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The single euro payments area (SEPA) project eliminates the incompatibility between domestic payment systems across European countries. It also enforces uniform pricing between national and international transactions. How does this policy affect competition among European banks in the retail payment market? To address this question, we explore and solve a model of non-linear price competition between two asymmetric banks in terms of transactional capital by considering price discrimination in pre-SEPA and uniform pricing in post-SEPA, under presence of economies of scale. Our results show that the transaction pattern plays an important role in the effect of SEPA on competition between banks; Competition is less intense in post-SEPA when the transaction pattern is domestically oriented. Moreover, comparison of pre-SEPA with post-SEPA phases suggests that SEPA intensifies competition when economies of scale are large enough. We further show that consumer surplus improves in post-SEPA but the effect of SEPA on welfare depends on fixed adjustment cost.

This article provides an overview of cases decided by the Court of Justice of the European Union concerning contract law. The present issue covers the period between the beginning of July 2019 and the end of December 2019.

Part 1 Scope of challenges: West European integration and security co-operation - converging and diverging trends. Part 2 Central European and Mediterranean security policy perspectives: regional perspectives the Central European view security challenges in the Mediterranean NATO member countries national views - Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, The Netherlands, United Kingdom, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Turkey. Part 3 International responses - frameworks for security co-operation in Western Europe: European political co-operation the European Parliament NATO the West European Union. Part 4 Conclusions and perspectives: thinking beyond a West European pillar.

Turkey conducts amulti-polar foreign diplomacy in order to strengthen its positions in the region, to gain control over the neighboring countries; as well as to make its way towards the European Union. Being on the EU’s waiting list, Turkey strives to get advanta-ges of its prolonged status as acandidate country.

