodation. A set of criteria was formulated to assess the occurrence of participative decision-making by stakeholders. These criteria were tested against the discussions and decisions found in ...

This thesis describes the parliamentary scrutiny system of the Dutch Government in the European decision-making process. More specifically, this study concerns the instruments of the British parliamentary scrutiny reserve and the Danish and Austrian mandating systems, and the added value that such instruments might have for the Netherlands. The main lesson to be learned from the British scrutiny reserve is that both the Government and Parliament are encouraged to become actively involved at an early stage of the European decision-making process. The system also ensures structural provision of information throughout the European decision-making process. In the Netherlands such structural information agreements between Parliament and the Government do not exist. The introduction of a parliamentary scrutiny reserve would solve this problem. The instrument of the parliamentary reserve that was introduced in the Netherlands when the Lisbon Treaty entered into force is much more limited than the British scrutiny reserve. The Dutch parliamentary reserve lacks the most essential aspect that makes the scrutiny reserve a valuable instrument. It is not linked to Government information and therefore does not stimulate as much dialogue between the Government and Parliament from the earliest stages of the European decision-making process as the British scrutiny reserve does. The Danish mandating system adds little to the Dutch Parliament's existing instruments to scrutinize the Government in the EU decision-making process. It may be doubted whether a mandating system would be suitable in a bicameral system such as the Dutch one. The Tweede Kamer (the Dutch House of Representatives) and the Eerste Kamer (the Dutch Senate) may occasionally give contradictory instructions. Furthermore, the fact that the presentation of the mandates often takes place at a later stage of the European decision-making process can be seen as a major drawback of the Danish mandating system. Despite the fact that the system ensures that Parliament is ...