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This paper aims at discussing the historical trajectory of European money and the way it can be illuminated through a dialogue with Stefan Eich's The Currency of Politics. Fleshing out the different theories, visions, and conceptualisations of money in Eich's book, this paper utilises this exposition to evaluate the development and operationalisation of European money. With an eye to contemporary debates about the re-politicisation or democratisation of money, the paper will critically assess the way in which Eich's account can be used as a framework to explain European money. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the European Union (EU) has intensified efforts to open European research programmes to the world. This paper focuses on the opening of European research to the world by studying the case of the FP7 international cooperation programme. It is based on a mixed-methods approach including analyses of quantitative data, documents and interviews with programme participants, policymakers and other stakeholders involved in 131 EU projects worldwide. The paper identifies features specific to the European international research cooperation scheme and contributes to our understanding of the supranational intervention and its impact on European research integration. Policymakers can use this piece of evidence to formulate enhanced strategies and better design and target activities both within the EU and globally, to achieve stronger, long-lasting research outcomes and effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2014 European Parliament (EP) election resulted in the rise of populist right-wing parties (PRPs). This paper aims to answer: why PRPs were able to rise in the 2014 EP election; what messages were delivered by the election results regarding European integration; and whether or not policy-makers addressed the messages correctly with the right policy responses? After examining the competing interpretations, this paper argues that a deep disillusionment and crisis of trust in the political establishment, which derived from the long neglect of deteriorating distributional justice and fairness in European integration, which became acute after the euro crisis mismanagement, explains the 2014 EP election results. This paper, accordingly, argues that policy redirection of EU economic governance and the addressing of a ‘social Europe’ are required to regain political trust. After assessing the policy responses taken by the EU, an economic Europe is expected to revive, but the required social Europe will still remain absent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims at discussing the historical trajectory of European money and the way it can be illuminated through a dialogue with Stefan Eich’s The Currency of Politics. Fleshing out the different theories, visions, and conceptualisations of money in Eich’s book, this paper utilises this exposition to evaluate the development and operationalisation of European money. With an eye to contemporary debates about the re-politicisation or democratisation of money, the paper will critically assess the way in which Eich’s account can be used as a framework to explain European money.

This paper analyzes the compatibility of intra-EU bilateral investment treaties--intra-EU BITs--with EU law. The status and validity of intra-EU BITs gave rise to a heated debate in Europe, which culminated in the CJEU's recent controversial judgment in Achmea. This Article demonstrates that although the CJEU approached intra-EU BITs from the angle of federalism--where they are both redundant and illegitimate--the reality is that EU law does not provide for the kind of protection afforded by BITs. The paper gives both a positivist and a critical assessment of the Achmea ruling. It argues that the judgment should be construed in the context of the underlying facts and, hence, notwithstanding the CJEU's apparently anti-arbitration attitude, its holding is rather narrow. It gives an alternative theory on intra- EU BITs' fit in the EU internal market--based on European reality--showing that the complete invalidation of intra-EU BITs is flawed because the overlap between BITs and EU law is merely partial: BITs address a subject EU law does not. This Article's central argument is that intra-EU BITs accelerate the internal market and, hence, their suppression does not lead the European integration further, but holds it back. Finally, this Article argues that the prevailing pattern of investment protection is a global scheme that cannot be arrested through regional unilateralism as essayed by the CJEU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution evaluates whether European Union State aid policy could play a role in achieving deeper and more solidary integration in the area of public health. According to Article 107 TFEU, the powers of Member States to grant aid to help their economies are seriously limited. Exceptions to the general prohibition to grant State aid are authorised by the European Commission, which enjoys wide discretion in weighing national objectives against European integration goals. The area of public health has been shielded from the application of these rules, with activities such as the provision of health insurance failing to be considered of economic nature (see most recently the Dôvera judgment). The COVID-19 experience shows that, in cases of major health crises, State aid provisions are practically suspended, with interventions allowed in the name of the fight against the pandemic. The eventual creation of a Health Union will require the re-evaluation of the application of the State aid rules to healthcare. This paper questions whether these rules should evolve as a reflective function of strengthened competences in healthcare or whether existing regulatory powers are enough to determine the interaction between national spending policies, a solidary European Health Union and fair competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the eve of 60th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, the UK voted to withdraw from the EU (so-called Brexit). The implications for European integration and EU policies are far from clear and require further investigation. This paper aims to answer: what does Brexit imply for European integration? What messages were sent to the EU from the UK referendum? Did EU leaders interpret these messages and implications correctly and did they respond with the right policy? After examining the competing interpretations, this paper argues that the sharp divisions between different socio-economic classes shown in voting behaviour highlight the imperative of addressing economic inequality and distributive injustice, which are rooted in the structural flaws of EU governance and have been aggravated by the mismanagement of the Euro crisis. To move European integration forward and to keep a ‘political Europe’ sustainable, a ‘social Europe’ making an ‘economic Europe’ more inclusive and fair is required. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper investigates the factors that led the Italian government to accede to the Fiscal Compact in spite of its demanding requirements for the country’s budgetary policy. Specifically, the paper assesses the extent to which Italian government’s support for the Fiscal Compact was driven by the logic of the ‘vincolo esterno’ in a replication of the pattern that led Italy to sign the Maastricht Treaty. The paper finds only limited support to the ‘vincolo esterno’ argument. Rather than being motivated by domestic dysfunctions or socialization to the fiscal discipline doctrine, the Italian government acted mainly out of market punishment fears. Interestingly, however, three factors filtered such external pressures and contributed shaping government’s support for the new Treaty. First, the Economic and Monetary Union unfinished architecture, and in particular the lack of a European financial firewall, weakened opposition to the new Treaty. That is to say, the institutional context constrained the choices that Italian policymakers could pursue. Second, the pro-European orientations of government members contributed to elevating the new Treaty to a symbol of European integration. Finally, the Italian government confronted a quite large domestic win-set during the negotiations, as the parties supporting the Monti government also supported Italy’s participation to the new Treaty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Croatia and Serbia are two countries that started their paths toward the EU with similar conditions. Nevertheless, in 2018, the end of this study's period, the two countries are characterized by different outcomes regarding European integration. This paper puts forward one key determinant for the more successful Europeanization process of Croatia—resolved statehood problem—and claims that the unresolved statehood problem in Serbia led to higher adoption costs of EU rules. Therefore, this article seeks to improve the theorization of the relationship between Europeanization and the statehood problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the historical ties between Protestantism and the nation-state, as well as between Catholicism and supranationalism, to widen the political science debate on different conditions of EU issue voting. Research suggests that the political context in each nation-state shapes the extent to which individual Eurosceptic attitudes influence the decision to vote for Eurosceptic parties. In addition to this, I expect that a nations' religious background responds differently to this relationship. Using data from the 2014 European Parliament elections, I show that citizens from predominantly Protestant countries actually decide for Eurosceptic parties if they hold negative attitudes towards European integration. In contrast, citizens from predominantly Catholic countries may or may not vote for Eurosceptic parties, but their voting decision is not based on individual EU attitudes such as support for European integration, trust in EU institutions or European identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the role of gender in shaping attitudes towards the European Union (EU) among young people living in Polish cities – the so-called 'winners of European integration'. Previously, little attention has been given to gender as an influence on views on the EU. Most studies apply the gender-based perspective on Western Europe, while Central and Eastern European countries remain understudied. Based on theories on public opinion, I employ a mixed-methods approach, conducting a survey among 815 MA students living in Polish cities, followed by 27 semi-structured interviews. This analysis of gender-related attitudes towards the EU offers nuanced insights into transitions within post-communist societies. My findings posit that the sampled well-educated women are more likely to support EU integration than men. Education, gender-based individual cost-benefit analyses, and the perceptions of national politics are possible explanations for the positive attitudes towards the EU among the sampled women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the Second World War was drawing to a close in 1944, two great works of political economy were published. One of them was Friedrich August von Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, inspiring the defenders of free market movements ever since and up to the present. The other was Karl Polanyi's The Great Transformation.2 This essay will focus on Polanyi but also pay tribute to Hayek. Contrasting the two helps to understand both of them better. Of the two, Hayek, the Nobel prize winner, is of course more widely known and by far more influential. But Polanyi's work, too, has achieved and has been attracting as of recently such attention that one of the Directors of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne proclaimed that 'we are all Polanyian now',3 not only in economic sociology, but also in related disciplines, including, of course, political economy and political theory. A plethora of aspects of The Great Transformation are very widely discussed. This essay will be concerned with the not-so-well explored importance of Polanyi's work for European Law and legal scholarship in general, including his theorems on the 'embedded economy', his conceptualisation of labour as a 'fictitious commodity' as well as the notion of counter-movements. It will then juxtapose Polanyi's expectation of a new international order with the development of the European integration project and sketch out the contours of the democracy-enhancing conflicts law and its affinities with Polanyian core normative principles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Brexit referendum of 23 June 2016, voters in England and