English Abstract: On 21 November 2017, the European Payments Council (EPC) introduced a new scheme for instant payments (SEPA Instant Credit Transfer- SCT Inst) in the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA). The new scheme envisaged a maximum execution time of 10 seconds for the processing of each transaction and guaranteed service availability every day of the year, 24 hours a day. One year later, on 30 November 2018, Banca d’Italia – which had been commissioned by the Eurosystem to develop the system – delivered TIPS (TARGET Instant Payment Settlement), a new service for the settlement of instant payments in central bank money, which was also compliant with the SCT Inst scheme. Conceived as a multi-currency settlement platform, TIPS was developed with the aim, inter alia, of fostering the integration of retail payment services offered by the European financial community and of eliminating barriers due to lack of interoperability between different settlement platforms. The TIPS project is part of the Vision 2020 programme, which the Eurosystem has devised with the aim of providing new services to support financial markets, citizens, and businesses in Europe and to foster the innovation of market infrastructures and harmonization of financial services related to securities and cash. The Vision 2020 programme is part of the European Commission's Capital Markets Union project, aimed at achieving full integration of the European financial market. Building TIPS required the fulfilment of a number of particularly challenging technical requirements: virtually instant payment execution (with processing times per payment not exceeding 5 seconds); the capacity to handle a large volume of processed payments (over 43 million transactions per day); very high availability and resilience (reaching 99.9% service availability, and the capacity to restart within 15 minutes in a site disaster scenario); extreme scalability of the system from a performance viewpoint (the ability to sustain a doubling of the volume of payments over a year). About two years after the go-live, the number of payments settled in TIPS still falls short of these expectations and the potential of the service. However, albeit at different speeds in the various European countries, instant payment services are growing and it is reasonable to expect that this trend will only increase in the years to come. It is in this context that Banca d’Italia has already identified a series of actions that aim to prepare TIPS to become an essential component of the foreseeable spread of instant payment services in Europe. This paper is organized as follows: Chapters 1 and 2 illustrate the evolution of instant payment services in Europe and the fundamental principles of the TIPS service, respectively. Chapter 3 gives a detailed description of the TIPS system, outlining its functional perimeter (Section 3.1), presenting the technical characteristics of the platform on which it operates (Section 3.2), as well as the monitoring and management activities for the smooth operation of the service (Section 3.3). The governance of TIPS and the procedures for joining the service are then set out in Chapters 4 and 5. Finally, Chapter 6 outlines the main trends that Banca d’Italia, on the recommendation of the Eurosystem, has identified for TIPS for the years to come, both in terms of activities that are already in progress or being planned (Section 6.1), and with reference to other potential functionalities to be offered to the users in the near future (Section 6.2). Italian Abstract: [Il 21 novembre 2017, il Consiglio Europeo per i Pagamenti (European Payment Council – EPC) ha introdotto nell’area europea comune dei pagamenti (Single Euro Payments Area – SEPA) il nuovo schema per il pagamento di bonifici istantanei (SEPA Instant Credit Transfer – SCT Inst), che prevede un tempo massimo di esecuzione di ogni singola transazione non superiore ai 10 secondi e una disponibilita del servizio garantita tutti i giorni dell’anno, 24 ore al giorno. Un anno dopo, il 30 novembre 2018, la Banca d’Italia – che era stata incaricata dall’Eurosistema di sviluppare tale sistema – era gia in grado di avviare in esercizio il servizio TIPS (TARGET Instant Payment Settlement), che consente il regolamento immediato di singoli pagamenti istantanei in moneta di banca centrale, in linea con lo schema SCT Inst. Il servizio, concepito come piattaforma di regolamento multi-valutaria, e stato sviluppato con l’obiettivo, tra gli altri, di favorire l’integrazione dei servizi di pagamento al dettaglio offerti dalla comunita finanziaria europea e di eliminare le barriere dovute alla scarsa interoperabilita tra le piattaforme di regolamento preesistenti. Il progetto TIPS si inquadra nel piu generale contesto del programma Vision 2020, che l’Eurosistema ha elaborato allo scopo di fornire nuovi servizi a supporto dei mercati finanziari e dei cittadini e delle imprese in Europa e per favorire l’innovazione delle infrastrutture di mercato e l’armonizzazione dei servizi finanziari relativi ai titoli e al contante. Il programma Vision 2020 si inscrive nell’ambito del progetto Capital Markets Union della Commissione europea, volto a conseguire la piena integrazione del mercato finanziario europeo. La realizzazione di TIPS ha richiesto di soddisfare una serie di requisiti tecnici particolarmente sfidanti: una elevata velocita di elaborazione del singolo pagamento (tempo non superiore a 5 secondi1); un cospicuo volume di pagamenti regolabili (oltre 43 milioni di operazioni al giorno); un’altissima disponibilita e una solida resilienza del servizio (che deve essere costantemente attivo, con disponibilita del 99,9% e in grado di ripartire entro 15 minuti a seguito di eventi disastrosi); una estrema scalabilita del sistema dal punto di vista delle prestazioni (capacita di sostenere un raddoppio del volume dei pagamenti nell’arco di un anno). A circa due anni dalla partenza, il numero dei pagamenti regolati in TIPS resta ancora al di sotto delle aspettative e delle potenzialita del servizio. Tuttavia, pur se con velocita diverse nei diversi paesi europei, i servizi di pagamento istantanei si stanno diffondendo ed e lecito attendersi che tale tendenza si accentui negli anni a venire. E in tale contesto che la Banca d’Italia ha gia avviato una serie di interventi che si prefiggono l’obiettivo di preparare TIPS a sostenere la prevedibile diffusione dei servizi di pagamento istantanei in Europa e a diventarne una componente essenziale. Il presente lavoro e organizzato come segue: i capitoli 1 e 2 illustrano rispettivamente l’evoluzione dei servizi di pagamento istantaneo in Europa e i principi fondamentali del servizio TIPS. Il capitolo 3 descrive in dettaglio il sistema TIPS, delineando il perimetro delle funzionalita che esso offre all’utenza (§.3.1), presentando le caratteristiche tecniche della piattaforma su cui opera (§.3.2), nonche le attivita di monitoraggio e gestione dell’operativita del servizio (§.3.3). La governance di TIPS e le modalita di adesione al servizio vengono poi esposte nei capitoli 4 e 5. Il capitolo 6, infine, delinea le principali linee evolutive di TIPS che la Banca d’Italia, su indicazione dell’Eurosistema, ha tracciato per gli anni a venire, sia per quanto riguarda gli interventi gia in corso di realizzazione o in programma (§.6.1), sia con riferimento ad altre potenziali funzionalita da offrire all’utenza nel prossimo futuro (§.6.2).]

