Suchergebnisse

Still in Russia and abroad, questions about implementation of the right to life and right to death are controversial, and as a consequence, the threat of killing the person by the use of euthanasia does not cease to be relevant. Russian criminal law provides criminal responsibility for the murder, which is a variety of ways, however, standards meeting the requirements of the safe existence of terminally ill people, including those not able to be fully aware of the incurability of the disease, is not provided. The legislator attempted criminal prohibitions of the use of euthanasia, however, in the current criminal law of the Russian Federation the data of rules. In this connection, many questions of law enforcement practice in the sphere of criminal-law protection of the safety of life and human health remain uncertain. The given circumstances testify to the fact that the study of issues of qualification of crimes against life and health becomes more fundamental. The article analyzes the problematic issues of demarcation of euthanasia from murder and suicide, and the author's article, providing for the criminal-legal prohibition of the use of euthanasia that will contribute to the improvement of law enforcement practice.

Currently, significantly changed the nature of the transport system of the country, new types of transport, and as a result of the threat of accidents significantly transformed. The given circumstances testify to the fact that the study of issues of qualification of crimes against traffic safety and operation of transport is more fundamental. Russian criminal legislation has undergone a number of changes and additions that meet the modern requirements of the safe functioning of transport. The legislator added new types of traffic offences, however, many problems of law enforcement practice in the sphere of criminal–law protection of traffic safety and operation of transport remain controversial. The article analyses the problematic issues of law enforcement practice in the sphere of criminal–law protection of traffic safety and transport operation.

Received 13.01.2021. The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated global economic, technological and social transformation, including the energy sector, and has given the impetus to energy transition from organic fuels to clean energy sources. Though oil will remain an important energy resource in the global energy balance, in the long run renewables will become the leading energy. The European Union and China are the leaders in implementation of energy transition strategies from fossil to clean energy. The transformation in the energy market has affected dramatically the relations between producers and consumers, who now actively determine the consumption trends (for example, green energy, electric vehicles, etc.). Distributed generation and blockchain in power industry enable the consumers to play an active part in the electricity production and distribution chains. Digital transformation and climate agenda are changing the structure of energy business from vertically integrated companies to knowledge-intensive networks. Investors almost unanimously vote for renewable energy. The largest oil and gas companies change their long-term strategies and transform into energy holdings with the prevailing share of renewables in the business structure. Hydrogen attracts particular attention as a promising energy source. The EU plans to develop hydrogen transport infrastructure. For its part, Russia has the ability to supply hydrogen to the European market through the existing gas pipelines. Coronacrisis accelerated the development of online services, artificial intelligence, and distant work. Education and telemedicine received a powerful impetus for further development. Еducation becomes continuous process in the digital world. New educational ecosystems in which skills and competencies are worked out on an interdisciplinary basis are formed. Digital transformation meets the expectations of the generation Z, which in the coming decades will become economically active and will dominate in social and economic agenda. Digitalization, adaptive nature-like technologies, environmentally friendly energy resources, flexible horizontal network between market participants are already a post-COVID reality.

The article analyzes the current state of energy markets. The basic fundamental factor of the demand for energy resources – the world economy growth – is rather low. At the same time, the USA and China demonstrate steady economic growth, thus rising demand for hydrocarbons. But recent decline of prices for oil and other commodities like metals or grain shows that among various factors, both fundamental and speculative, financial markets are also speeding up the volatility on the markets, thus deepening the gap between "paper" and "fair" oil price. Also, it is necessary to analyze the impact on the situation on the global oil market of such multidirectional factors as influence of "shale revolution" in the USA or Saudi Arabia refusal to reduce oil production. Shale oil helped USA to overcome oil import dependency and to become an exporter in the future. However, production costs in the country are rather high. On the contrary, Saudi Arabia has low production costs and is now trying to keep the international prices at a level that makes the US shale projects infeasible. The Saudi budget 2015 assumed a price of $90/barrel and it can endure $50 as well. However, other oil exporting countries face huge losses. Nevertheless, in the future oil prices will rise and evidently the level of fair price can be determined at $60-70/barrel. The author examines also the break-even prices for oil production and levels of oil prices necessary for formation of budgets of oil exporting countries. The changes on oil and gas markets lead to formation of more complicated global energy space and to shifts in the concept of energy security from ensuring the stability of energy supplies to energy self-sufficiency. The transformation of energy markets and geopolitical risks cause the changes in the transportation logistics and enhance risks of implementation of new trans-border pipelines. Prospects of sustainable and multidirectional development of global and regional energy markets are also considered.

Currently, gas markets are going through a phase of transformation into global ones. They are largely following the American model of the spot trade market development with the building of LNG terminals for the internationalization and globalization of supply chains. All this greatly changes the structure of the relationship between the producers and consumers of long-term gas contracts, primarily in Europe. The availability of a ramified network of gas transmission pipelines in the territory of the European Union and the diversification of supplies through greater application of liquefied natural gas allows Europe to more effectively build its energy strategy. In particular, the stress is made on the creation of large hubs (junctions of inter-country flows) to turn the spot trade into a dominant mechanism of natural gas supplies.

