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The increasing dominance of neoliberalism as the key steering mechanism of the European Union (EU) since the early 1990s has implied the competitiveness-oriented reshaping of cohesion policy. The aim of this paper is to initiate a debate from a critical political economic perspective on the implications of this shift for Central Eastern European (CEE) member states. To this end, the paper discusses the formation of EU centre-periphery relations from a CEE point of view and formulates some preliminary suggestions as to how cohesion policy would need to be rethought in order to ensure the better integration of lagging CEE regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper brings theoretical and empirical contributions to the scholarship on dimensions of politics in Europe. On the theoretical side it emphasizes the differences between Western and Eastern countries; we argue that while in Western Europe the main dimension of political conflict is the economic left-right, in Eastern Europe the main dimension is more likely to encompass cultural issues associated primarily with what in the Western literature is known as the secondary, social left-right. We trace the origin of the difference to the 1990s when parties in Eastern Europe chose to emphasize cultural issues to appeal to an electorate unfamiliar with capitalist economics and dissatisfied with the economic left associated with Communism and the economic right associated with painful reforms. To test this assertion we apply the Optimal Classification vote scaling method to an original dataset of over 24,000 votes from 22 European parliaments; the statistical tests support the hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: This paper questions the necessity and legitimacy of transitional arrangements in the field of free movement of workers imposed on the ten Central and Eastern European states which joined the EU in 2004 and 2007. It addresses the issue of free movement of labour in the enlarged Union in the context of the policy reasoning behind such transitional arrangements. Present transitional periods are contrasted with other solutions (such as allowing immigration quotas), which would have been politically fairer and psychologically wiser in confronting the arguments on the divide between 'first class' and 'second class' EU membership. The paper suggests that the results of the most recent studies, showing that the fears of the old Member States were mostly unfounded and that economic and social benefits result from the free movement of workers in the EU, should be taken into consideration for the next enlargement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The shock of refugee crisis from the fall of 2015 and terrorism in European Union space has called again into question the topic of European borders. In the present paper we intend to show that the process of the European integration has been marked by the division within the EU especially after the last enlargement eastward (2004/2007) took forms of fragmentation. Initally, the financial and economic crisis has produced new forms of division which have fragmentation aspects designed to create new European borders in the area of EU, but related to the internal process harmonization. Secondly, the Ukranian crisis, due the implications on external security of European Union, will multiply the fragmentation, but in this case being disputed the national security of the states located on the eastern borders of the EU. Finally, the refugee crisis has led to a real psychosis of security not only at the external borders of the European Union but also at the internal borders reaching national security sensitivities of Member States, hence there is danger that the EU may close between hard borders and postpone the European project for decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the nexus between political instability and economic growth in 10 CEE countries in transition in the period 1990-2009. Our results support the contention that political instability defined as a propensity for government change had a negative impact on growth. On the other hand, there was no causality in the opposite direction. A sensitivity analysis based on the application of a few hundred different variants of the initial econometric model confirmed the abovementioned findings only in the case where major government changes were applied to the definition of political instability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political risk—risk that investments are damaged by policy action of authorities—increased during the financial crisis due to controversies about the distribution of accumulated losses among stakeholders. Authorities interconnected by cross-border banks considered unilateral policies that minimised losses for domestic stakeholders at the expense of their foreign counterparts. This is at odds both with the assumption behind financial integration which presumes multilateral responses to cross-border shocks and with the typical definition of political risks that ignores the fact that not only host-country, but also home-country authorities can create such risks. This paper recasts the definition of political risk and reviews instances when political risk materialised within the EU banking market between 2007 and 2011. The analysis reveals that the EU regulatory framework needs to be enhanced to contain resurgent political risks systematically rather than through ad hoc interventions of the EU and international bodies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Clandestine migration, particularly along the Southern sea borders, dominates the debate on migration control in Europe. On the contrary, even if most irregular migrants are visa over-stayers, remarkably little is known about the management of the EU visa supply. This paper analyzes the role played by visa policy in the European immigration control system. It shows that visa policy has never been exclusively a tool of irregular migration prevention and that the overall trend of short-term visa supply highlights an asymmetric visa regime, increasingly open to Eastern European countries while remarkably rigid across the Mediterranean. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper draws on a report on the state of the art in East European political science based on country reports. It serves as a source for those interested in the degree of development and sophistication of the political science in EU accession countries, but stands also as a scientific contribution in its own right. The authors found a correlation between the degree of democratization and the degree of political science's institutionalization in a given country. Candidate countries improved the political science teaching and research, but dealing with the communist legacy proved a cumbersome task still needing decades for completion. There is considerable variation within the pool of countries surveyed. Those which had the opportunity to develop even a minor political science nucleus in the communist regime are doing far better presently. The solutions suggested to bridge the gap between the two Europes are the mobility of academics and students, higher autonomy of the Universities and the wider use of new communication technologies [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, attention is being increasingly drawn to the role of Europe in general, and the EU in particular, in shaping policies which may best serve, in the post-communist East, effective human rights protection and long-term inter-state peaceful relations. The gradual extension of the 'Western' integration project to Eastern Europe is resulting in importing a set of unresolved minority issues. In the wake of efforts undertaken by other international institutions, the EU is devising a range of ways and means of committing Eastern European countries to the protection of minorities. By so doing, it is highlighting patterns of scrutiny, providing guidance to an assessment on the prospects for improving state compliance. The present paper attempts to develop a preliminary framework for discussing the relatively unexplored role of minority rights considerations in this crucial context. The case of Eastern Europe reveals the vast potentialities, but also the dilemmas, of the EU action in the field, and reaches out to the question of whether - and to what extent - such an action can and should be taken vis-à-vis minority issues in all third countries and the EU member states as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]