Geographical barriers include the sheer distance of citizens from the Parliament, the large constituency sizes, and the lack of a single recognisable parliamentary site. In comparison to the majority of the national parliaments, the European Parliament (EP) is physically further removed from its citizenry. Another geographical barrier to citizen awareness and support is the size of a citizen’s electoral constituency and the related issue of the ratios of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) to population totals. Compounding the geographical barriers to contact, awareness and support are institutional barriers such as the number of institutions and the ever-evolving complexity of procedures and areas of competence. Although Eurobarometer data on awareness of the EP through the media has shown evidence of fluctuation in between elections, the dominant trend is still that awareness heightens around election time. Support for the EP among its citizens can be measured by a number of indicators.

The European Union (E.U.) has a specific system of financing its institutions. The system has been the subject of political discussion since the beginning in 1970 and the recent modification in 2020. This system has come under increasing pressure as a result of the growth of the number of member states and growing economic disparity between the Northern versus Southern and Western versus Eastern member states of the Union. The question of whether to rely on its own sources of finance or on contributions from its members is the subject of a separate political argument.

Publication performance in anaesthesiology hints at research activity and attractiveness for a particular centre or country for anaesthetists.The aim of this retrospective bibliographic study is to compare the publication performance of anaesthesiology departments within the countries of the European Union (EU) and European Free Trade Association (EFTA) combined. Outcome measures were the number of publications, the number of original articles, the average impact factor and the number of publications and average impact factor per million inhabitants.Articles from anaesthesiology departments within the EU and EFTA countries published between 1 January 2001 and 31 December 2015 were included. Articles were electronically imported from Medline into a database and linked to anaesthesiology departments according to the authors' affiliations. Publication performance was assessed for 2001 to 2005, 2006 to 2010, 2011 to 2015 and 2001 to 2015.From 2001 to 2015, the absolute number of articles increased from 10 513 to 19 037 (+81%), whereas the number of original research articles decreased from 3786 to 1563 (-58%). Germany had the most publications (8948) with 1967 of these being original articles. Denmark achieved not only the highest average impact factor per million inhabitants (319.9) but also the most articles per anaesthesiologist (1.46), and per million habitants (105.7). Countries which moved up the income scale to a higher income class also increased the number of publications.In the EU and EFTA countries, the total number of publications increased from 2001 to 2015, but the number of original research articles fell by more than 50%.Between 2001 and 2015, in the EU and EFTA countries, the number of publications increased, whereas the number of original articles decreased. Germany published most, but Denmark had most publications per anaesthesiologist and per capita, and also achieved the highest impact factor per article.

General attitudes of citizens toward the European Union (EU) have frequently been analyzed. However, European integration represents a multifaceted process and citizen attitudes may well depend on the precise nature of policy proposals. In this contribution, we analyze the determinants of specific support for three prominent EU economic policy proposals: the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, Eurobonds, and a EU financial transaction tax. Drawing on Eurobarometer data, we find that four standard explanatory factors—ideology, utility, identity, and cues—also affect support for these policies. However, they do so in systematically different ways, depending on whether the policies primarily represent positive or negative integration and market-making or market-correcting, on how they affect national sovereignty, and on how they are affected by complexity and salience.

This study tests two of the main explanations of the formation of political ties. The first explanation is based on the homophily principle and states that political actors are more likely to form a relationship if they have similar policy preferences. The second explanation, from network theory, predicts that the likelihood of a tie between two actors depends on the presence of certain relationships with other actors. For instance, two actors are more likely to form a tie if they share many transitive linkages with other actors. We examine the evolution of cooperation networks in the Council of the European Union as a testing ground for propositions from these approaches. Our data consist of a unique combination of actors’ policy positions and their network relations over time. We find evidence that both preference similarity and indirect ties affect the development of network relations throughout the Council's committees, although there appears to be significant variation in the extent to which preference similarity affects network evolution. We consider the implications of these findings for the stock of social capital held in the Council and for understanding the consensual mode decision-making highlighted by previous studies of the Council. These issues are highly pertinent given the challenges posed by the prospect of Brexit.

