Search

The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) medical devices is rapidly growing. Although AI may benefit the quality and safety of healthcare for older adults, it simultaneously introduces new ethical and legal issues. Many AI medical devices exhibit age-related biases. The first part of this paper explains how 'digital ageism' is produced throughout the entire lifecycle of medical AI and may lead to health inequity for older people: systemic, avoidable differences in the health status of different population groups. This paper takes digital ageism as a use case to show the potential inequitable effects of AI, conceptualized as the 'AI cycle of health inequity'. The second part of this paper explores how the European Union (EU) regulatory framework addresses the issue of digital ageism. It argues that the negative effects of age-related bias in AI medical devices are insufficiently recognized within the regulatory framework of the EU Medical Devices Regulation and the new AI Act. It concludes that while the EU framework does address some of the key issues related to technical biases in AI medical devices by stipulating rules for performance and data quality, it does not account for contextual biases, therefore neglecting part of the AI cycle of health inequity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Union (EU) seems to presume that the mass production of European research papers indicates that Europe is a leading scientific power, and the so-called European paradox of strong science but weak technology is due to inefficiencies in the utilization of this top level European science by European industry. We fundamentally disagree, and will show that Europe lags far behind the USA in the production of important, highly cited research. We will show that there is a consistent weakening of European science as one ascends the citation scale, with the EU almost twice as effective in the production of minimal impact papers, while the USA is at least twice as effective in the production of very highly cited scientific papers, and garnering Nobel prizes. Only in the highly multinational, collaborative fields of Physics and Clinical Medicine does the EU seem to approach the USA in top scale impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Council Directive 2001/55/EC on temporary protection in the event of a "mass influx" of displaced persons provides for a mechanism that shall lead to collaborative efforts of the European Union Member States in dealing with persons seeking protection in Europe. In spite of the current "refugee crisis", not even those Member States which have admitted the largest numbers of persons, such as Germany, have made any attempts to trigger this Directive. The article first assesses the applicability of the Directive with respect to the surge in arrivals in 2015, and then analyses the reasons for its non-application on the basis of rational choice theory. It concludes that the benefits resulting from an application of the Directive are minimal while transaction costs to reach agreement in the Council are high. Thus, those countries affected by "mass influx" lack the incentives for triggering its mechanisms, and the Directive can be considered a failed instrument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Social Charter has recently received increased attention due to the evolution of its monitoring mechanism and the need to address a multitude of contemporary challenges to socio-economic rights. Although the treaty's preamble has played a crucial role in the interpretation of substantive provisions and in shaping state obligations, little attention has been paid to the way in which the preamble has defined the fundamental lines of the 'jurisprudence' of the Charter's monitoring body. The European Committee of Social Rights has deduced from the Charter's preamble several important general principles for the protection of socio-economic rights, on which it grounds its interpretation. This article analyses these principles and evaluates their effects in the relevant practice. The findings suggest that the Charter's preamble serves different purposes and performs multiple functions in international law, thus challenging the common assumption that human rights treaty preambles are empty phrases of a merely ceremonial nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the Green Paper, Equality and Non-Discrimination in an Enlarged European Union of European Community (EC) Treaty in the European Commission in Europe. It notes that the paper has two objectives including the analyses of European Union's (EU) efforts to combat discrimination and to promote equal treatment. It is divided in three sections, which assess the EC achievements in the implementation of non-discrimination policy.

The EU27 Position Paper on Intellectual Property sets out the EU Member States' starting position in relation to pre-existing IP rights as part of the Brexit negotiations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

These results contribute to our understanding of voting behaviour and suggest that a stricter crises management policy may mobilize citizens and increase their support to incumbent politicians. The first paper uses an experimental design to study European citizens' support for European Union (EU) budgetary assistance programmes. In this issue, there are four papers, each tackling a policy-relevant topic using an original methodology. [Extracted from the article]

This paper introduces a set of papers analysing the likely economic impact of Brexit across key aspects of the UK economy as the country comes to the end of its first full year outside the European Union. The Brexit vote in 2016 was not just a vote on the UK's relations with the institutions of the European Union but was also a referendum on the fractured state of the UK as a nation. The resulting conflation of Brexit with domestic economic policy debates is reflected in this issue. A first cluster of papers focuses on the consequences of choosing to abandon the 'four freedoms' enshrined in the Treaty of Europe, the free movement of goods, services, capital, and labour across the EU, and a second is concerned with the indirect effects of Brexit in those areas of domestic policy that have been opened up by the Brexit decision. The economic consequences of Brexit are only just emerging, but these papers provide an informed perspective on the state of debate, and the likely implications of Brexit across a range of policy areas, both international and domestic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent economics of knowledge studies have highlighted the strong positive effects that the limited exhaustibility of knowledge and its cumulability exert on the recombinant generation of new technological knowledge. While existing empirical investigations primarily focus on the