European Union

ANÁLISIS DEL REAL INSTITUTO ELCANO - ARI 23/2013 - 20/6/2013

Tema: A los 300 años de la firma del Tratado de Utrecht mediante el que se cedió Gibraltar al Reino Unido, se analizan las opciones legales, políticas y judiciales de España en el actual período histórico, en el que los marcos jurídicos e institucionales de la controversia están siendo abiertamente cuestionados.

Resumen: Nos encontramos en 2013 en una situación que parece el fin de un período completo en el tratamiento de la controversia gibraltareña. La conmemoración de los 300 años de Tratado de Utrecht debe llevar a España a reflexionar sobre su posición en la controversia y las posibilidades de acercamiento y acuerdo. Tras los cambios operados en los tres gobiernos en 2010-2011, la cuestión de Gibraltar se encuentra en una crisis negociadora de carácter estructural, ya que existe un marcado agotamiento o cuestionamiento de los marcos jurídicos bilateral y de Naciones Unidas. España de esta forma debe plantearse sus estrategias respecto a Gibraltar. Descartada la revisión o continuidad del Foro de Diálogo instaurado en 2004, las opciones estratégicas son limitadas, aparte de la tradicional reclamación descolonizadora de perfil bajo, o de una lectura restrictiva del Tratado de Utrecht que limite la cesión a la Ciudad excluyendo al Peñón. Las opciones para encarar una solución real giran en torno a sopesar la opción de una solución judicial, que es una alternativa de alto riesgo, y relanzar la negociación bilateral con una búsqueda imaginativa de soluciones, que es la que puede dar mejores resultados.

ARI 23/2013 - 20/6/2013
http://www.realinstitutoelcano.org/wps/portal/rielcano_es/contenido?WCM_GLOBAL_CONTEXT=/elcano/elcano_es/zonas_es/europa/ari23-2013-gonzalez-galvez-espana-gibraltar-300-anos-tratado-utrecht

El próximo día 31 de octubre, coincidiendo con el anunciado final de la prórroga para alcanzar un acuerdo entre el Reino Unido y la Unión Europea sobre el Brexit, Mario Draghi dirá arrivederci como Gobernador del Banco Central Europeo. Han sido ocho años intensos de gestión al frente de la autoridad bancaria comunitaria. Sin su inteligencia y capacidad profesional el euro, a buen seguro, habría desaparecido como moneda única continental y símbolo maestro del proceso de Europeización.

ABSTRACT Greece's accession to the European Union (EU) has affected its economy and its manufacturing sector. Large-size enterprises (LSEs) form a small but vital part of Greek manufacturing and constitute a major component of the country's stock market. According to finance theory, the capital structure of a firm affects its capital cost and market value. This paper, by using dynamic panel data techniques, investigates the determinants of capital structure of LSEs in the Greek manufacturing sector. The findings suggest that asset utilization, gross and net profitability and total assets growth have a significant effect on the capital structure of LSEs. This has straightforward policy implications. Following recent economic developments, Greek firms are exposed to a stronger competition in the EU and global markets, but also to new opportunities. In order to improve their capital structure, Greek manufacturing LSEs need to achieve higher asset utilization and profit margins through economies of scale attained mainly by higher exports. Moreover, governmental measures aiming to support LSEs' efforts should focus their impact on alleviating taxation, reducing bureaucratic burdens, minimizing market imperfections and subsidizing applications of new technology.

The police station in Irun, a border town between the Spanish and French states, has the highest inter-annual data of arrests of foreigners in irregular situations when compared to other police stations in the Basque Country. This pattern, of which many are unaware, is due to police identity checks in the border surroundings. The place where the border barrier was once, was occupied by a car toll booth constructed with a very particular structure: as a border, with cabins for police officers. In addition, the data for border readmission between these two states, under an agreement signed in 2002, requires special attention: 300,000 people were deported across the Northern border. 70% of the people detained in the French Detention Centre at Hendaia in 2015 were caught at the border. This case study on the Spanish-French border will shed some light on a disregarded topic: internal borders. Regulation in these areas is diverse. Many exceptions and specificities apply, in parallel or alternatively to the ordinary immigration rules, as a matter of exception to the law. In considering this, we need to rethink the image of a borderless Europe as stated by the Schengen agreement. Since the publication of Balibar’s essay ‘What is a border?’ (2005), the controls have multiplied all along the territory as a kaleidoscopic vision. The EU internal borders have never disappeared, but have mutated into a police managed model of internal borders.