Using process tracing, this paper charts the history of the changes in the EU’s revenue since 1970, including package deals and the unforeseen consequences of change, comparing the positions of the Council to those of the European Commission and European Parliament. Those revenue decisions allowed European integration to proceed though without a fully autonomous budget as Member States became more careful to calculate their net benefits or costs in relation to the budget. In December 2013, the European Union’s institutions established a High Level Group to recommend changes to the revenue base of the EU’s budget. This reported in January 2017, proposing to resolve the effect of sub-optimal revenue and budget decisions made by the European Union over many years, to reduce direct national contributions, to minimise the risk of unforeseen consequences, and to combine revenue flows with steering effects to discourage certain forms of economic behaviour in line with the wider policy agenda of the European Union.

During the two decades after the transition the technical and technological development of the Hungarian agriculture was determined by the preparation for the EU accession and the adequacy to the performance and technological requirements of the new farm structure of the post-transition era. After the accession the quality based change of farm equipment was characteristic by modern, high performance units which were suitable to meet the requirements of the environmental sustainability, improving the competitive production of farms. In the small scale private farms the rollout of the old and depreciated tools were slower than the investments. This was unfavorable for the expected decrease of the average age of the farm assets. The research is based on the database of the censuses of the Hungarian Central Statistical Office.

When measuring bank efficiency, there is no generally accepted concept of efficiency nor is there a uniform system of indicators for its measurement. It is, however, possible to use the method of financial analysis to measure bank efficiency. In this paper, the following ratios are used for measuring bank efficiency

Titles in the Complete series combine extracts from a wide range of primary materials with clear explanatory text to provide readers with a complete introductory resource. This chapter discusses the history of the European Union. It covers the historical rationale for the EU; the aims of the EU; the four stages of economic integration; economic and political difficulties; expansion of membership; institutional developments; legal developments; closer European integration; the Treaty of Rome (1957), the Single European Act (1986); the Treaty on European Union (1992); the Treaty of Amsterdam (1997); the Charter of Fundamental Rights; the Treaty of Nice (2001); the Treaty of Lisbon (2007); and the potential process for and impact of ‘Brexit’.

Much of the substance of UK environmental law has been derived from EU environmental law. This chapter is an introduction to some of the major themes in EU environmental law. The first section outlines aspects of EU legal culture and considers different approaches to defining EU environmental law. The following sections examine four major themes of EU environmental law. The first theme is competence, which concerns the nature of the EU’s authority to act in relation to environmental matters. The second theme is implementation and enforcement. The third theme is the ability of Member States to take unilateral environmental protection action. Finally, the last theme is the legitimacy and accountability of EU governance.

Media often portrays European Union (EU) decision-making as a battleground for national governments that defend the interests of their member states. Yet even the most powerful individuals, such as the German chancellor, the French president, or the Commission president, are party politicians. At the same time the consistent empowerment of the European Parliament (EP) means that the party groups of European-level “Europarties”—political parties at European level—are in a key position to shape EU legislation. The Parliament has also become more directly involved in the appointment of the Commission, with the results of EP elections thus influencing the composition of the Commission. Examining the “partyness” of European integration, this article argues that scholarly understanding of the role of parties in the EU political system has taken great strides forward since the turn of the millennium. This applies especially to the EP party groups, with research focusing particularly on voting patterns in the plenary. This body of work has become considerably more sophisticated and detailed over the years; it shows that the main EP groups do achieve even surprisingly high levels of cohesion and that the left–right dimension is the primary axis of contestation in the chamber. It nonetheless also emphasizes the continuing relevance of national parties that control candidate selection in EP elections. Considering that most votes in the Parliament are based on cooperation between the two largest groups, the center-right European People’s Party (EPP) and the center-left Party of the European Socialists (PES), future research should analyze in more detail how these groups build compromises. Actual Europarties, however, remain relatively unexplored. Case studies of treaty reforms or particular policy sectors reveal how individual Europarties have often wielded decisive influence on key integration decisions or key appointments to EU institutions. The Europarty meetings held in conjunction with European Council summits are particularly important in this respect. The regular, day-to-day activities of Europarties deserve more attention, both regarding decision-making and vertical links between national parties and their Europarties. Overall, it is probably more accurate to characterize Europarties as networks of like-minded national parties or as loose federations of member parties, especially when compared with the often centralized and strongly disciplined parties found in the member states.