knowledge generation and technology production functions, the analysis of the cost of knowledge has received less attention. This paper aims to fill this gap by investigating the dynamics and determinants of patent costs in the European Union in the period 1992–2012. The analysis of patent unit costs in European countries, measured as the amount of research and development (R&D) expenditure per patent application to the European Patent Office (EPO), shows a steady decline and clear convergence toward lower levels, both in time and across countries. We find that a larger stock of patents and a higher technological variety and coherence of its composition are associated with a sharper reduction in patent costs. Our findings suggest that, in Europe, ideas have been getting cheaper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the exploration of the potential application of duties related to the diligent anticipation of the (imminent) harms and (potential) benefits to humans that scientific innovation engenders to health-related contexts. In particular, it addresses the intersection between the human right to science and health-related data processing, which plays a key role in the production, translation and implementation of biomedical knowledge. The first part of the paper provides a brief recap of the interpretation of the right to science based on Art. 15 (1) (b) of the United Nations International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (hereafter ICESCR or Covenant) and the resulting obligations for States in the context of health and related data processing. The second part of the paper defines the relevance of the ICESCR for EU Member States and the European Union. In the third part, theses are put forward on how the human right to science and the obligations under Art. 15 (1) (b) ICESCR influence the interpretation and application of the General Data Protection Regulation as secondary EU law. By examining the justifications for using the right to science to interpret EU data protection law and by providing interpretation and application guidance on the main data protection principles in the area of health-related data processing, taking this right into account, the aim is to shape the EU data governance framework to meet the requirements of this human right. In doing so, the paper aims to close the gaps in the interpretation and application of the main rules of EU data protection law. Such standardization in the health-related context can contribute to a coherent interpretation and application of existing rules by referring to this emerging human right. Against this background, the paper identifies governance measures that the EU legislator could take to guide the processing of health-related data in line with the requirements of the right to science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The euro and prices DID EMU AFFECT PRICE SETTING AND INFLATION PERSISTENCE? Surprisingly not; or at least not directly. Using data on individual consumer prices and on sectoral inflation rates from six euro area countries spanning several years before and after the introduction of the euro, we look at whether EMU has altered the behaviour of price setters and/or the dynamics of inflation. We find no evidence of such change in 1999, when the euro was introduced as an electronic unit of account. At the start of 2002, when the paper currency appeared, the frequency of price adjustments (both upward and downward) increased suddenly, while the average magnitude of price changes fell; both, however, quickly settled back to the earlier patterns. Conversely, we do find evidence of a permanent decline in the persistence of inflation after the mid-1990s. While in principle this could be attributable to the preparation of EMU, this interpretation is put into question by the fact that a similar decline occurred also in the UK and in the US. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the effects of digitalization and organizational practices on innovation in Europe, between 2010 and 2016. We analyze the cross-country and industry differences in firms' investments and capabilities to adopt and use new technologies and their effects on innovation outputs. Along with traditional drivers of innovation, such as research and development (R&D) expenditure, two composite indicators are constructed. One encompasses direct measures of the adoption and use in enterprises of a set of digital technologies. The other measures the learning capacity of organizations, which captures the use of management tools and organizational practices concerned with the improvement of individual and organizational learning. Product, process, organizational, and marketing innovations are identified as well as their combinations within companies. Empirical evidence is provided by a unique dataset based on the integration at the sector within the country level of European Union (EU)-wide employers' and employees' surveys: the Community Innovation Survey (CIS), the Community Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) usage and e-commerce in enterprises survey (Eurostat), and the European Working Conditions Survey (Eurofound). The descriptive evidence shows that Digital technology adoption and use is rapidly growing across Europe, while the Learning capacity of organizations remains stagnant. By contrast, our results from the econometric analysis show that these investments can favor all forms of innovations and that, further, they may show some complementarity. Overall, a mix of product/process innovations and organizational/marketing innovations rests on joint investments in R&D, digital technology adoption and use, and learning capacity of the organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Although current efforts are made to diminish the incidence and burden of disease, cancer is still widely identified late at stage. This study aims to conduct a systematic review mapping the existent and emerging clinical research on artificial intelligence (AI) in the treatment of cancer and to underpin its integration challenges and opportunities in the European Union (EU) health sector. Methods A systematic literature review (SLR) evaluating global clinical trials (CTs; published between 2010 and 2020 or forthcoming) was concluded. Additionally, a horizon scanning (HS) exercise focusing on emerging trends (published between 2017 and 2020) was conducted. Results Forty-four CTs were identified and analyzed. Selected CTs were divided into three research areas: (i) potential of AI combined with imaging techniques, (ii) AI's applicability in robotic surgery interventions and (iii) AI's potential in clinical decision making. Twenty-one studies presented an interventional nature, nine papers were observational and 14 articles did not explicitly mention the type of study performed. The papers presented an increased