Suchergebnisse

Freedom of expression enjoys a particular protection in the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights. According to the Court, freedom of expression constitutes one of the essential foundations of a democratic society, and one of the basic conditions for its progress and for the development of every man. Moreover, it is applicable not only to 'information' or 'ideas' that are favorably received or regarded as inoffensive or as a matter of indifference, but also to those that offend, shock or disturb the State or any sector of the population, since these are the demands of that pluralism, tolerance and broadmindedness without which there is no 'democratic society'. This high valuing of freedom of expression is particularly striking when it comes to the political speech, the free political debate being a distinctive feature of a democratic society. Nevertheless, the European Court considers that whoever exercises his freedom of expression undertakes 'duties and responsibilities', and that the freedom of political debate is undoubtedly not absolute in nature. More concretely, when the hate speech is at issue the Court underlines that the tolerance and respect of equal dignity of all human beings constitutes one of the essential foundations of a democratic and pluralist society, and that in a democratic society, in principle, it may be considered necessary to punish and even to prevent all forms of expression which propagate, incite, promote, or justify the hate based on intolerance. Taking into account the notion of prohibition of hate speech in the constitutional system of the Republic of Serbia, and the place of the European Convention on Human Rights in its hierarchy of legal sources, this paper follows the evolution of the European Court's case-law as to the understanding and definition of conditions under which it may be considered necessary in a democratic society to restrict freedom of expression because of hate speech. This legal standard - necessary in a democratic society, is then compared to the clear and present danger test, which has been developed for almost a century in the case-law of the Supreme Court of the United States of America, and which application is sometimes recommended in Europe.

In this paper, the author analyzes the key stages in the development of the Republic of Srpska, since its formation in 9 January 1992. In this context, it elaborates the process of genesis of the Republic of Srpska, its international verification by the Dayton Peace Agreement, post-conflict consolidation as a process of trial of the constitutional reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina that would redistribute responsibilities between the entity and state authorities. However, the paper points out that the Republic of Serbian unquestionable categories and that the current attempt by the U.S. and the EU for the amendment of the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina did not imply denial of two-entity structure of the state. In the future, how would you rate the author will attempt leading actors in world politics to redesign the institutional framework at the level of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as to strengthening its negotiating capacity to assume the obligations related to membership of the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Global trends in the energy sector are focused towards extensive inclusion of renewable sources in the energy production. Solar energy has proven to be a valuable candidate, especially for direct conversion into electricity. Its wider use has, so far, among other, been constrained by the technological limitations, resulting in higher production costs compared to those from conventional non-renewable sources, primarily coal. In that sense, the efforts of the scientific community have for long been directed towards development of both efficient and inexpensive solutions. However, the major boost in the electricity production from photovoltaics (PV) came from the legislative measures, primarily the introduction of feed-in tariffs. Following the global trends, a significant increase in PV inclusion in the electricity production was made in the Republic of Macedonia. In the article we give a brief review of the achieved progress. ; Global trends in the energy sector are focused towards extensive inclusion of renewable sources in the energy production. Solar energy has proven to be a valuable candidate, especially for direct conversion into electricity. Its wider use has, so far, among other, been constrained by the technological limitations, resulting in higher production costs compared to those from conventional non-renewable sources, primarily coal. In that sense, the efforts of the scientific community have for long been directed towards development of both efficient and inexpensive solutions. However, the major boost in the electricity production from photovoltaics (PV) came from the legislative measures, primarily the introduction of feed-in tariffs. Following the global trends, a significant increase in PV inclusion in the electricity production was made in the Republic of Macedonia. In the article we give a brief review of the achieved progress.

Political parties are an indispensable factor in any modern parliamentary democracy. It would be impossible to parliamentary democracy to function properly without them. Political parties are a constitutional category and they have to act in accordance with constitution, but due to their importance it is already observed that sometimes they go beyond constitution. Each country should find its own way in order to face that challenge. Germany is a good example for that, by giving political parties the freedom to act on the basis of the provisions of the Basic Law, but with the care that the entire system does not endanger itself. That could be seen in three examples. First example is the relationship between the parliamentary group as the emanation of political parties in parliament and deputies. Second example is banning of anti-constitutional political parties. Third example is the election process of judges of the Constitutional Court. The paper concludes that it is necessary to find an ideal formula for the freedom of their actions, according to which political parties are allowed to perform any action that is beneficial to the constitutional order, while not all of them are forbidden, but only the actions that have a devastating effect on the system as a whole.

Official development assistance (ODA) implies the movement of capital with a minimum of one quarter of grant. It was established in the second half of the previous century, with the aim of getting developed countries to set aside a part of their gross domestic product (GDP) as an aid intended for developing countries. In the European Union, development assistance implies a policy which was established at the very beginning of the integration process, but it was not until the Treaty on the European Union was signed that it obtained its legal basis. Today, the European Union is a key partner of developing countries, and together with member states it ensures more than a half of the ODA assets. The countries of the Western Balkans are categorized among the developing countries and receive aid via loans and grants from developed countries and international institutions. The European Union's support is divided into the aid intended for the countries that are in the process of accession and the aid which is meant for other, less-developed countries. The distinction between these two forms of assistance is very difficult, because the character of the support changes in the course of accession process. The scientific problem that this paper deals with pertains to identification of the intensity of the European Union Official Development Assistance and the level of development of the Western Bal-kans. The assets of the European Union's assistance to the region of the WesternBalkans are necessary, yet not sufficient for achieving a higher level of developmentand the European standards in all directions.