The digitalisation of the global economy is one of the main topics of discussion at the OECD1 – and at the European Commission (‘the Commission’) – in relation to taxation, in particular indirect t...

Iceland is a member of the European Free Trade Association, the European Economic Area and Schengen.It was a European Union candidate country until recently, when its government decided to withdraw its Eu­ropean Union membership application. The European Economic Area agreement currently ensures Iceland’s access to the European Union’s common market. The question remains what is the most feasible arrangement for long term prosperity of Iceland? Should it continue to rely on the current arrangement? Should it seek European Union membership in the future and perhaps subsequently become part of the Euro Area? What are the possible benefits and disadvantages for Iceland joining the European Union and the Euro Area? These questions have economic, political as well as security dimensions.

India and the European Union are in the negotiation process for a Free Trade Agreement. However, as the result of a vote on June 23, 2016, the United Kingdom decided to exit from the European Union, i.e., Brexit. Consequently, bilateral trade costs between the United Kingdom and the European Union will increase both from the newly applicable tariff and non-tariff barriers, which will have a direct impact on trade flows between these two trading partners and an indirect impact on their income growth and on their trading partners. The United Kingdom has been is the most important trading partner for India in the EU, thus the trade deal would not be as beneficial for India as it would have been were the United Kingdom still a member of the European Union. This study attempts to analyze the effects of trade liberalization on the bilateral trade structure between India and the European Union, and the welfare effects both considering the United Kingdom as a member of the European Union and the situation when the United Kingdom exits the European Union. The study found that when United Kingdom is a member of the European Union, both India and the European Union gain more than the situation when the United Kingdom exits the European Union; due to Brexit, India would experience the decline of GDP growth rate from 1.1 to 0.5 percent while the European Union, from 0.1 to -0.5 percent.

The Member States of the European Free Trade Association are the considerable opportunity for export, especially for countries of the European Union. The European Economic Area unites the Member States of European Union and Norway, Liechtenstein and Iceland (the three EFTA countries) into an Internal Market. The paper deals with comparison the basic data of EFTA Member States such as geography, infrastructure, GDP. Due to Logistics Performance Index, it is possible to compare the level of logistics and transportation conditions in selected countries. The export costs and delivery time from a one Member State of European Union to capital cities of EFTA Member States are identified by using online calculator of chosen integrators.

On January 1, 1981, Greece became the tenth member of the European Economic Community and, 20 years later, on January 1, 2001, joined the euro area. In May of 2010 and February of 2012, Greece signed the first and the second economic adjustment programs and adopted austerity policies throughout the public sector in order to avoid the economic collapse, affecting residents’ income and health status. We studied the questionnaires of polls conducted in Greece before the elections of the European Parliament (May 25, 2014) and the “Europeans 2014” Eurobarometer’s survey in March of 2014. The responses of Greek voters from the Greek polls were alarming, pointing out their declining personal economic situation and Greece’s national economic situation, with a sense that the country was heading in the wrong direction, declaring themselves unsatisfied and insecure. The responses of Greek voters from the “Europeans 2014” survey were even more alarming. Health was the first priority for the voters. As the Greek polls and the Eurobarometer’s survey forecasted, but more significantly as the results of the Euro-elections showed, Greek voters preferred to put their hopes in something new.

