Search

This paper is concerned with re-imaginings of 'Europe' following the accession to the European Union (EU) of former 'Eastern European' countries. In particular it explores media representations of post-EU accession migration from Romania to the United Kingdom in the UK and Romanian newspaper press. Todorova's (1997) notion of Balkanism is deployed as a theoretical construct to facilitate the analysis of these representations as first, the continuation of long-standing and deeply embedded imaginings of the 'East' of Europe and, second, as a means of contesting these discourses. The paper explores the way in which the UK press construct Balkanist discourses about Romania and Romanian migrants, and then analyses how the Romanian press has contested such discourses. The paper argues that the idea of the 'East' remains important in constructing notions of 'Europe' within popular media geographies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Currently, the majority of the European housing stock falls towards the bottom of the energy efficiency rating scale on the EU Energy Performance Certificate. If governments and businesses are to successfully address ambitious CO2 reduction targets, then it will be imperative that energy-efficient measures and policies focus on existing housing. In order to understand what kind of retrofit is needed to achieve an “A” energy performance rating in social housing, the paper reports the findings of an on-going research project in the UK. The paper draws on a case study from the Technology Strategy Board's “Retrofit for the Future” competition entry in Cambridge. The upgrade strategy improved the home's energy performance rating to A, aimed to radically reduce carbon dioxide emissions (17 kg m−2 year−1) and provided affordable warmth for the tenants. In order to get an impression of the actual energy consumption in the case study, energy use behaviour of the household was observed. Based on the barriers identified in the case study, the feasibility of the current UK policy strategies (e.g. Smart Meters and Feed-in-Tariffs) to facilitate the acceptance of energy measures in social housing is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper identifies and seeks to resolve the paradox that British social policy appears to have diverged from its EU partners in the period since membership and to have converged with that of the USA. Existing historical institutionalist approaches stress common regime characteristics of Britain and the USA in explanation of British difference from other member states. The present paper challenges such accounts and argues that the explanation lies in the transformation (and demise) of the post-Imperial/Commonwealth system of political economy in which the British economy (and related social policy) was embedded. This transformation has also produced internal problems within the British state giving rise to its reorganization with devolved Assemblies in Scotland and Wales. The final part of the paper addresses how this latter development has created a 'fault-line' in the British social policy debate with the possibility of reversing the trend toward Americanization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the relationships between the migratory policies of the EU countries with more experience of immigration and their national political cultures. It focuses on France, Germany and the United Kingdom. It then looks at Italy, a relatively new country of immigration, which, with 3,000,000 legal immigrants, has become the fourth country of immigration in Europe and the first in the Mediterranean basin. In its final part it highlights the incipient process of 'communitarisation' of the immigration policies of EU countries in the last decade. This process, which has already entailed a significant convergence of their migratory policies, is expected to continue after the recent enlargement of the European Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What are the prospects for trilateral concord among Britain, France and Germany in terms of defence policies? Would more institutionalised links among them lead to more convergence of their defence policies? To answer these interrogations, this article investigates the relation between policy convergence and institutionalised cooperation, in particular by studying whether and when one is a prerequisite to the other. First, this article examines the extent to which these countries' defence policies have converged since the end of the cold war based on several indicators: their attitudes towards international forums, their defence budgets, the structure of their armed forces and their willingness to use force. Second, we study each of the bilateral relations between the three states to qualitatively analyse their degree of institutionalisation and the convergence of their defence policies. This article concludes that contrary to the arguments of many discussions, think-tank reports and political actors, there is no evidence that institutionalised cooperation leads to policy convergence as far as defence is concerned. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper assesses the extent and sources of the UK's comparative advantage within the European Union (EU). It finds that both inter-industry and intra-industry trade are important despite clear aggregation effects. Having established that there is a significant degree of inter-industry specialization the sources of this are analysed, using a factor-content approach. Results are reported for aggregate factors of production and, in the case of labour, by disaggregated skill categories. A key finding is that the UK's net trade with the EU is driven more by a specialization in specific types of skill than by an overall endowment of human capital. The results also suggest that the inter-industry specialization cannot be explained by comparative advantage alone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The British government's position in the 1996 IGC will reflect long-standing policy positions that have been shared by both main parties. This consistency in policy was partly masked by the tone of British statements on Europe during the Thatcher premierships. However, there was a change of tone when Major came to office, and this was followed by successful British diplomacy in the 1991 IGC on political union, with the result that, on the issues that are under discussion in the 1996 IGC, Britain is largely a status quo state. The government will resist far-reaching changes to the Treaty on European Union, especially any erosion of the three-pillar structure and any further extension of the competences of the European Community. However, it will want to see institutional changes agreed that will pave the way to further enlargement. In these objectives it is likely to find allies because the European Union as a whole has been moving in the British direction since Maastricht, because of public hostility to further integration, the collapse of the federalist coalition, and the 1995 enlargement. However, the influence of Conservative backbenchers is making it more difficult for the present government to adopt the right tone in negotiations. The policies of the Labour Party do not differ markedly from those of the Conservatives, except on social policy, and if there is a change of government before the end of the IGC, the removal of the so-called 'Euro- sceptic' influence on the diplomatic tone of the government might help Britain to achieve its objectives even more successfully than the present government could. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditionally, minority nationalist parties (MNPs) have employed the notion of Europe in order to advance an alternative to centralized administration within the unitary state. This study examines whether earlier claims of MNPs' repositioning on the European Union (EU) are supported by a discourse analysis of manifestos in UK meso-elections. The findings confirm a significant shift in MNPs' framing of EU policy at the regional level; no longer advanced as a principal route to autonomy, voters are latterly invited to view the EU more as a fiscal-support mechanism. The wider significance of the findings is in pointing to post-devolution instrumentalism and an ideologically fluid phase in MNP attitudes to the European project. In the wake of state restructuring, meso-elections present new discursive opportunities for MNPs to seek a mandate to build on the degree of self-government already attained through the (re)creation of regional polities without principal reliance on the goal of ‘independence in Europe’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article offers the author's insights on the two inquiries into the media ownership rules in Europe and Great Britain. Topics discussed include European Union's (EU) interest on media pluralism, the relationship between domestic media policies and EU, and the key issues that are central to the development of media ownership. Also mentioned the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), the House of Lords Communications Committee, and Member of Parliament (MP) Harriet Harman.