Wales voted to leave the EU, while in Scotland and Northern Ireland they voted to remain. Following that, there has been a debate about how it would be possible to achieve the continuing presence in the single market of the UK constituent nations that do not want to be taken out against their will. This paper explores two pathways for Scotland and Northern Ireland to remain in the EU and/or the single market. The first entails the achievement of Scottish independence and the reunification of Ireland through democratic referendums. To this effect, the paper reviews the right of secession of those two constituent nations under UK constitutional law. It revisits the debate on the appropriate legal basis regulating Scotland’s future EU accession and discusses the Irish reunification from an EU law perspective. The second pathway explores how it would be possible for Scotland and Northern Ireland to remain in the EU and/or the single market even without seceding from the UK. In order to do that, the paper points to the remarkable flexibility of the EU legal order as evidenced in numerous cases of differentiated application of Union law. The paper shows that the EU possesses the necessary legal instruments to accommodate the divergent aspirations of the UK constituent nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars of European integration are primarily interested in explaining change and variation over time. Indeed, given that integration has progressed over 50 years and competences have been transferred to the European level in policy fields, including energy, fast and coordinated action in the face of a major external threat might have been anticipated. Yet, as this article documents, member states struggled to establish a cohesive and solidary European response to the 2022 gas crisis, just as they had failed to cooperate effectively during the 1973 oil crisis. Building on recent literature on European polity development and integration through crises, this article argues that differences in national crisis affectedness and energy structures hampered cooperation. Such asymmetries became particularly visible on the part of France and Germany, the Union's two largest member states, who could have provided regional political leadership. Consequently, both the 1973 and 2022 energy crises led to very limited steps in European integration and collectively suboptimal policy outcomes, such as high energy prices and uneven access to energy resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By the turn of the 1990s, tax competition among national governments had emerged as a powerful lawmaking practice. The possibility of tax competition essentially depends on the design of transnational law, such as European law. This Article examines the change of economic, political, and legal ideas that have shaped responses by the European Communities and the European Union (EU) to income tax competition. It asserts that under the post-war settlement of embedded liberalism and moderate market integration, tax competition was not perceived as a fully developed phenomenon. Under increased cross-border economic mobility in the 1990s, tax competition became a critical concern but received a liberal and permissive reaction from the EU. In the 2010s, governing tax competition in the EU became a more vital topic. Still, in the contemporary EU, turning political ideas into legal rules capable of addressing tax competition remains hampered by the EU law requirement of unanimous decision-making. The European choice of whether and how to address tax competition involves profoundly contrasting ideas on the means by which to govern the socio-economic reality. The decision between spontaneous and regulated income tax integration is therefore a salient political question, but the unanimity rule undermines political contestation over tax competition and over the European model of fiscal federalism. The Article comes to a close by reflecting on whether the EU legal order offers means to overcome the deadlock of unanimity and whether it could accommodate a more properly political contestation over the Europeanisation of income taxation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why did the transnational synchronization of wage inflations fail during the first 10 years of the euro? We analyze data from 1999 to 2008 for 12 euro members and estimate increases of nominal unit labor costs both in the overall economy and in manufacturing as dependent variables. While our analysis confirms that differences in economic growth shaped the inflation of labor costs, we add a political-institutional argument to the debate and argue that the designs of the wage regimes had an additional, independent impact. In coordinated labor regimes, increases in nominal unit labor costs tended to fall below the European Central Bank's inflation target, while in uncoordinated labor regimes, the respective increases tended to exceed the European inflation target. Due to the stickiness of wagebargaining institutions, the lack of the capacity to synchronize inflation is not likely to disappear in the foreseeable future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introductory Article sets out the background and summarises the content of the Symposium on 'The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) as a Relational Actor'. Observing that the CJEU has been a key player in shaping European legal integration, the Symposium takes as its starting point that courts -- and the CJEU is no exception in this regard -- are unable to drive developments in isolation. For the Court to carry out its role as guarantor of the Treaties and guardian of the rule of law in the Union, it needs not to isolate itself but to interact with other European Union (EU) and national institutions. Relations, the Symposium argues, are not only unavoidable but also legitimate and even vital for the adequate execution of the judicial function. This introduction briefly explores six of the Court's most important relationships: those with the other EU institutions; the courts of the Member States; the Member States themselves; the parties appearing before it; other international courts; and the general public. It then summarises the contributions and highlights how they complement each other in examining the CJEU as a relational actor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A burgeoning literature documents the emergence