The concept of sustainable development is faced with great interest both in theory, by scientific researchers, and in practice, by managers and policy makers in many countries. Given the fact that humanity has no 'spare planet' to live on and that the deterioration of the climatic conditions is a global issue, promoting sustainable production and consumption becomes the activity that is in focus of many actors. The paper analyzes the activities - of consumers, companies and government, as three key actors. Each of them is important in promoting the idea of sustainability, with the ability for substantiation of synergetic effect. Concrete examples advocate that thesis, while having the concept of consumer society not opposed to the aim of preserving the planet. Consumption is the driver of production and without open spiral of these two processes there is no development of society at all. The point is in a qualitative step from production and consumption of material goods that have a negative impact on the limited resources of the planet, towards those that have a positive one.

From the very beginning the steps towards unification of European countries have been founded on the personal incentives of politicians, but not on broad democratic agreement of the people. That method has never been abandoned: even the huge administrative apparatus in Brussels that makes important decisions without any democratic control could be seen as natural consequence of such praxis. It is just because of such political behaviour where important political documents and decisions are made out of the eyes of the public, which the great political incentives, such as referendum on the European Constitution, have failed. If we ask ourselves where it has gone wrong the possible answer is that EU has been made according the needs of the rich and mighty countries. The states that are located on the periphery of EU have no political influence on the main decisions, and cannot decide about their own economic development. They are simply forced to adapt ourselves to the interests of the most advanced. But the protests all over EU show that the general economic concept of the EU is wrong and that it will generate crises in the long run.

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.

Measuring the quality of political regimes is a field that occupies a traditional place in statistical studies that have the subject of studying the characteristics of the political system as an important segment of the explanation of the behavior of states in international relations. In a desire for a comprehensive and complete spatial and temporal interaction, researchers seek to classify data categories through an extremely complex set that represents the starting point for further research. The aim of this article is a comparative overview of the most used quantitative instruments of the level of the political regime. In addition, the author points to the advantages or limitations of certain databases. The subject of the comparative presentation are the following databases: Polity IV, Lexical Index of Electoral Democracy-LIED, Authoritarian Regime Dataset, Varieties of Democracy, and other data sets relevant to statistical testing. In addition, the author presents the problems that researchers in security studies meet in "measuring" the level of the political regime, that is, quantifying the relationship between democracy and autocracy. The method of descriptive statistics will be used in order to present the most important statistical cross-sections of the instruments used in modern research.

For decades, the US economy have had a chronic current account deficit, which is a consequence of the high trade balance deficit. The highest value of the current account deficit was recorded in 2006 (798.5 billion USD), when the Chinese share in US trade deficit was 32%. Hence, there is a discussion about sustainability of the US trade deficit, as well as the debate about the most important perpetrator for global trade imbalances. China is accused because of the high saving level and depressed currency policy. On the other side, US used the historic privilege of USD as world reserve currency to build a cult of consumption economy. This paper aims to reconsider these statements and, based on the cause analysis of the disequilibrium, define not only the main levers, but also the instruments which can be used for neutralization of this global imbalance. The analysis for each country covers the period 2000-2013 and includes many variables, e.g. current account deficit, savings, investment, interest rate level, etc. The research showed that China brought the referent down interest rate with the investment of excess liquidity, and that the FED did not use any other instrument as a defence of the interest rate level. The FED prescribed the required reserve level, but it failed to respect the rules. The reserve level was allowed to be reduced and thus enabled money supply expansion and low interest rate level.

This paper analyzes the demographic potential of the Nišava District at the administrative level of municipality. It is shown through the analysis of the selected indicators: numerical trends and age structure of the population. The main demographic processes that characterize the observed district are the overall depopulation (the decrease of the total population) and the aging of the population. Due to this, the change in the population numbers according to previous censuses has been investigated in order to determine its intensity in different periods. Some population characteristics such as the age of the population, the aging index, the age coefficient, the young population contingent (0-19) and the old population continent (60 and over) as well as the fertile and labor contingent have been used to represent the age structure. The changes in the educational structure are considered in interaction with the processes of depopulation and demographic aging. This has been an attempt to determine the degree of correlation between demographic processes and the education level of the population. The results of the analysis of the demographic potential point to spatial disparity of the Nišava District. Unfavorable demographic processes, extreme depopulation and aging of the population of this district have had a large influence on the weakening of the demographic basis and the decrease in the overall potential of the observed district. The mutual dependence of the process of depopulation and pronounced changes in the age structure towards ever increasing aging of the population has created a vicious cycle which leads to unfavorable and unstoppable demographic changes in this area.