heterogeneity in sample size, type of tumour, type of study and reporting of results. In addition, a shift in research is observed and only a small fraction of studies were completed in the EU. These findings could be further linked to the current socio-economic, political, scientific, technological and environmental state of the EU in regard to AI innovation. Conclusion To overcome the challenges threatening the EU's integration of such technology in the healthcare field, new strategies taking into account the EU's socio-economic and political environment are deemed necessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article about the "Overview of clinical forensic services in various countries of European Union" [[1]] is an important milestone in the field of clinical forensic medicine in so far that one of the main proposals would be to set up a Clinical Forensic Network for Europe. Were to discuss a future Clinical Forensic Network for Europe (CFN Europe) and a European-wide minimum standard for clinical forensic examinations. Furthermore, the CFN Europe could be a network proposing training for medical staff and other occupational groups who are in close contact with victims of physical and/or sexual violence in order to secure and adequately store forensic findings. [Extracted from the article]

This paper aims to trace how the meaning of ethics in the research and innovation (R&I) sector is discursively and procedurally revised within two consecutive modes of legitimizing public policies in the European Union (EU), namely, good governance and better regulation. The text draws insight from Ernesto Laclau's work on discursivity, contingency, and hegemony and Chantal Mouffe's critique of consensual political theories. It shows that with the policy transition from responsible innovation to breakthrough and disruptive innovation, the possibilities to employ ethics in interrogating the ambiguous nature of science and technology advancement become very limited. Ethics is currently construed as a means for unclogging the innovation process and embracing the collective production of risks. The paper demonstrates that the recent emptying of ethics within EU R&I is an expected effect of hegemonization practices and discursive configurations promoting and stabilizing the science–market alliance in science and policy relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transformative innovation policy (TIP) implies not only new directionality for innovation policy but also rethinking its means and scope. This requires further investigation into the role of horizontal and cross-sectoral policy programmes that may be relevant for upscaling innovation and destabilising regimes. This paper studies the national implementation, in Finland, of the European Union (EU) programme for COVID-19 recovery, the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF), as an example of a cross-sectoral policy programme. It is of interest, because the EU has set certain conditions related to sustainability transitions for the RRF. Using a transformative policy mix approach, the paper finds that the Finnish RRF Programme lists many policy measures that can be regarded as having a transformative intent. These include upscaling innovative sustainability niches and destabilising existing practices. Yet, we also found that there is a risk that cross-sectoral programmes fail to find overall transformative visions and fund multiple potentially competing technological pathways instead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is it possible to develop a robust crisis management response in a system where governance is characterized by coercive power and adversarial bargaining rather than the diversity, inclusion, and openness highlighted by extant scholarship as conducive factors for robustness? Using two instances of crisis in the European Union—the Eurozone crisis (2010‒2015) and COVID-19 pandemic (2020‒2022)—the paper argues that how actors reinterpret existing rules and institutions offers an important source of robustness in crisis management. Based on the employment of a disaggregation of robustness into degrees of robustness, as well as the concepts of ideational and institutional power, we show how actors can counter the coercive power of dominant coalitions and open up for rule adaptation through reinterpretations of existing rules that, at least in the short term, can solidify the functioning of existing institutions faced by turbulence. In the context of the Eurozone crisis, ideational and institutional power thus enabled a moderately robust response without treaty reform. In the case of the pandemic, it was possible to convince (particularly German) policymakers of the need to employ new ideas about common debt. This meant less need to employ ideational and institutional power by other actors, leading to significantly more effective crisis management than in the Eurozone crisis, what the paper terms maximal robustness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to evaluate the concept of data sovereignty as applied to data spaces, particularly the Common European Data Space (CEDS). The CEDS aims to develop a single European data market through nine domain-specific data spaces: health, industrial and manufacturing, agriculture, finance, mobility, Green Deal, energy, public administration, and skills. It aims to do this by providing a secure and trustworthy technical architecture, a robust data-sharing business model realized through effective governance, and ensuring data sovereignty. Ensuring data sovereignty, however, is challenging when different agents all claim authority over their data within a data space. This paper focuses on three data sovereign agents in the CEDS—individual, organization, and state—to examine how data sovereignty can be implemented in data spaces based on current European Union regulations and whether shortcomings still need to be addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the scope of its initiative on 'Compulsory Licensing in the EU', 8 the European Commission launched a call for evidence on 1 April 2022 and a public consultation on 7 July 2022 with the aim of gathering views from stakeholders. The objective of this initiative is to explore the possibility of revising the framework for compulsory licensing in the EU to make it more 'adequately prepared and coordinated to tackle future crises'. 