With the PiS expected to prevail in Sunday's parliamentary elections, this book chapter discusses the substantial post-WWII efforts to transform a multicultural Poland into an ethnically homogeneous state, and then the post-1989 reactions to EU pressures to open borders for the free movement of people, goods, capital, and services.

Esta Europa de contrastes é simultaneamente marcada por perplexidades e por sinais promissores que podem emergir e travar a onda populista. E isso passa sem dúvida pelo crescente ativismo juvenil que está a desafiar as instituições e a classe política. Não será mera casualidade que a viagem aqui em questão beneficie de um programa de mobilidade Erasmus+, talvez o maior estímulo à edificação de uma Europa cosmopolita e transnacional.

Relevant theoretical underpinnings suggest that higher education, continuous professional development and training provide numerous opportunities for societal development. This contribution posits that interventions in education can play a significant role in shaping key performance indicators for social outcomes. It suggests that education contributes to create a fair, just and equitable society. This article discusses some of the contemporary challenges facing education leadership as it considers Malta’s National Reform Programme to meet Europe’s 2020 strategy. It sheds light on European Union’s recommendations and presents an assessment of the economic, social and environmental situation in Malta. The smallest EU state is pursuing its policy efforts to reduce early school leaving.  At the same time it is striving to address skills gaps (and mismatches) in its domestic labour market. This paper reiterates that with better education there may be implications for economic growth, job creation and competitiveness. It proposes family friendly measures including; better access to childcare, more flexible working schemes and employer incentives can help individuals to return to work. In conclusion, this contribution suggests that the pursuit towards continuous improvement in educational scale and social progress can create a virtuous cycle of productivity outcomes and economic growth.

The purpose of this article is to make sense of the resurgence of religion on the political agenda of a secularizing Europe. The focus is placed on the European Union (EU). The religious factor is considered alternatively as an influence on political attitudes and behaviours; as an ideological and party component; and as a controversial policy stake. We analyse the effects of the religious factor in past European elections as an element framing the perception of European integration and voting. We then document the crisis affecting the Christian-Democratic family incarnated by the European People’s Party (EPP) and competing narratives about religion to claim leadership in the redefinition of the core ideology and the boundaries of this political family. Two cases studies are developed: The ‘Hungarian crisis’ and identity politics promoted by Viktor Orbán: the Spitzenkandidaten process to select the EPP candidate running for the presidency of the Commission. We finally study the treatment of religion as a policy issue within the EP and as a potential bone of contention in the incoming term.

Deconstructing the autoimmune practices in the frontier zones to differ the notion of “state of law” allow me to imagine, as Derrida affirms, “the event of what or who comes” (2005, 159) at the current geopolitical landscape.A possibility to rethink the reasonable response that certain governments are offering to the human mobility based in assume their responsibility and juridical justness (unconditional hospitality) instead of perpetuate violence and terror, the trauma of the worst is coming.
To deconstruct the euphemistical policies of certain autoimmune practices at the frontier zones which avoid in the name of sovereignty human mobility between two or more countries in European Union, I will use the metaphor of the triple suicide for three events: a) biopolitics as a symbolic and strategic double suicide; b) the state of law failure as trauma; c) the sovereign exception as the vicious cycle of repression.

Fomina, Joanna. “Of “Patriots” and Citizens: Asymmetric Populist Polarization in Poland.” In: Democracies Divided The Global Challenge of Political Polarization, eds.Carothers, Thomas and Andrew O'Donohue, Brookings Institution Press, 2019, pp. 126-150.

