Download or read book The Capacity of Central and East European Interest Groups to Participate in EU Governance written by Daniela Obradovic and published by ibidem-Verlag / ibidem Press. This book was released on 2012-02-24 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The integration of ten Central and East European countries (CEEC) into the EU as part of the 2004 and 2007 enlargements poses new challenges to EU governance, as the number of countries involved has thereby increased dramatically. However, the actors coming from the new member states also face challenges as they attempt to integrate themselves into EU decision-making processes. This book analyses the attempts of of civil society organisations from the Czech Republic and Poland to engage in EU governance in four policy fields. The guiding question is whether civil society organisations from the Central and East European member states have (or can gain) the capacity for meaningful participation in EU governance.After an introductory part, which outlines the analytical framework and offers a review of the literature, the actors and rules of EU governance are profiled. The third and fourth parts of the book then present case studies. The case studies address the civil society organisations most actively involved in EU governance, namely typical NGOs, trade unions, employers’ organisations and business associations.
Download or read book The European Union written by Kristin Archick and published by . This book was released on 2019-09-15 with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The European Union (EU) is a political and economic partnership that represents a unique form of cooperation among sovereign countries. The EU is the latest stage in a process of integration begun after World War II, initially by six Western European countries, to foster interdependence and make another war in Europe unthinkable. The EU currently consists of 28 member states, including most of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, and has helped to promote peace, stability, and economic prosperity throughout the European continent. The EU has been built through a series of binding treaties. Over the years, EU member states have sought to harmonize laws and adopt common policies on an increasing number of economic, social, and political issues. EU member states share a customs union; a single market in which capital, goods, services, and people move freely; a common trade policy; and a common agricultural policy. Nineteen EU member states use a common currency (the euro), and 22 member states participate in the Schengen area of free movement in which internal border controls have been eliminated. In addition, the EU has been developing a Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), which includes a Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP), and pursuing cooperation in the area of Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) to forge common internal security measures. Member states work together through several EU institutions to set policy and to promote their collective interests. In recent years, however, the EU has faced a number of internal and external crises. Most notably, in a June 2016 public referendum, voters in the United Kingdom (UK) backed leaving the EU. The pending British exit from the EU (dubbed "Brexit") comes amid multiple other challenges, including the rise of populist and to some extent anti-EU political parties, concerns about democratic backsliding in some member states (including Poland and Hungary), ongoing pressures related to migration, a heightened terrorism threat, and a resurgent Russia. The United States has supported the European integration project since its inception in the 1950s as a means to prevent another catastrophic conflict on the European continent and foster democratic allies and strong trading partners. Today, the United States and the EU have a dynamic political partnership and share a huge trade and investment relationship. Despite periodic tensions in U.S.-EU relations over the years, U.S. and EU policymakers alike have viewed the partnership as serving both sides' overall strategic and economic interests. EU leaders are anxious about the Trump Administration's commitment to the EU project, the transatlantic partnership, and an open international trading system-especially amid the Administration's imposition of tariffs on EU steel and aluminum products since 2018 and the prospects of future auto tariffs. In July 2018, President Trump reportedly called the EU a "foe" on trade but the Administration subsequently sought to de-escalate U.S.-EU tensions and signaled its intention to launch new U.S.-EU trade negotiations. Concerns also linger in Brussels about the implications of the Trump Administration's "America First" foreign policy and its positions on a range of international issues, including Russia, Iran, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, climate change, and the role of multilateral institutions. This report serves as a primer on the EU. Despite the UK's vote to leave the EU, the UK remains a full member of the bloc until it officially exits the EU (which is scheduled to occur by October 31, 2019, but may be further delayed). As such, this report largely addresses the EU and its institutions as they currently exist. It also briefly describes U.S.-EU political and economic relations that may be of interest.
Download or read book Participants Or Observers in European Governance written by Kristina Charrad and published by Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft. This book was released on 2010 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study focuses on the framework conditions under which civil society actors from the new Central and East European member states of the European Union are operating in Brussels. They are facing several challenges which complicate their access to the formal and informal networks of European policy making. By analysing the network around the Directive on Services, the author exemplifies the difficulties the civil society actors from the four new member states face and what implications it has on the EU governance. Kristina Charrad is a member of the Research Group European Civil Society and Multilevel Governance at the University of Mnster.