9 The authors of this position paper welcome the Commission's attempt to reinvigorate the public discourse on this important subject. Depending on the issue to be addressed and the extent of the Commission's willingness to reform, different regulatory approaches are conceivable. Subject to compatibility with the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality, these include: Rather than making concrete recommendations on the regulatory approach, this paper addresses selected aspects by way of a preliminary, non-exhaustive note on: the proposed reform's scope and the grounds for a compulsory licence; the requirements of prior negotiation and licensing failure; government use; procedural matters; compulsory licences for patent applications and products; the relation with other regulations and sui generis regimes (i.e. trade secret protection, regulatory data protection and supplementary protection certificates); the concept of adequate remuneration; compulsory licences for European patents with unitary effect; and the exhaustion of products placed on the market under a compulsory licence. – soft law measures, such as guidelines and recommendations; – harmonisation of national laws (substantive and/or procedural); 10 – judicial cooperation (i.e. mutual recognition of judgments and of decisions in extrajudicial cases); 11 – centralisation of granting and/or judicial review competences; – creation of a supranational compulsory licence; – or any combination thereof. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the ongoing transformation from 'industrial capitalism' towards an 'informational capitalism', one of the core challenges is for the law to design and enforce an appropriate legal framework for access to and use of data. Focusing on access to data generated by the use of products or online services (product and online services usage data), the aim of this paper is to describe and systematize the core elements of this legal framework in the making and to provide some guidance on how it could be further developed. Access by the users of products or online services to the individual-level data that their usage generates must be distinguished from access to bundled individual-level and aggregated data by third parties. With regard to data co-generators' access to individual-level product usage data, the Draft Data Act proposes to create new rights to access that will become part of a new private law infrastructure of data rights. These access rights are granted independently of whether the data holder is dominant. With regard to data co-generators' access to individual-level services usage data, the Digital Markets Act (DMA) establishes rights of access only vis-à-vis gatekeepers within the meaning of the DMA. Third-party undertakings who request access to bundled individual-level or aggregated data can, as of now, only base their claim on Art. 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) and – in the case of search data – on Art. 6(11) DMA. A regulatory approach has been proposed as an alternative. This paper strives to systematize this hodgepodge of approaches and discern the broader principles that can guide the legislature in creating and fleshing out the legal framework for data. Ideally, markets for bundled individual level or aggregated data will emerge based on the rights of data co-generators to access individual-level data. For this to happen, data intermediaries will have to play a larger role and succeed in bundling and marketing such data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collaboration networks are the main mechanisms through which regional innovation capacities are enhanced. These networks have been analyzed by using data either on research projects or patents. However, analyzing only one type of network can limit our understanding of regional innovation dynamics. In this paper, we investigate the drivers of network evolution in two inter-regional network types within the European Union: R&D project networks and co-patenting networks. Specifically, we examine data on Framework Program project collaborations and patent collaborations at the NUTS2 regional level between 2011 and 2019. Our empirical strategy is based on Stochastic Actor-Oriented Model where we analyze and compare the factors that affect the evolution of two networks. We find that path-dependent processes resulting from past networks, such as triadic closure, preferential attachment, and tie repetition, play a more important role in explaining the evolution of R&D project networks compared with patent networks. On the other hand, regional characteristics, particularly the patenting intensity of a region and similarity in patenting between regions appear to be more influential in shaping patent networks. These results have important implications for the future evolution of knowledge networks in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of the European Union common agricultural policy direct payments on land prices has received substantial attention in recent years, leading to heterogeneous evidence of capitalisation for both coupled and decoupled payments. In this paper, we provide an extensive review of the empirical works addressing this issue econometrically and compare their results through a Bayesian meta-regression model, focussing on the impact of decoupling and its implementation schemes. We find that the introduction of decoupled payments increased the capitalisation rate, although the extent of this increment hinges on the implementation scheme adopted by the member state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a firm-level examination of the European Union (EU) vs US research and development (R&D) intensity differences based on four pictures taken during the time span 2005–2017. It contributes to the literature on the topic by inspecting for the first time which sectors and firms account the most for the aggregate R&D intensity performance of these two economies. Analyzing the top 1250 R&D investors worldwide in four different years, it finds that (i) only few companies within key (for their relative impact on the overall R&D intensity) high-tech sectors determine (positively and negatively) the bulk of the sector's intensity, (ii) the EU holds a much lower number of both larger and smaller R&D investors than the United States in the key high-tech sectors, and (iii) there is a high heterogeneity in firms' R&D intensity within such key sectors. These findings are crucial to better understand the aggregate transatlantic corporate R&D intensity gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers whether pricing algorithms present novel issues that existing merger control frameworks and practices are inadequate to address, particularly in relation to pre-merger disclosure of pricing algorithms and the suitability of current tests and remedies for addressing coordinated effects. Through a comparative and critical analysis of the merger control regimes and practices of the European Union, United Kingdom, and Australia, this paper finds that whilst such regimes and practices are broadly adequate for dealing with algorithmic transactions, there are nonetheless potential areas for improvement. Disclosure of a pricing algorithm may contravene prohibitions on the sharing of competitively sensitive information. As such, merger