Four decades have passed since the EU and China established diplomatic relations in 1975, and now became mutually indispensable economic partners, presenting both an opportunity and challenge. During that time, after the first market reforms were introduced in 1978, China has transitioned from a predominantly agricultural to industrial and service-oriented economy. On 11 December 2001, China also became the 143rd member of the WTO. The aim of this research is to quantitatively compare the US, EU and Chinese GDP from 1995 to 2014, the US and Chinese outward FDI from 1995 to 2013, and the EU 28 Total Imports from and Exports to the US and China between 2002 to 2014, and analyse the impact of the exponentially rising Chinese investments in the European Union (EU). We have found that while the US economy experienced a regression in general, and exhibited outward FDI exponential decrease in particular, the Chinese outward FDI sustained an exponential growth. Our analysis has shown that the now weakened US dollar and diminished US economic and industrial power, along with the US designed and archaic post World War II European institutions, vitiated by the recent US Economic Recession, which has swept along the EU and all other US dependent foreign economies globally, are and will continue to experience the primary impact of the exponentially rising economic investment of China in the EU. Furthermore, we have found that the Chinese economic growth has been affecting both the EU identity and policies. Yet, its full effect is waiting to be realized. The Chinese investment in the EU is estimated to peak during the next decade, when China will become by far the foremost economic partner of the EU. This crossroad may be reached as soon as in few years’ time and contribute towards the EU – Asian regional stabilization. In the changing context of the Sino – EU - US relations, due to the exponentially growing economic prosperity and rising global influence of China, the EU international institutions and socio-political structures will re-emerge with the once forgotten access to the 21st Century Silk Road Economic Belt, “The Silk Road II”, between China and the EU in the foreseeable future.

This article explores the implementation of the European Union’s (EU) counter-radicalisation strategy (EUCRS) and its treatment of religion. It focuses on two EU institutional frameworks that entail processes of politicisation and depoliticisation through rationalisation: the European Parliament, as the EU’s political arena par excellence where value-loaded issues are debated, and the Radicalisation Awareness Network, as a technocratic body that gathers experts and circulates best practices. We examine both policy configurations to determine whether, to what extent and how the religious dimension of the EUCRS leads to the development of new patterns to organise or contain conflict; and whether new actors, divisions, loyalties, repertoires of action and policy practices emerge. We demonstrate that religion is institutionalised as an EU policy issue in usual ways that serve to promote transnational regulation while preserving party, cultural, denominational and national differences without altering the structural logic of European politics and their standard approach to religion.

Durant les années 1990, les conflits ethniques en Yougoslavie ont conduit à la fragmentation et à la recomposition des territoires et des populations autour des groupes ethniques majoritaires. Les interventions successives de la communauté internationale, basées sur un apriori consociationnel et la volonté d’en finir avec la guerre, ont contribué à renforcer l’ethnicisation des territoires, des sociétés et des politiques.
Si de nombreuses recherches montrant les limites de ces interventions ont déjà été menées, peu sont dédiées à de possibles alternatives. L’objet de cet article est de discuter de manière théorique et critique de la possibilité d’émergence d’un nouveau dialogue politique et social en ex-Yougoslavie au travers des politiques de coopération transfrontalière d’inspiration européenne, et plus précisément de discuter leurs possibles liens avec les processus de réconciliation interethnique.

In a dramatic and unequivocal ruling on 24 September, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s decision to shut down Parliament for five weeks was overturned by the Supreme Court. Britain’s highest court ruled unanimously that Johnson’s advice to the Queen to prorogue Parliament between the second week of September and 14 October was ‘unlawful, void and of no effect’.

This article critically reviews some of the most recent developments in relation to reforms of ISDS, focusing on both the European and the international reform efforts. As to the former, we discuss two major developments: the establishment of the Investment Court System (ICS) in the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) and the proposed mechanism of a Multilateral Investment Court (MIC), intended to replace ICS, once in force. At the international level, we offer an overview of the UN negotiations to reform ISDS conducted under the auspices of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) Working Group III.

In reviewing these reform efforts we ask whether and how the (proposed) reforms address the major flaws of ISDS and, more particularly, the negative impact on the human rights of investment-affected communities and individuals. Regrettably, we find that the panoply of reform proposals discussed at the EU level and in the UN environment run the risk of reflecting the aspiration of the old adage: ‘for everything to stay the same, everything must change’.

We then present two main paths more likely to achieve transformative change: the first is to maintain ISDS, but to reform it in new and radical ways; the second implies the definitive disposal of ISDS. As to the former, we discuss proposals for granting states, investment-affected communities and individuals a right to initiate a claim against investors. We conclude that a reformed international investment law, which incorporates human rights and endows investment-affected communities and individuals with enforceable rights, may be a better alternative than abandoning ISDS tout-court.