The Transport Success Story: Europeanization in The Czech Republic, Slovakia and Romania
June 1, 2011 Author: Eleanor E. Zeff & Ellen B. Pirro
Abstract: This paper explores the nature of success in EU transport policy implementation in three of the newer Eastern member states, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Romania, to see how their governments and administrations are integrating with the European Union. It utilizes the concept of Europeanization (as used by the European Union) to examine how multi level governance works for this one sector of policy implementation. In particular, we focus on supra national, national and regional inputs and development to explain how these nations are integrating their transport sectors within their nations and with the European Union. Our case histories show three different stages of transport sector development: the great progress in the Czech Republic; the plans and programs created by Slovakia with the European Union which should bring notable success within the next five years; and the initial stages of Romania’s efforts in the transport area.
Key words: European Union, multi-level governance, Romania, Slovakia, transport policy
The role of national parliaments in the European decision-making process after the Treaty of Lisbon The EU early-warning system for subsidiarity control
June 1, 2011 Author: Corina Turşie & Ciprian Niţu
The Lisbon Treaty introduced an early-warning mechanism for subsidiarity control, which formally gave an institutional procedure to enforce the subsidiarity principle. This mechanism has been developed as a way to increase the national parliaments input in the European system of governance, but, beyond that formal competence, the system proves to be of little practical relevance because it presents some weaknesses and does not bring a relevant shift inside the traditional institutional triangle designed for making decisions for the EU. The method used to reach such a conclusion is the analysis of the early-warning system for subsidiarity along four key elements of an efficient mechanism of risk prevention.
Regionalization amidst ‘state-shrinkage’: the case of Vojvodina
June 1, 2011 Author:Vassilis Petsinis
The advent of the third millennium saw rapid and radical changes in Serbia’s constitutional landscape. One of the debates has been the restitution of certain competencies to the assembly of Vojvodina. Since 2000, the Vojvodinian debate was overshadowed by other domestic and foreign policy priorities until it kicked off again by the end of the third millennium’s first decade. Correspondingly, by the end of November 2009, the assembly of Vojvodina and the Serbian parliament jointly adopted the new statute for Vojvodina. In this work, I focus on the political significance of the new statute for Vojvodina, as part of the broader process to set Serbia’s regionalization on novel foundations. What I try to demonstrate is that the new statute is compatible with the ‘European’ guidelines and standards on contemporary regionalization. It also comes to fill in certain gaps and ambiguities in the 2006 Serbian Constitution.
Keywords: Serbia, Vojvodina, regionalization, regionalism, European integration
Sebastiaan Princen, Agenda Setting in the European Union, Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics, 2009. Reviewed by Eleanor E.Zeff
December 16, 2010 Author: Eleanor E. Zeff
Agenda-Setting in the European Union by Sebastiaan Princen is a book
in the series of Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics edited by Michelle
Egan, Neill Nugent and William Patterson and published by Palgrave/
MacMillan, a global academic publisher. Traditionally, agenda-setting has
contributed an important element to the study of policy making in general. In
this book, Princen isolates and analyzes the agenda setting processes used in the
European Union (EU) in order to shed new light on European integration and
on EU policy-making. He then compares EU to United States (US) agendasetting
in the areas of health and environmental policies. By theoretically
examining how issues of concern to the EU get on its political agenda, and
comparing those issues with policy agendas in the United States, Princen
presents a fresh explanation for European integration and a more optimistic
view of democracy in the EU.
An Innovative Pattern in Political Science: The Security Governance Approach
December 10, 2010 Author: Claudiu-Laurenţiu ŢABREA
The present study aims to explain and analyze this new pattern within the security studies – the security governance – into a descriptive and interpretative manner and suggests it as an alternative for solving and managing the security issues, the risks and threats that are much more diverse and complex in the current international system. The Security Governance is a recent approach, still in an evolving phase, which determined its appearance in the specialists’ debates in the context of globalization, actually combining the concept of security (understood in its broadest sense) with the notion of governance. To show the applicability of this new approach, we have focused on a case study, analysing the level reached by the security governance in the Wider Black Sea Area on two dimensions: the security sector within the littoral states and the regional level.