The paper offers a systematized and updated view of exchange-traded energy products. The increase in natural gas and electricity trade volumes at commodity exchanges has dramatically changed the wholesale market structure in Europe. Nowadays commodity exchanges have played an essential role in energy trading. The complexity of exchange technologies and the reasons for their demand are often hidden under everyday exchange routine. Academic analysis of exchange activity has traditionally been feebly developed, because, firstly, classical economics assumes that finding of equilibrium between supply and demand is an instantaneous and cost-free process. Markets were mainly described as simple market exchanges where faceless buyers and sellers meet for an instant to exchange standardized goods at equilibrium prices. Secondly, energy exchanges are relatively new phenomenon. The justification of exchange trading became possible as a result of new institutional economics (NIE) and transaction cost theory (TCT) findings. Under conditions of positive transaction costs, incomplete foresight and bounded rationality – the conditions of the New Institutional Economics (NIE) – the institutional framework not only of firms but also of markets matters. Also, within this institutional framework the concept of "governance structure" was introduced. A high-performance system shall align transactions with governance structures in relation to their adaptive needs. Governance structures are properly regarded as part of the optimization problem. A shift from one structure to another may permit a simultaneous reduction in both the expense of writing a complex contract and the expense of executing it effectively in an adaptive, sequential way. The founders of NIE and TCT, having been investigating the stock and commodity exchanges, approached them as a measure of transaction costs for other-the-counter trades. However, they did not include exchange trading into classification of governance structures. As far as is known, it has not been described in this way in terms of NIE and TCT to date. Natural gas and electricity markets is a good examples of network industries, which are an appropriate case of institutional flexibility regarding the alignment between transactions and governance structures. "Liberalised" network industries needed and still need an "intense" design and re-design to be able to host any kind of markets and to interact with. Organized markets, energy exchanges have developed a required bridge between leaving long-term contracts and price promulgation. The hypothesis of energy exchange classification as a special type of governance structure, in the meaning of NIE and TCT, for network industries is discussed in this article.

The article deals with geoeconomic and geopolitical challenges for the further development of the world economy in the conditions of the energy transition designated by a number of countries of the world. The authors carried out a detailed analysis of the trends in the development of "green" energy in the period before and during the COVID‑19 pandemic, identified the main directions of changes in the state energy policy of developed and developing countries. It is established that the accelerated and forced transition to renewable energy sources had a negative impact on the dynamics of economic development of a number of countries of the world. The authors make the assumption that the non-alternative and accelerated transition to "green" energy, actively promoted by developed countries (EU, USA and other OECD countries), together with a sharp decline in investment in traditional hydrocarbon energy sources, can lead to the formation of significant imbalances in the global economy, loss of predictability of the development of global and regional energy and energy markets. In addition, the authors pay special attention to the role of rare earth metals in the energy transition, whose markets are characterized by high monopolization in favor of China. Together with the global economic crisis, which was caused by the consequences of the COVID‑19 pandemic, the trends of the accelerated energy transition have significantly worsened the stability of the energy systems of many countries of the world. Taking into account these factors, the authors have analyzed the strategic consequences for states engaged in intensive decarbonization of their national economies and the fuel and energy complex. At the same time, the authors noted that the EU's long-term plans to increase the share of hydrogen energy in the energy balance open up new prospects for the Russian Federation, which has extensive opportunities for the production and export of hydrogen. The importance of the development of domestic technologies in the field of hydrogen energy was noted. In addition, taking into account the development trends of the energy transition, the importance of the development of the rare earth industry in the Russian Federation to reduce the impact of imports of rare earth elements from China was noted.

According to judgemental forecasts, in the next few years the revolutionary changes in the energy complex both in the USA and in the world in general are hardly possible, considering the enormous inertia of the energetic system and high expenses coming from the infrastructure supersession, even in case of cost-effective alternatives to the existing energy commodities. At the same time, the sharpening of energy security problems resulting from the growth of a global demand on energy products leads to perceprion of necessity for a new approach to forming the global energy market, and to development of new stability and reliability strategies maintenance for assured supplies of energy products. In recent years, the USA as the biggest consumer of energy resources in the world worked out a new national strategy of energy security provision. Its main targets are: meeting the requirements of the American economy of its own resources, lowering the import-dependence level, high use of innovation technologies, significant increase of investments in alternative energy sources, as well as of resource-and energy-saving.

The article examines the trends that hinder the development of international energy and economic cooperation in 2018–2020. These trends have been particularly exacerbated by the COVID‑19 pandemic and the resulting global economic and energy crisis. Falling demand for oil has affected the decline in world commodity prices. Competition between oil exporters has intensified amid falling demand. As a result, international energy cooperation mechanisms in the energy sector have come under serious pressure. The dynamics of relations between the world's largest economic centers: China, the United States, the European Union, and the Eurasian space have become another aspect of the aggravation of imbalances and confrontational trends in the global economy. The strengthening of trade contradictions between the United States and China in 2018–2019 negatively affected global economic growth and the dynamics of major manufacturing indices. In turn, the events of 2020 clearly confirmed that the contradictions between China and the United States are of a deep structural nature. These contradictions exacerbate the polarization of the global economic system and cannot be overcome by concessions and agreements exclusively in the field of investment and trade. Against this background, the real effectiveness of measures taken in the EU to deal with the economic consequences of both the pandemic and Brexit is questionable, and can only be reliably assessed after a sufficiently long time. The authors show that in contrast to the situation in the EU, the EAEU has tendencies to further strengthen economic, political and energy cooperation. Despite the COVID‑19 pandemic, the global economic crisis and external challenges, the Eurasian Economic Union not only stands up to them, but also continues to actively work to unite the Union's countries, as well as improve their energy and economic security. The authors offer their vision of further development of international economic and energy cooperation in the post-pandemic period, taking into account the positive trends in the development of the Eurasian space.