Download or read book The European Social Dialogue Under Articles 138 and 139 of the EC Treaty written by Christian Welz and published by Kluwer Law International B.V.. This book was released on 2008-01-01 with total page 692 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describes, analyses, and assesses the European social dialogue from a combined theoretical and normative perspective and applies theoretical strands stemming from industrial relations, EC law, and political theory to an understanding and assessment of the genesis, actors, processes, and outcomes of the European social dialogue through 2007
Download or read book Functional and Territorial Interest Representation in the EU written by Michèle Knodt and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-07-16 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite a substantial legacy of literature on EU interest representation, there is no systematic analysis available on whether a European model of interest representation in EU governance is detectable across functional, and territorial, categories of actors. ‘Functional’ actors include associations for business interests, the professions, and trade unions, as well as ‘NGOs’ and social movements; territorial based entities include public actors (such as regional and local government), as well as actors primarily organised at territorial level. What are the similarities and differences between territorial, and functional, based entities, and are the similarities greater than the differences? Are the differences sufficient to justify the use of different analytical tools? Are the differences within these categories more significant than those across them? Is there a ‘professionalised European lobbying class’ across all actor types? Does national embeddedness make a difference? Which factors explain the success of actors to participate in European governance? This book was originally published as special issue of Journal of European Integration.
Download or read book National Interest Organizations in the EU Multilevel System written by Rainer Eising and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-05-21 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Political scientists have always accorded interest organizations a prominent place in European Union (EU) policy-making because they connect the EU institutions to citizens, provide important information to EU policy-makers, and control resources that impact on the problem-solving capacity of EU policies. In other words, they are vital to both the input legitimacy and the output legitimacy of the EU. So far, research on interest organizations in EU policy-making has concentrated on EU-level interest organizations and EU-level politics. This edited book draws attention to the role national interest organizations play in the EU multilevel system. All contributions present state-of-the-art research on that subject in the form of theory-driven empirical analyses. Chapter 8 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tandfbis/rt-files/docs/Open+Access+Chapters/9781138614741_oachapter8.pdf
Download or read book Coping with Accession to the European Union written by T. Börzel and published by Springer. This book was released on 2009-09-29 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book explores the role of new modes of governance in helping future member states to cope with their accession to the EU. It examines the extent to which civil society and business have assisted the governments of Southern, Central and Eastern European accession countries in taking on the ever more comprehensive body of EU laws and regulations.
Download or read book The New Politics of European Civil Society written by Ulrike Liebert and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-08-21 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past two decades, civil society has played a pivotal role in Europe, from the demise of Communist rule to the reunification of Europe, followed by the expansion of the single market to the reconstitution of democracy in the enlarged European Union. European civil society has emerged as a social space between EU governance and the citizens of the member states, populated by non-state agents claiming to represent, speak for or participate on behalf of the most varied social constituencies in EU decision making. This book consolidates European civil society research by re-viewing its conceptual, normative and empirical-analytical foundations. With contributors from political science to sociology to law, it captures the evolving practices of European civil society that stretch across the national (local), the European and the global realm. Developing an analytical framework that highlights the interplay between civil society building and polity building from above as well as from below, within the legal and institutional framework of the EU, they examine whether and how civil society can contribute to making democracy work in normative democratic theoretical perspectives. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of civil society, European politics, political science and sociology.
Download or read book Lobbying in the European Union written by Heike Klüver and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-02-28 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thousands of lobbyists lobby decision-makers in Brussels every day, but little is known about their impact on policy. Lobbying in the European Union addresses this research gap and analyzes the conditions under which interest groups can successfully lobby the European institutions.
Download or read book Civil Society in Central and Eastern Europe written by Sabine and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2014-04-15 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As well as promoting debates about liberal democracy, the dramatic events of 1989 also bought forth a powerful revival in the interest of the notion of civil society. This revival was reflected mainly in two broad tracts of literature. The first was primarily focused on the events surrounding the Solidarity movement in Poland and the tumultuous events of 1980-81. The second was concerned with the ‘Velvet Revolutions’ more broadly. Following the events of 1989, there appeared a number of works sharing the common central argument that civil society played a key role in the overthrow of these Communist regimes in 1989. Challenging the centrally accepted wisdom that dissent in totalitarian regimes was representative of civil society, Civil Society and Communism posits the argument that the totalitarian public sphere, a new theoretical typology, presents a more robust and rigorous way by which to understand dissent and opposition in totalitarian Czechoslovakia, Poland and the GDR.
