Suchergebnisse

The analysis is devoted to the city of Sarajevo and its turbulent history as being an illustrative case for how political borders have been symbolically reconstructed on ethnic lines in the Balkans for the last five centuries. Key historical periods such as the Austro-Hungarian period, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and next the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the Olympic Games, the war and the Dayton Peace Agreement including its aftermath shall be discussed in turn. Some of the most significant events that have shaped the history of the 20th century have directly marked the city of Sarajevo and they tackle some of the most intricate issues that dominate European history as a whole such as national belonging, political ideologies, and religious beliefs. Several milestones can be traced in this regard: the beginning of the first World War, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, the second World War, Tito's political vision and the prosperous era of socialist Yugoslavia, the dissolution of Yugoslavia and violent ethnic war, the period of peace building and post-conflict reconstruction which is still ongoing. The aim of the study is to analyse the events and patterns which might have contributed to changes in Bosnia and Herzegovina's capital city. The main argument that the analysis tries to put forward is that the post-conflict Sarajevo's governance structure has maintained and institutionalised the ethnic divisions and political differences in the country and city's reality.

Road traffic is one of the major sources of many of the worst pollutants, including carbon dioxide (CO2), carbon monoxide, carcinogenic particles and noise. The past decades have seen a dramatic rise in these harmful effects on human health, that proved to cause at the same time massive damage to the natural and built environment. In response to this aggravating situation, the new European Commission's President Ursula von der Leyen placed as the centrepiece of her political mandate 'the European Green Deal', a comprehensive climate and nature package of measures to make Europe climate neutral by 2050. To reach this very ambitious goal, there is a need for very creative and efficient policy solutions. And this is the scope of the current study. As the sustainability concerns become vital for policy planning, the paper advocates for the need of all EU's main stakeholders to realise the potential of 'green gamification' to help EU member states reach these ambitious policy goals, particularly in the field of transport and mobility - which are of crucial importance for overall CO2 reduction. Placed at the intersection of technology innovation and the need to find more efficient ways to protect the environment, 'green gamification' is an emerging concept that refers to the usage of game mechanics when it comes to engaging people, with the purpose to change their behaviour on sustainability issues. In short, it aims to motivate a sustainable behaviour within companies, institutions and citizens, with the use of interactive games, in order to fight against pollution and climate change. Applied to the field of transport and mobility, green gamification implies using strategies to cut carbon emissions especially by convincing people to reduce the use of private cars. But how can we better incentivise citizens' behaviour for cutting carbon emissions and achieve the new EU transport and mobility policy goals for 2050? To tackle this relevant question the article aims to assess the potential of 'green gamification' to help EU member states reach these ambitious policy goals.

For the last decade, the EU was confronted with an unprecedented series of subsequent and often overlapping crises - the constitutional crisis, the Euro crisis, the massive influx of migrants and refugees and last but not least, the Brexit referendum. They were all very different in structure, but they had a common element - they put to test the European Union's (EU) legitimacy. The main assumption of the study is that these recent crises in the EU directly influence the debates in the national public spheres, and affect the way in which solidarity among EU citizens and EU states is imagined and enacted in media. Thus, the study aims to explain variation in the Romanian public opinion for the period 2014 to 2017. It identifies exogenous factors that relate to the EU polity, its policies and national politics and how they shaped public debate in Romania around two main Pan-European crises - the refugee crisis and Brexit. The paper discusses the impact of the two crises on the Romanians' level of trust in EU institutions and assesses possible causes of this 'superficial Euro-enthusiasm' on the overall context of the Europeanization of public sphere in Romania. The findings are discussed in light of three main conditions of a Europeanized national public sphere: the role of Romanian media in building EU legitimacy; very high levels of polarization and contestation around the 2 topics of common concern; and a clear 'European dimension' that transcends national topics.

It became a shared opinion among European policy-makers to state that without a serious commitment from the European Union (EU), the Western Balkans (WB) will find itself increasingly isolated from the unfolding developments around it and this may endanger the stability of the entire continent. The scope of this paper is two folded: first, to examine the role of the EU in the WB with a focus on democratic institutionbuilding; second, taking Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH) as a case study, the article aims to determine whether there is a need for a new theoretical framework in order to more accurately define the specific process of the Europeanisation in the WB. In this regard it proposes the term "limited Europeanisation". The main theoretical aim of the article is to identify some clear-cut criteria of this phenomenon in the last 14-year evolution of BiH in relation with the EU. Keywords: Bosnia and Herzegovina, democratisation, Europeanisation, institution building, Western Balkans. (Romanian Journal of European Affairs / SWP)