Proposals made by the European Commission in 2007 led to the Education Council adopting, for the first time, a European agenda for improving the quality of teaching and teacher education. This article reports on a small-scale longitudinal interview-based study with teachers in England, Norway and Germany demonstrating that while opportunities for professional development are increasing in all three countries, dissatisfaction is expressed by most teachers in relation to its quality and outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the decisions behind group membership in the European Parliament (EP) using a rational-choice institutionalist framework. Following the goals ascribed to them by Strøm (1990) in other settings, national parties should join the largest group that matches their socioeconomic preferences. Yet, whilst explanations taking national parties as the basic unit of analysis might sometimes suffice, we argue that it is often necessary to consider the influence of individual parliamentarians and existing EP groups. The scope open to these various actors to pursue their interests determines the attractiveness of the various options available to a national party. We illustrate our conceptual framework by reference to the attempt by the British Conservative Party to leave the European People's Party-European Democrats (EPP-ED) group, an effort ending in the formation of an extra-parliamentary federation, the Movement for European Reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We miss the significance of the advent of the Euro for European political, economic, and social order if we ignore its identity dimension. Money has always been a symbolic marker in nation-building efforts and is strongly related to collective national identities. This article makes two interrelated causal claims. On the one hand, the introduction of Euro bills and coins has already begun to affect Euroland citizens' identification with the EU and Europe in general. The Euro makes Europe real and reifies it as a political order, since it provides a visible link from Brussels to the daily lives of the citizens. On the other hand, existing collective identities pertaining to the nation-state explain to a large degree how comfortable people feel using and dealing with the Euro. The variation in attitudes between the Italian enthusiasm for the Euro, the German ambivalence about it, and the widespread British opposition can be accounted for by the differences in collective understandings and identification patterns with the nation-state and Europe. In sum, the causal arrows from the Euro to collective identities run both ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

States have chosen various international fora to negotiate on the disciplining of state aids through export credit insurance: the GATT, European Union (EU) and the OECD. Although on a global level the violation of the strict GATE rules on export credit insurance could be ignored, on the regional EU level, market integration and competition and common commercial policies created pressures to harmonize national credit insurance policies. In the resulting regional negotiating process, intergovernmental factors have prevailed over supranational/transnational factors. Neither transnational interest groups nor the European Parliament and the Commission have been important actors in this process. The real political issue of competition distortion between exporters of different member states has been taken care of by the member states in a special co-ordination group, set up by the Council. Although national preferences with regard to harmonizing official credit insurance policy have converged as a consequence of rising cumulative deficits on these insurance schemes in all member states and the pressure of market factors such as increasing cross-border co-operation, the harmonization process appears to be confined to transparency and harmonization of insurance techniques and limited co-operation among public insurers in the case of consortium exports. All proposals to create a European credit insurance facility or a binding, common credit insurance policy were turned down or ignored, because of the far-reaching consequences for the future policy autonomy of the member states. The question of whether the credit insurance policies should also be disciplined, i.e. whether the level of subsidy should be lowered, was not addressed, for fear of disadvantaging EU exporters against government-supported non-EU competitors. Consequently, the United Kingdom sought to turn from a regional to a more global arena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]