parties may need to rethink aspects of their usual due diligence procedures. Pricing algorithms may also increase the potential for coordinated effects to arise in some markets that would ordinarily have been considered too complex, asymmetric, opaque, or insufficiently concentrated for tacit coordination to occur, or be used to retaliate more effectively against deviations from a coordinated equilibrium, or to raise the height of barriers to entry. Competition authorities may therefore need to amend their standard approach to investigating and assessing coordinated effects, as well as their traditional approach to remedies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Alcohol increases cancer risk, but less is known about public awareness of this link. This scoping review summarizes recent findings on the public awareness of alcohol as a cancer risk factor in European Union and UK. Methods Four databases (Web of Science, MEDLINE, PsycInfo, CINAHL) were searched for papers containing data on awareness of alcohol as cancer risk factor in EU or UK published between January 2017 and December 2022, and complemented with grey literature searches. Results In total, 45 studies were included covering 18 EU countries (Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden) and UK, presenting data collected between 2009 and 2022. Studies covered general population (17 studied a nationally representative sample), women, health professionals, patients and young people. Awareness of alcohol causing cancer in general was higher and studied more often than awareness of alcohol's impact on specific cancers. Among the EU general population, awareness of the link between alcohol and breast cancer ranged between 10% and 20%, head and neck cancer 15–25%, colorectal and oesophagus cancer 15–45% and liver cancer 40%. Awareness was higher among young people and specialized health professions and lower among women (the latter specifically for the breast cancer). Conclusions While awareness rates varied depending on the exact question wording, many studies showed low awareness of the alcohol-cancer link, especially for specific types such as breast and colon cancer. Public should be better informed about alcohol consumption-related cancer risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

More than a decade after the start of the eurozone crisis, the coronavirus in Spain has brought back the idea of constitutional reform in social rights. The paradigm shift that occurred with the arrival of the pandemic is hardly questionable. From the austerity promoted by European institutions and assumed by national authorities in the face of the 2008 financial crisis, we have recently moved on to boosting public investment and social spending in both spheres of governance. This paper comparatively analyses the two scenarios to demonstrate that economic policy is a matter of ideology. Moreover, austerity is only one of many possible responses to economic downturns. And to preserve our welfare state in the face of future austerity trends, this paper argues strongly in favour of a series of constitutional reforms in Spain to guarantee the effectiveness of social rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The U.K. economy experienced significant macroeconomic adjustments following the 2016 referendum on its withdrawal from the European Union. To understand these adjustments, this paper presents empirical facts using novel U.K. macroeconomic data and estimates a small open economy model with tradable and non-tradable sectors. We demonstrate that the referendum outcome can be interpreted as news about a future decline in productivity growth in the tradable sector. An immediate fall in the relative price of non-tradable goods induces a temporary "sweet spot" for tradable producers. Economic activity in the tradable sector expands in the short run, while the non-tradable sector contracts. Aggregate output, consumption, and investment growth decelerate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impacts of climate change are unevenly distributed across territories. Less is known about the potential effects of climate policies aimed at mitigating the negative consequences of climate change while transitioning economies towards low-carbon standards. This paper presents an analytical framework for identifying and assessing the regional impacts of the green transition. We develop a Regional Green Transition Vulnerability Index, a composite measure of the regional vulnerability of European regions to the socio-economic reconfigurations prompted by the green transition. The index brings to light strong regional variations in vulnerability, with less developed, peri-urban and rural regions in Southern and Eastern Europe more exposed to the foreseeable changes brought about by the green transition. We also draw attention to the potential rise of pockets of growing 'green' discontent, especially if the green transition contributes, as is likely to be the case, to leaving already left-behind regions further behind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The copyright protectability of outputs generated by, or with the help of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a hotly debated question in academia and by many institutions. In practice, sophisticated AI algorithms have become a meaningful assistant in the European news industry for the reporting of sports (Retresco's collaboration with the German Football Association), weather (textOmatic's collaboration with FOCUS Online) and finance (the Guardian's 'Guarbot'). Furthermore, for the first time in copyright history a court in China assessed the validity of a company's copyright claim over the articles produced by the corporation's algorithm. The protection with copyright of this 'robojournalism' is no longer just a buzzwordy trend. From a technological perspective, robojournalism currently relies on assistive, generative and distributive technologies. The first two seem to be the most problematic from a copyright perspective as they challenge the well-rooted human authorship requirement. Experts have been able to agree so far that it does not look like AI technology is going to be a disruptive force in the media industry. However, researching the impact of AI in journalism matters a great deal. There are numerous benefits stemming from the use of AI in the newsroom – from expanding news coverage, through faster content production, all the way to leaving journalists more time for the more 'creative' and investigative tasks where the algorithm remains weak. This paper addresses, first, the protectability of the outputs of robojournalism under the existing European Union copyright laws. It then goes on to introduce findings related to the practical significance of robojournalism in the European news industry. Here, our focus is on the business, media, and communications studies' perspectives of automated journalism. Our results demonstrate that the extent to which European journalism relies on assistive and generative technologies to produce written output does not justify, from a copyright perspective, the changing of the current anthropocentric copyright system. These findings have wider implications as AI-generated outputs have prompted many to talk about market failure if copyright (or related rights) protection was to be refused for such works. 