of a new globalization cleavage in Western Europe, centered around the issues of immigration and European integration. We investigate to what extent the globalization cleavage has crystallized by studying the alignment of preferences regarding open borders, their connection to more fundamental elements in the normative component of cosmopolitanism and communitarianism, and the extent to which this links up to the organizational component through party choice. To do this, we use innovative items tapping into political priorities, values, understandings of democracy, and virtues in a cross-sectional comparative survey in Norway and the UK. We find that the globalization cleavage is significantly more developed in the UK than in Norway but lacks a solidified normative component in both. This implies that considerable opportunities remain for ideological entrepreneurs to either fortify or dilute this cleavage, even in the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Boosted by landmark decisions such as Crotty, Solange, or Maastricht-Urteil, academic literature on National Higher Courts in the context of European integration has undergone an exponential growth in the last decades. In this Article, I aim at mapping this emerging subfield in order to explore the three patterns that structure it. First, a trend towards the consolidation and expansion of literature on the higher courts of the Member States, which has gained relative autonomy from general studies on European law and politics. Second, a clear tendency towards the internationalization of this subfield, which has developed in parallel to the national scholarship on the topic. And third, the emergence of a pattern of transdisciplinary dialogue in a subfield featured by the diversity of approaches, methodologies, and epistemological backgrounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article undertakes a critical revisitation of mass–elite congruence on EU matters, taking stock of 30 years of research and addressing durable ambiguities flagged by recent scholarship. Its specific contribution leverages EUEngage elite and mass survey data gathered in 2016 in 10 European countries. Examining congruence at both the country and the party level, we carry out an uncommon multidimensional analysis that encompasses general European integration and certain key sub-dimensions. At both levels, we perform a distinctive systematization of multiple approaches to the assessment of EU issue congruence, probing the substantive consistency of ensuing results. The findings qualify and soften the conventional wisdom of a chasm between pro-European elites and lukewarm citizens. While most countries exhibit pro-EU elite bias in terms of averages and proportions alike, mass–elite alignment is the rule when the general dimension and its sub-dimensions are understood as binary. Party-level analyses display different outcomes, depending on whether party positions are derived from elites' self-placement or their voters' perceptions, yet discrepancies are generally lower than in past assessments. Altogether, 'constraining dissensus' chiefly emerges along sub-dimensions concerning decision-making authority, as opposed to sub-dimensions evoking solidarity and burden-sharing. The layered panorama of congruence and incongruence implies a dependence of mass–elite interplays on context and sub-dimensions, drawing attention to the mediating role of critical junctures and elite entrepreneurship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stefan Eich's The Currency of Politics reconstructs and contextualises the monetary understanding of some of the most renowned political thinkers in history. By contextualising each author's conceptualisation (subjective perception) against their respective contemporary monetary frameworks (objective institutional dimension), Eich elaborates a narrative composed of cumulative layers leading to a double conclusion: that money is political at its core, and that current policies are actively de-politicizing money. These relevant findings are the point of departure of a reflection on the role that law, and constitutional theory in particular, must play in the configuration of Europe's common currency to overcome some of the most acute difficulties the process of integration is currently experiencing. If the triad law, money and public discourse is supposed to articulate social life in the polity, European monetary integration has neutralised them by neglecting the relevance of one of their key features: civic reciprocity. Reactivating the three mechanisms of social integration requires an exercise of constitutional imagination able to integrate interdisciplinary knowledge about money within an institutional framework able to prevent the concentration of unlimited power in unaccountable institutions and to promote and fully exploit the democratic potential of money. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Twitter is a prominent communication tool for politicians with two potential uses: as a "substitute" channel to circumvent constraints from other political arenas, or as an "amplifier" that reinforces party messages. Using a novel dataset containing tweets and parliamentary speeches by members of parliament (MPs) in seven countries, we estimate politicians' positions and intra-party dissent on European integration. We find that MPs' sentiment about Europe on Twitter is a valid measure of their party's position, while also uncovering intra-party disagreements. Our results suggest that most MPs amplify the partisan message, but MPs who participate less in parliamentary debate tend to have larger differences with their party on Twitter. Social media thus can free politicians from their party's grip. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the role which Member State-led infringement proceedings can play in overcoming the EU's rule of law crisis, and hypothesizes that it can prove helpful in breaking the current impasse. It begins by understanding why the EU's "traditional" rule of law enforcement mechanisms—such as Article 7 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) and the recent rule of law conditionality regulation—have failed (Section 2), before exploring how infringement proceedings operate, what their shortcomings are, and why Scheppele's proposed "systemic infringement proceedings" are important (Section 3). It then seeks to apply said findings to the rule of law crisis, using two recent developments as an example: The oral proceedings of Commission v. Poland (Régime disciplinaire des juges) and a recent vote by the Dutch Parliament compelling its government to take Poland before the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) (Section 4). Finally, it explores the broader constitutional implications of relying on Article 259 Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) to overcome the rule of law crisis: It discusses Kochenov's notion of "biting intergovernmentalism", what Article 259 illustrates about the European Union's (EU) hybrid constitution, and how intergovernmental legal instruments can facilitate further European integration (Section 5). It concludes by restating and summing up article's hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The EU's latest decision on adopting the recovery fund was revolutionary, both quantitatively and qualitatively. It would also dominate the EU's economic governance of the decade of the 2020s. This article is an attempt to evaluate whether the EU's recovery fund was the right policy answers to the post-COVID-19 EU economy or not, and explore its meanings and implications for European integration. This article argues that COVID-19 hit the EU at a time of health and social precariousness, and proved the conventional economic governance unsustainable. Necessities for game-changing in the post-COVID-19 economic governance were justified on both practical and moral grounds. Judging with these yardsticks, the EU's recovery fund was evaluated as a welcomed paradigm shift in both the ideology and methodology of its economic governance. Beyond a contemporary economic rescue package, the recovery fund implied laying the cornerstone of completing a fiscal union in the Eurozone, for enhancing institutional functions of the European Commission, and for rediscovering the nature of European integration as the rescuer of national states, through the newly-forming consensus between Eurosceptic nationalists and pro-EU integrationists. This article reminds us that the COVID-19 crisis was a crucial opportunity for EU leadership to legitimize the EU's existence in the post-Brexit era. If well implemented, the recovery fund could usher in a new chapter of European integration. If it fails, European integration would be at risk of further fragmentation and entrench into an ever-stronger anti-EU populism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Union has faced many crises, such as populism, xenophobia, economic and political challenges, to name a few. This has resulted in some questioning whether the EU will survive. Herein, the neo-institutionalist perspective on crises in EU integration frames an original and timely inquiry into the role of a new EU initiative – the European Education Area – in supporting EU integration in these challenging times. This inquiry relies on a thematic analysis of relevant key policy materials. The findings highlight that while it is not surprising that the EEA is an example of an education convergence project in the EU, the novelty of other findings is striking. It appears that the crises in the EU inspired the authors of the EEA to utilize its education as a tool for EU deepening, which is an aspect of EU integration related to the strengthening of the relationships amongst its Member States. Specifically, the EEA has been a driver in the development of a common European identity and European economy, the EU as a socially-just society and the continent of progress. These findings address important gaps of our knowledge about the role of education in driving EU integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using survey vignettes and scaling techniques, we estimate common socio-cultural and European integration dimensions for political parties across the member states of the European Union. Previous research shows that party placements on the economic left-right dimension are cross-nationally comparable across the EU; however, the socio-cultural dimension is more complex, with different issues forming the core of the dimension in different countries. The 2014 wave of the Chapel Hill Expert Survey included anchoring vignettes which we use as "bridge votes" to place parties from different countries on a common liberal/authoritarian dimension and a separate common scale for European integration. We estimate the dimensions using the Bayesian Aldrich–McKelvey technique. The resulting scales offer cross-nationally comparable, interval-level measures of a party's socio-cultural and EU ideological positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amidst the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic, the German Federal Constitutional Court rendered a little-noticed, but potentially far-reaching decision regarding European integration. When it declared the law ratifying the Unitary Patent Court Agreement unconstitutional, it did so because it is a treaty "supplementing or being otherwise closely tied to the EU", in other words, a satellite treaty, inter-se agreement, or more generally: an international law agreement furthering European integration outside the EU law framework. This commonly used integration technique is therefore going to be a lot more difficult in future whenever Germany is involved. At the same time, the court order gives all German citizens a far-reaching right to have laws ratifying such treaties checked before the Constitutional Court, which is a significant extension compared to its earlier case-law. In future cases of disagreement, EU Member States may have to find different ways to proceed than resorting to international law, such as using the enhanced cooperation mechanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Euroscepticism has become a stable component of the European Parliament. But is there one distinct Euroscepticism in the European Parliament or do various types exist there? Departing from the widely accepted definitions of hard and soft Euroscepticism, we analysed the behaviour of Eurosceptical groups in the European Parliament in order to assess how they differ. Using data from parliamentary questions, we argue that there are substantial differences between these two groups. This suggests that hard and soft Euroscepticisms do not represent different degrees of one phenomenon, but instead refer to two fundamentally different stances towards European integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using Voting Advice Application (VAA) data from the EU Profiler/euandi Trend File, we studied how parties' positions towards European integration relate to their positions on other important issues, and how this varies across EP elections, and between European regions. We hypothesized that the association between parties' EU-integration positions and their positions on other issues was affected by the three major crises that hit the European Union (EU) between 2009 and 2019: the economic, migration, and climate crises. Additionally, we hypothesized that the economic and migration crises asymmetrically affected the association between cultural and economic issues on the one hand and the EU dimension on the other across the EU's three macro regions (NWE, SE, and CEE). Our results show that neither the economic crisis nor the migration crisis or the climate crisis had an EU-wide impact on how European integration relates to other issue dimensions. As we hypothesized, economic issues were particularly strongly linked to EU-integration positions in SE in 2014, but our results additionally indicated that the longstanding interpretation of EU integration as a mainly economic issue in SE diminished after the start of the migration crisis. Finally, EU integration became related to immigration issues in CEE while this is not the case in the other regions. The main takeaway is that EU integration is interpreted differently by parties across the EU, which is important to recognize for parties that seek to work together in transnational party groups, and for scholars that aim to understand EU policy making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Article deals with the issues related to the judicial review of transnational acts which are adopted particularly within the context of the European integration process. The European Union is a privileged playground for the development of administrative acts of this type, primarily because of the existence of various and diverse administrative cooperation mechanisms. Transnational administrative acts are, either because of their adoption process or because of their conditions of enforcement, governed by at least two national legal orders. The question of the availability of judicial review in the context of transnational administrative acts is a complex one, because the presence of one exogeneous element may disrupt the straightforward path toward the right of access to courts—as both the determination of the competent court and the scope of the review carried out by the court seized become uncertain. This Article first draws up a typology of transnational administrative acts. Second, on the basis of this typology, this Article analyzes the solutions developed by the case law of the Court of Justice and assesses them in the light of the principles of territoriality of administrative law and the right to effective judicial protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the relationship between Italy and the European Union (EU) has worsened due to the emergence of an increasingly negative attitude towards the question of European integration. The growth in citizens' disaffection with, and hostility towards, the political elites is part of a more general trend witnessed throughout the EU. From this point of view, an understanding of whether, and in what way, the role of Prime Minister (PM) has been affected by this change of perspective, especially following the various crises affecting the EU in the last 10 years, would be worthwhile we believe. This article examines the political positions of all PM during the so-called Second Republic (1994–now), by means of a longitudinal content analysis. This analysis reveals that after 2008, and for the first time in the history of the Italy–EU relationship, PMs' speeches have included sharp criticism of the EU. In particular, two PMs (Renzi and Conte) have clearly rejected those conditionality mechanisms implied by the EU. The results of this study confirm the start of a phase of strong conflict/politicization in regard to the EU and its institutional functioning. This article contributes to the broader literature concerning the study of the relationship between political elites and the EU, by focusing for the first time not simply on party leaders but on one of the most important institutional roles in the Italian political system (the Presidenza del Consiglio). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Post-communist Central and Eastern European legal cultures in general, and judicial style in particular, are often characterized as formalistic. This article reconstructs two ideological narratives about the formalist heritage of CEE judiciary, variants of which have dominated academic and policy debates about rule of law, judicial reforms and European integration in the last three decades. As the debate becomes linked to deeply rooted and long-term, sometimes traumatic issues of national and political identity, patterns of ideological thinking resurface easily. While it is symptomatic of CEE political cultures that the debate on judicial method has become a battleground for fierce controversies about collective (political) identity, arguably this exemplifies a broader phenomenon. Other weak or peripheral national cultures also face and struggle with issues of collective identity and inferiority complexes which may resurface in professional discourses and seemingly unpolitical domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic is changing the face of Europe. Member States' divergent responses to this crisis reveal a lack of unity in the face of a humanitarian catastrophe. At best, this undermines the effectiveness of health protection within the European Union (EU). At worst, it risks breaking up the Union altogether. Divergent national responses to COVID-19 reflect different national preferences and political legitimacy, and thus cannot be completely avoided. In this article, we argue that these responses should be better coordinated. Without coordination, the price for diversity is high. Firstly, there are damaging spill-overs between Member States, which undermine key pillars of European integration such as the free movement of persons and of goods. Secondly, national policy-making is easily captured by local interest groups. Our proposal is that the EU indicates - not mandates - a European exit strategy from