Download or read book Trade Unions from Post Socialist Member States in EU Governance written by Heiko Pleines and published by ibidem-Verlag / ibidem Press. This book was released on 2012-02-27 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The central question addressed by the papers collected in this book is whether trade unions from the post-socialist states have successfully represented their interests at the EU level. At issue is not only their purely formal integration into umbrella organizations and EU bodies; of much greater concern is their actual participation in political decision-making processes and the resulting impact at the national and sub-national level. The book therefore examines the integration and Europeanisation of a vital part of those societies which joined the EU in 2004. The empirical focus is on case studies from the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia.The book is based on the research project ‘Already arrived in Brussels? Interest representation of trade unions from the new EU member states at the EU level’, which was – with financial support from the Otto Brenner Foundation – carried out under the guidance of the Research Centre for East European Studies at the University of Bremen.
Download or read book Exploring Organized Interests in Post Communist Policy Making written by Michael Dobbins and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-05-18 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines organized interests in post-communist Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), providing incisive analyses in three critically important policy areas - healthcare, higher education and energy. The four countries surveyed – Poland, Hungary, Slovenia and the Czech Republic – afford rich diversity offering broad empirical material available for cross-country and cross-policy comparative analyses. Featuring interdisciplinary research, the book draws together recent developments in the evolution of post-communist advocacy organizations, their population ecology dynamics, interest intermediation, the influence of organized interests and their (bottom-up and top-down) Europeanization. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of Central and Eastern European politics, interest groups and lobbying, post-communism, transition and consolidation studies, and more broadly to European studies/politics. The Open Access version of this book, available at: http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781003049562, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
Download or read book Their Members Voice written by Meike Rodekamp and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-06-17 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The role of civil society organisations in Brussels is debated. Some view them as representatives of their members and thus as legitimising agents for policy-making in the European Union. Others see them as being elitist and out of touch with their membership bases, therefore ill-suited to promote democracy at the EU level. Taking civil society organisations in the EU’s external relations as an example, Meike Rodekamp submits these controversial views to a reality check. Interviews with representatives of civil society organisations in Brussels and their member organisations in the EU show that the Brussels offices have not lost contact with their members. However, member organisations differ substantially in their participation in internal decision-making processes, which raises doubts about the legitimacy gains through civil society participation in EU policy-making.
Download or read book Interest Representation and Europeanization of Trade Unions from EU Member States of the Eastern Enlargement written by Heiko Landgraf, Christin Pleines and published by BoD – Books on Demand. This book was released on 2015-05-01 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the integration of major trade unions from the six biggest countries of EU's Eastern enlargement into EU governance structures. Based on extensive empirical research, including more than 150 in-depth interviews, statistical data collection, document research, and eight detailed case studies, the contributions describe the activities and perceptions of the trade unions under investigation and the different levels of engagement, including European umbrella organizations, interregional cooperation, and European Works Councils. The book thus contributes to political science research on interest representation and Europeanization as well as sociological research on labor relations.
Download or read book Governance Failure and Reform Attempts After the Global Economic Crisis of 2008 09 written by Leonid and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2014-04-15 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The global economic crisis of 2008/2009 has had a broad impact far beyond economic concerns. Most importantly, it has been seen as a crisis of governance and debates have not just questioned specific regulations, e.g. of global financial markets, but have additionally challenged the appropriateness of underlying governance concepts not only in global markets, but also at the national level. For the post-socialist countries, which adopted market-oriented governance mechanisms less than two decades ago, the global crisis was the first stress test after the post-socialist recovery. The contributions in this book focus on the impact of the crisis and related reform attempts in two important areas. The first area is financial and monetary policy, which is at the core of the global crisis of 2008/2009. The second area is relations between business and state actors, where corruption and weak institutional frameworks can both seriously hamper reform attempts. The volume comprises essential contributions on how the post-socialist countries have tried to cope with the first global economical crisis they saw themselves confronted with.
Download or read book Europe in 12 Lessons written by Pascal Fontaine and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book EU Conditionality in the Western Balkans written by Florian Bieber and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-12-07 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume examines how European institutions, the European Union in particular through its policy of conditionality, have shaped the post-conflict reconstruction of the Western Balkans. From state-building to democratization and environmental policies, this book explores whether and in what ways the EU has been successful in consolidating states and democracy in the Balkans. In addition to requiring countries to be ready to join the European Union, the EU has also set new conditions in an effort to become the prime international organization involved in stabilizing the Western Balkans after the wars of the 1990s. Its record has been mixed: the conditions of the EU have often been haphazard and were frequently not followed through. In addition, enlargement towards the Western Balkans has been slow and marred by open questions over the stability of some countries in the region. This volume assesses the EU's struggle to transform the societies through conditionality and whether the offer of EU membership is enough to build stable democracies. This book was published as a special issue of Europe-Asia Studies.