1 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Union (EU) directive on personal data and resulting data protection legislation of EU member states require from data controllers, a notification of their activities to the appropriate supervisory authority. Included in this notification is also a description of the data or categories of data which are processed. Legislation in some EU member states (e.g. Slovenia) require that not only a description but also a concrete list of personal data attributes needs to be included in this notification. In such cases it is sometimes difficult to ascertain in concreto whether some collected attribute represents personal data (and should therefore be included in the list of attributes) or whether it is a non-personal attribute. Similarly, under the EU directive data subjects have various rights, including the right to access their data, and data controllers are sometimes faced with the problem of determining whether various data items constitute personal data. Further, the impending case in the European Court of Human Rights arising out of the decision of the UK case of Durant v Financial Services Authority (which narrowed the scope of personal data) has added some uncertainty to the interpretation of the EU directive. In view of the legal uncertainty regarding what constitutes personal data, this paper examines whether relational database design principles can be applied to identifying personal data. Using this approach, the paper explores various parallels between personal data identification and principles of relational database design. The paper thus makes a novel contribution to the ongoing uncertainty in data protection law. The paper also discusses the wider issue of applying computing/scientific principles to interpreting the law. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The income stabilisation tool (IST) is the latest tool proposed by the European Union (EU) to manage agricultural risks. It aims at stabilising farm income by compensating income losses. Using a discrete choice experiment, this paper investigates grapevine farmers' acceptance of the IST in Croatia and tests whether behavioural factors such as risk preferences, probability weighting and subjective probabilities related to future farm income explain acceptance of this new tool. Results suggest that there is demand for the IST. Pessimistic farmers are more likely to participate in the IST than others, suggesting that subjective probabilities influence farmers' decisions about agricultural risk management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to tackle climate change and biodiversity loss, the European Union (EU) promotes extensive farming. However, identifying such farms across countries and assessing their performance for policy purposes remains challenging. This paper combines a latent class stochastic frontier model (LCSFM) with a novel nested metafrontier approach. The resulting model enables the identification of intensive and extensive farms across countries, estimation of farm efficiency and identification of different technology gaps. Based on Farm Accountancy Data Network data of French, Irish and Austrian dairy farms,we find poorer environmental but better economic performance of intensive farms, compared to extensive farms. The largest productivity differences stem from technology gaps and not from inefficiency. The approach enables a more nuanced analysis of sources of inefficiency to assist policy design for future green payments in the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper scrutinizes the effect of social media use on institutional trust in the European Union (EU) among European citizens. Fixed-effects regression models on data from the Eurobarometer survey conducted in 2019, the year of the most recent European Parliament (EP) elections, demonstrate that higher social media use is associated with lower trust in the EU. More importantly, social media usage habits exert particularly detrimental effects in regions with wider and faster internet connections. In such high-information environments, those who more frequently use online social networks, tend to trust those networks, and receive information on EU affairs from these networks have less faith in the EU compared to those in regions with lower-quality internet access. In contrast, in regions with lower broadband access, receiving EU information from social media fosters political trust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines possible mechanisms behind the spike in racially or religiously-aggravated (RR) offences after the Brexit vote. It adds to the current literature in five significant ways: (1) it provides the first Brexit-related RR hate crime comparison between England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland; (2) it reports on results from a national-level panel model that adds to the debate in the literature on whether pro-leave or pro-remain areas saw greater increases hate crimes; (3) it assesses the role of demographic characterises on the variation in hate crime; (4) it compares the effect of the vote with other 'trigger events'; and (5) it uses social media data to control for variation in hate crime victim and witness reporting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As artificial intelligence ('AI') becomes pervasive, it is inevitable that there will be a corresponding increase in AI disputes. However, it is often no easy task to determine liability in AI-related disputes due to the unique features of many AI systems, including their complexity, opacity, and the ability of some AI systems to self-adapt. This paper considers the existing EU liability framework and concludes that, at present, it is not adequate to ensure that injured parties can be compensated for damage caused by AI. The argument presented is that Product Liability Directive 85/374/EEC should be amended to provide greater protection for claimants that suffer harm caused by AI, and proposals for revision are suggested. In addition, this paper argues that there are cogent reasons to design sector specific legislation and identify ex ante which party should be held strictly liable for certain classes of AI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can external threats strengthen group identity? A growing body of research in economics emphasises