asymmetric containment policies of COVID-19. In particular, the EU should help Member States procure and validate tests for infection and immunity. The EU should also indicate ways in which testing could be used to create safe spaces to work, thereby restoring the free movement of persons and of goods. We see a great advantage in such EU guidance: it could improve mutual learning between Member States, which have faced different timings of the epidemic and learned different lessons. Although the local political economy has so far delayed learning and undermined cooperation, the EU can mitigate both effects and indicate the way for Europe to resurrect united from the ashes of COVID-19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the integration of the European Union (EU) as an institution after the 2015–2016 migrant crisis. Qualitative data from elite interviews in Brussels and policy analysis, in the framework of a bigger project about the impact of the migrant crisis on European integration, highlight EU learning about new integration modes as a key theme following the crisis. The article focuses on this theme and argues that EU integration has been happening through intensive learning after the migrant crisis, whereby the EU has been exploring a combination of certain integration modes: shaping the relationships with candidate countries by restraining from enlargement; shaping the relationships with (prospectively) exiting Member States by considering fuzziness at the borders; and exploring differentiation among the existing Member States, possibly through promoting a two-tier EU, instead of universal deepening. A key contribution lies in applying the notion 'learning' to understanding EU integration modes specifically after the migrant crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between the Court of Justice and the Bundesverfassungsgericht is perhaps one of the most explored relationships in all of EU's legal history. In attempting to understand and operationalize the uncertainty surrounding the positioning between EU and national constitutional orders, they have in some respects followed the footsteps of a typical life-long love story: in the early years of European integration, both courts appeared to be in denial of any romance, and entered into a conflict over the question of the final arbiter; they subsequently turned to flirting by moving away from an institutionally based conflict towards finding a common substantive ground; which resulted in finally abandoning the competition for domination, but rather embracing mutual respect and a heterarchical relationship. This brief piece follows these developments in fundamental rights review that for now end with the second German decision concerning the right to be forgotten. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Article revisits the role and function of constitutional identity and common constitutional traditions and claims that the latter have had an increasingly stronger influence on the process of European integration—more than may appear at first sight. In addition, the relevance of common constitutional traditions has not been undermined but, on the contrary, strengthened by the emergence of fundamental rights in EU law and the subsequent conferral of binding force on the Charter of Fundamental Rights. Constitutional identity and common constitutional traditions are part of two discourses—security and fundamental rights—which are an expression of the security of the European project as an overarching frame characterizing the EU as a polity and legal system. After an overview of some of the most important rulings of the Court of Justice of the European Union, this Article concludes by emphasizing the importance of the recent conciliatory attitude recently adopted by the Court of Justice, although the more ambivalent attitude of the Italian Constitutional Court indicates how conflictual features are becoming increasingly important and can no longer be concealed as the EU reaches a more advanced stage of integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the impact of financial depth and capital market development on the growth of European nations. Financial depth is important if the benefits of financial integration are to be realized. In fact, financial depth is a channel that promotes growth and risk sharing and curbs macroeconomic volatility. Panel data of 17 European nations from 1970 to 2013 were taken and results were obtained through the Pool Mean Group Estimation technique. Our results show that, for European nations, financial depth and stock market development contributed to long-term growth. However, the contribution of financial depth outweighs that of stock market development. Moreover, it was observed that in the case of Hungary and Ireland, capital market development and financial depth contributed to short-term growth. Trade openness was found to be significant for growth in the cases of Austria and Finland while financial depth and trade openness were found to be significant for Germany and Switzerland. In conclusion, in the short-run, financial depth contributed more to growth than stock market development. Therefore, the role of financial depth in enhancing growth can be said to be more persistent than that of stock market development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses public opinion toward European integration along with the information on assessing the reliability of the European mood and of single indicators for measurement of generalized support for the European Union.