Europeanization of Administrative Law with a view to Hungary
December 1, 2010 Author: Anita Boros
The Europeanization of administrative law is a prominent issue in public administration: the problem, however, is well beyond administrative law. The effect of Community law on member state administration beyond administrative law is also an issue of constitutional and state law, as well as of political science.The effect of the implementation of Community law, Community court rulings and the specific internal administration of Community organs, the organs serving the enforcement of Community law and established in the member states (e.g.: agencies) on member state administration is getting more and more evident. Our article attempts to introduce the general issues of the Europeanization of administrative law, the issues emerging in connection with the Lisbon Treaty, and the administrative sectors where the effect of Community law is the most obvious, so we are examining the most important Community and domestic interfaces with procurement law and the role of the Internal Market directive simplifying the administrative procedure.As a conclusion we can say that more and more areas of public administration are affected by the administrative provisions of EU. The effect of such provisions is partly direct, partly indirect, but still perceptible. Regarding the examined areas of public administration we can state that the role of national (member state) public administration is changing and this is influencing the freedom of the public administration authorities and thus the question of state sovereignty as well.
Li Zhang, News Media and EU – China Relations, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011
December 1, 2010 Author: Raluca Maria Nicoară
In a society of interdependences, understanding the complexity of
interconnections brings up the necessity of studying other types of actors: the
worldwide broadening of communications changed the perception over the
importance of holding the information or using it; overall, the state authority
had to adapt to these changes.
Interests shaping EU energy policy at the Court of Justice
December 1, 2010 Author: Inese Stepina
Has litigation as a strategy of interest representation at the European Union (EU) level promoted policy development in EU energy policy? The objective of the research is to demonstrate what interests have been represented in one of the EU’s institutions – the Court of Justice of the EU – and what the outcome for EU energy policy was. The content analysis of the case-law of the Court over the last twenty years (1989–2009) in the EU energy policy area reveals that the most vulnerable areas or obstacles in the creation of an EU energy market and in efforts to develop a common EU energy policy were the electricity sector and the oil and gas sectors, notably related to the application of common rules for the internal electricity and natural gas market, access to and use of national electricity transmission systems, exclusive rights to import and export gas and electricity, as well as the price of electricity transmission. These were policy domains where opposite interests met and were subjects of litigation at the Court. However, litigation at the Court at the EU level has not had an influence on the development of EU energy policy and has not expanded EU competences in the area.
Lobbycracy or is there a new layer of the EU policy making system?
December 1, 2010 Author: Adrian-Daniel Stan
This article is based on the idea that the European networks generated by lobby activities influence the way European policies are drafted, adopted and implemented. The multilevel structure of the EU has created a secondary force of action between central European institutions and the nation-state. The focus of this article will be placed on the structure of the lobbyists – EU – relationship and its effects on policymaking. This lobbycracy is expanding fast, helping the integration process to fulfill its duties and giving the European citizens good public policy.
The European remembrance between unity and diversity – Creating a common EU identity through discourse
December 1, 2010 Author:Cristina Stanc
Much has been said on how important a common European identity
is for governance in the European Union. Most often put in the context of the so called
‘democratic deficit’, the European identity is thought to be an answer to legitimacy problems
of the EU, by creating a European public sphere. The following paper goes beyond this
discussion and investigates processes of identity building in the European Union. It begins
with the premise that remembrance is a way of creating a common identity and that the
EU starts creating a common remembrance through discourse. Applying the frame analysis
to policy documents, this paper aims at presenting the strategy by which the EU policy of
remembrance strikes the balance between creating a sense of commonness and respecting
diversity of memories.