the importance of cultural attributes such as identity for trust and cooperation. However, where these attributes come from is not well understood. This paper examines reactions to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014, looking at European Union member states. Comparing low-threat to high-threat states in a difference-in-differences design, I find a sizeable and persistent positive effect on EU identity. It is associated with higher trust in EU institutions and support for common policies. Lower-level identities remain unaffected, and proximity to Russia and Russian minority size are driving high-threat status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2011, the European Union (EU) concluded the first of a 'new generation' of free trade agreements that contained a separate chapter with obligations relating to 'trade and sustainable development' (TSD) issues. This was the Free Trade Agreement with the Republic of Korea. The EU formally initiated its first TSD complaint, under this agreement, in 2018. This labour complaint came after a non-paper of the European Commission promised 'more assertive' use of the soft dispute mechanism for TSD obligations, following years of pressure by various stakeholders. This non-paper remained apologetic about hard sanctions but promised a review in 2023. This article aims to study to what extent the EU delivered upon its promise to use the soft dispute mechanism more assertively during its first TSD proceedings. It finds that the EU was not prepared to act assertively in relation to certain issues (collective bargaining and the right to strike) and certain workers (in the public and export sectors) during the proceedings before the ad hoc Panel of Experts, which ended in 2021. It argues, in particular, that the EU missed a major opportunity to use its bargaining leverage vis-à-vis Korean consumer conglomerates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a historically informed comparative study of militarization and deportation efforts along the Western (Spain–Morocco) and Eastern (Greece–Turkey) Mediterranean migratory routes from 2005 to 2017. Based on extensive fieldwork on both sites, we argue that these two policy instruments go hand-in-hand in the construction of the European Union's anti-immigration border and examine the continuities in their implementation along the two extremes of the Mediterranean basin. Our findings indicate that the origins of current militarization and deportation efforts in the Eastern Mediterranean (such as the EUROSUR system and the 'Hot Spots' approach) can be traced back to the Western Mediterranean and that they have been gradually expanded eastwards. Finally, the paper also demonstrates how militarization and deportation initiatives were implemented jointly by sovereign entities (the EU and member states), and by doing so it addresses the recent debates on the status of sovereignty. We provide evidence to support the argument that, rather than disappearing, sovereignty is re-articulated through cooperation among sovereign entities, despite occasional disagreements among them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Personalised medicine can improve both public and individual health by providing targeted preventative and therapeutic healthcare. However, patient health data must be shared between institutions and across jurisdictions for the benefits of personalised medicine to be realised. Whilst data protection, privacy, and research ethics laws protect patient confidentiality and safety they also may impede multisite research, particularly across jurisdictions. Accordingly, we compare the concept of data accessibility in data protection and research ethics laws across seven jurisdictions. These jurisdictions include Switzerland, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom (which have implemented the General Data Protection Regulation), the United States, Canada, and Australia. Our paper identifies the requirements for consent, the standards for anonymisation or pseudonymisation, and adequacy of protection between jurisdictions as barriers for sharing. We also identify differences between the European Union and other jurisdictions as a significant barrier for data accessibility in cross jurisdictional multisite research. Our paper concludes by considering solutions to overcome these legislative differences. These solutions include data transfer agreements and organisational collaborations designed to 'front load' the process of ethics approval, so that subsequent research protocols are standardised. We also allude to technical solutions, such as distributed computing, secure multiparty computation and homomorphic encryption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores possibilities for cross-fertilization between the mission-oriented approach (MOA), informing the European Union (EU) Missions, and Cohesion Policy (CP). It argues for mutual policy learning between CP and MOA to address their shortcomings: CP faces a gradual erosion of its identity, while MOA lacks a territorial perspective. MOA can offer a theoretical 'blueprint' for reorganizing and clarifying CP's ever-expanding and blurred thematic scope, providing direction to strengthen CP's result orientation, and encouraging the adoption of 'whole-of-government' approaches to streamline CP's complex governance relationships. MOA can benefit from adopting the CP architecture, which allows for common broad priorities to be adapted to territorial contexts and to regional strategies. MOA could also learn from CP's goal of maximizing equity and efficiency, its focus on empowering regions, and its redistributive approach for fostering the full potential of all regions to address societal challenges to support the objectives of the EU Missions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper estimates the dynamic effect of vaccination on mortality from COVID-19 using weekly data from 26 European Union countries during 2021. Our analysis relies on the double machine learning method to control for multiple confounders, including nonpharmaceutical interventions, climate variables, mobility factors, variants of concern, country- and week-specific shocks. In our baseline specification, we show that a 10 percentage point increase in cumulative doses per hundred inhabitants averts 5.08 COVID-19 deaths per million inhabitants at the eight-week horizon and 26.41 deaths in the eight-week time window considered. The average reduction in mortality in this window is close to 50%. Further estimates reveal that the effect of doses administered to adults aged 18–59 does not statistically differ from that of doses received by people aged 60 and over. Finally, vaccine-specific estimates document that mRNA-1273 (Moderna) and Vaxzevria (AstraZeneca) are more cost-effective in saving lives than Comirnaty (Pfizer), while we are unable to demonstrate any effect of Ad26.COV2.S (Johnson & Johnson). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effectiveness of climate pledges and eco-taxation as strategies for mitigating climate change within a networked agricultural supply chain organisation. We utilise variational inequality techniques within a multicriteria decision-making framework and validate our theoretical findings through numerical simulations using a machine learning augmented algorithm. By employing this approach, we position the Agricultural Sector Roadmap, aimed at capping global warming at 1.5°C, within the wider agricultural sector's climate action framework. Our results demonstrate that environmental taxation emerges as the most effective approach for addressing climate change. Eco-taxation leads to a 57.87 per cent reduction in global emissions, whereas climate pledges only account for a 20.59 per cent reduction at the same level of production. Furthermore, eco-taxation results in a 45.68 per cent greater reduction in emission intensity compared to climate pledges. In contrast to climate commitments, an eco-fiscal policy is capable of achieving the objectives established by the European Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article, published in Economic Policy, presents a collection of research papers that cover various economic topics and their policy implications. The papers discuss tax compliance strategies, the impact of the UK's exit from the European Union on trade patterns, the viability of the Target system in the Eurozone, labor force transitions, and the long-term effects of negative interest rates on credit supply in Spain's bank-based financial system. The research provides valuable insights for economic policymaking and enhances our understanding of contemporary challenges. [Extracted from the article]

Co-creation seems to be flourishing across innovation policy discourses: The concept suggests that engaging diverse actors throughout innovation processes will unlock new sources of innovation and conduce robust outcomes. While co-creation seems to embrace new and diverse participation opportunities, it is necessary to interrogate how it affects existing notions of public engagement. In this paper, we explore the discursive uptake of co-creation in European innovation policy. Drawing on a qualitative discourse analysis of European Union (EU) publications, we scrutinize the value propositions of co-creation and discuss them in light of the existing public engagement literature. We find that the EU tends to foreground alleged economic benefits of co-creation over questions of social justice. To that effect, it consistently conflates citizens, consumers, and users and blurs the line between self-motivated opportunity and democratic legitimacy. Countering the prevalent co-creation optimism, we propose a more nuanced outlook on co-creation that should prompt further scholarly inquiry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to contribute to the English School's (ES) understanding of the European Regional International Society (ERIS) through the work of Karl Polanyi. While ES theory has long been interested in regional international societies, its general approach remains limited to a methodologically internationalist frame that fails to capture the dynamism and historical change of regional formations. We therefore aim to better ground the ES account of the ERIS within a more robust political economy framework that incorporates domestic dynamics with international processes. The article first examines the making of the nineteenth-century liberal order and its eventual breakdown during the turn of the century—the "great transformation", which ultimately informed the rationale for the European Community (EC). We then focus our analysis on the EC's Common Agricultural Policy. With specific examination of sugar production, we explore the tensions and contradictions bound up with the formation of a protected domestic and regional sugar market, the pressures it exerted on the wider international society, and the ways in which European officials skillfully exploited the post-Cold War liberalization of international society as a means of (partially) "disembedding" European sugar. Lastly, we hope that this article begins a new conversation on how the tenets of political economy (Polanyian or otherwise) might, at long last, make an impact on ES theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines mass public opinion in three small states of the South Caucasus, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, to understand why some individuals in these states prefer a pro-Western foreign policy orientation–pursuing membership in North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU), while others do not. We draw on social identity theory to hypothesize the potential affinity some individuals feel toward the West. Using public data from the South Caucasus region where Russia has strongly attempted to block Western penetration, the paper demonstrates that the commitment to democratic values is central to the understanding of mass opinion over foreign alliances in small states: individuals who demonstrate pro-democracy attitudes and support democratic values are more likely to approve of pro-Western foreign policy orientation. These findings suggest that the study of foreign policy preferences in small states is important for our understanding of great power politics and alliance competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two principal strands of scholarship analyse the material roots of European Union (EU) discontent. Some focus on the effects of regional decline, while others examine the role of individual socioeconomic factors. This paper brings these two perspectives together. We argue that EU discontent is a multifaceted phenomenon structured by the spatially-rooted interplay between individual and regional material conditions and subjective perceptions. We apply PLS-SEM to Eurobarometer public opinion data (2018–2019) and find that the geographical location and the socioeconomic position shape EU discontent directly. However, material factors' relevance for EU discontent is the greatest in structuring individual future expectations. Furthermore, democratic dissatisfaction turns out to be a key factor, pointing to the importance of institutional perceptions in the geography of discontent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses digital-based approach in the international traffic and international border control measures in containment and mitigation of COVID-19. Topics discussed include WHO interim position regarding proof of vaccination and guidance to standardization of paper of COVID-19; agreement reached with the European Parliament on the EU digital COVID certificate; and scientific, ethical and legal aspects of digitalization.