This article examines both the place of the social dimension in past and on-going debates about the United Kingdom's membership of the European Union and the reciprocal influence of EU and UK institutions on developments in the social policy field. It explores fluctuations in the relationship between economic and social policy, the divisiveness within, between and across political parties, the role of key policy actors in shaping the social agenda, and the failure of attempts to harmonise social welfare systems as enlargement intensified their diversity. We argue that, although difficult to predict, the implications of Brexit for future social policy in the UK and EU may not be so far-reaching as in some other policy areas, due largely to the maintenance of unanimous voting and the subsidiarity principle in many social domains, combined with the shift towards soft law and the widespread resistance of member states to tighter social integration. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article forges a link between support for European integration and adoption of tobacco advertisement restrictions in Swiss cantons. Leaning on the policy diffusion literature, this article argues that the more voters support deeper European integration, the more likely cantonal governments are to restrict tobacco advertising. Policymakers use voters’ support for more European integration as a signal that they support regulatory policies that are strongly associated with the European Union (EU) in the political and media debate, such as tobacco advertisement bans. This effect ought to be especially strong in the absence of adverse economic interests, such as the presence of the tobacco industry. To buttress these claims, the present article uses statistical analysis, specifically event-history analysis. Apart from the insights about Swiss tobacco control policy, this article contributes to our understanding of indirect EU influence on cantonal policymaking and policy diffusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explains variation in the quality of representation in the context of European Parliament elections. Specifically, it clarifies how voters relate to political parties on the issue of European integration and whether they are represented, misrepresented, or indifferent to this issue. The analysis shows that perceived benefits of European integration do drive a perfect voter-party match while perceived costs, when high, drive a perfect match between Eurosceptic voters and likeminded parties and make voters less indifferent. The analysis draws attention to the high number of status quo voters who, in the absence of a party with similar views, could channel their vote towards a party promoting integration, but only if their knowledge about the EU and its benefits increases. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Interactions between the pharmaceutical industry and physicians have recently received attention for their potential to create conflicts of interest in clinical practice, research and education. As a consequence, several medical and psychiatric associations including the EPA have published guidance papers to encourage best practice. In this context, the European Federation of Psychiatric Trainees (EFPT) performed a cross-sectional survey among European psychiatric trainees in order to ascertain the current level of interactions, as well as beliefs and attitudes towards interactions with the pharmaceutical industry. Responses from 1444 psychiatric trainees from 20 countries were obtained and reveal important differences in the level of interactions across Europe. Assigning a an educational role to the pharmaceutical industry and aid by senior psychiatrists in organizining industry-sponsored events were associated with a higher degree of interactions. Creating alternative, non-industry-sponsored educational opportunities and specific training dedicated to industry interactions may help to reduce the impact of the pharmaceutical industry on psychiatric training in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution revisits the Bundesverfassungsgericht's order for reference in the Gauweiler case and focuses on two aspects of that order that until now have not received much scholarly attention. The first concerns the German federal constitutional court's dissociation of constitutional identity review under the German Basic Law from national identity review under Article 4(2) TEU. While the decision on the Lisbon Treaty had suggested that the two go "hand in hand", the Bundesverfassungsgericht now emphasizes the "fundamental" difference between the concept of national identity under Article 4(2) TEU on the one hand and the German concept of constitutional identity on the other. The second element is the German federal constitutional court's contention that its approach to ultra vires and constitutional identity review can also be found in the constitutional law of many other member states. Yet, careful analysis demonstrates that while there does indeed seem to be a trend in that direction, and several elements of the German approach can also be found in other countries, very few national courts are as adamant as the Bundesverfassungsgericht, and only a handful have developed their position with the same level of detail and ardor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Union is at a make-or-break moment. The current crisis could be beneficial or detrimental for its future. We revisit Schmitter’s model of crisis-induced decision-making cycles (1970) and critically discuss why the current crisis might not be as benign as originally thought. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Introduction: 50% of all psychiatric disorders start before the age of 14 and knowledge of developmental psychopathology is relevant for all psychiatric trainees. The UEMS Psychiatry training requirements for the speciality of psychiatry states that training should include practical experience of different areas of psychiatric practice including exposure to psychiatric conditions throughout the life span. Despite this, training in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (CAP) is not mandatory in many national training programs for psychiatry trainees and there are large variations in how CAP training is delivered in the national training programmes that do include this. Objectives: The aim of this study is to investigate the scope and the quality of training in child and adolescent psychiatry (CAP) in adult psychiatry training programmes across Europe as well as the trainee perceived needs for training in CAP. Methods: An online survey was distributed through the member organisations of the European Federation of Psychiatric Trainees (EFPT) as well as the official EFPT channels to trainees in adult psychiatry. The EFPT represents national trainee associations in 37 countries. Data collectionwill take place from June-December 2019. Results: This study will be the first to describe the variation in the scope, methods and quality of CAP training in adult psychiatry training programs across Europe from the trainee perspective. Conclusions: The study will contribute to with knowledge of gaps in CAP training in adult psychiatry training programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]