Employment is very important for the development of every country. Without jobs and employees there is no development of anything. Therefore, it is extremely important that each country take into account the employment of its citizens. Employment is an agreement between an employee and an employer that the employee will provide certain services on the job in the return for compensation. For the purpose of the work it has been conducted a detailed analysis of the employment in selected European Union Member States in the period from 2002 to 2012. It has been analyzed the employment according to economic activity. The analyzed countries are the Republic of Austria, the Republic of Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and the Republic of Croatia. The aim of the work is to show that there were differences in structure between the observed countries.

This article covers those minority-related developments, important events and “missing” steps of the eu Institutions, especially the ep and the European Commission, throughout the year of 2014 that relate to traditional national minorities, regional language groups, and national communities. The year 2014 cannot be separated from 2013, thus the study covers one and a half years and analyses—among others—issues such as the first results of the European Citizens Initiative, the adopted resolution on endangered European languages and linguistic diversity in the European Union, the successful re-establishment of the “Intergroup for Traditional Minorities, National Communities and Languages” and the challenges the European Commission faces in this field. The study provides an analytical evaluation of this period. Throughout 2013 and 2014 a few minor steps forward were made within the European institutions on the field related to national minority protection; however, none of these should be over- or underestimated.

At the close of 2010, an immediate effect of the rule changes to the European Union’s budgetary powers brought in by the Lisbon Treaty was a non-agreement of the annual budget for 2011, which was repeated for the budgets of 2013 and 2015. Interviews and documents show that the European Parliament lost and the Council won in determining spending outcomes for 2011 and immediate payments for the subsequent years; whether this also resulted in lower budgets overall is ambiguous. When spending increased, this was in line with the will of the Council. The most significant variable was the change in the rules, which shifted the location of the default budget or reversion point to Council’s advantage if there were no agreement.

Sustainable economic growth is an essential objective at the European Union level. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of monetary integration on economic growth, assuming that the introduction of the euro significantly stimulated the process of European financial integration. We used a fixed-effects methodology for panel data for the EU 28 countries for the period 2004&ndash, 2018. We find that the main factors through which monetary integration contributessignificantly and positively to economic growth areeconomic growth Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA)cards, trade, monetary freedom, convergence of interest rates, convergence of exchange rates and cross-border holdings of short-term debt, with significant differences between Eurozone and non-euro countries, which confirms the hypothesis that the introduction of the euro had a significant impact on economic and financial integration.

International audience; The European Commission’s Investment Plan for Europe and the enduring economic crisis has brought state-owned development banks again to the fore of public and scholarly debate in Europe. This article proposes to place these banks’ activities and recent institutional co-operation in the context of European integration and assumes a historical perspective on European economic governance and development banking. Most importantly, it argues that the European Investment Bank has become a centre of gravity in long-standing political attempts to increase the investment firepower of the European Union. Based on detailed process-tracing analysis through publicly available data and interview material, the article delineates a gradual process of institutional innovation and network formation that advanced since the late 1980s and culminated in recent post-crisis policy processes. The contemporary visibility of development banking in Europe, we conclude, follows from these and is representative of a nucleus for a – somewhat hidden – European investment state, whose reach and stability, however, is yet to be determined.

Enlargement has always been an essential part of the European integration. Each enlargement round has left its mark on the integration project. However, it was the expansion of the European Union (EU) with the 10 Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs), Cyprus and Malta, unprecedented in scope and scale, which presented the Union with an opportunity to develop a multifaceted set of instruments and transformed enlargement into one of EU’s most successful policies. The numerous challenges of the accession process, along with the enormity of the historical mission to unify Europe, lent speed to the emergence of the study of EU enlargement as a key research area. The early studies investigated the puzzle of the EU’s decision to enlarge with the CEECs, and the costs and benefits of the Eastern expansion. However, the questions about the impact of EU enlargement policy inspired a new research agenda. Studies of the influence of the EU on candidate and potential candidate countries have not only widened the research focus of Europeanization studies (beyond the member states of the Union), but also stimulated and shaped the debates on the scope and effectiveness of EU conditionality. Most of the analytical frameworks developed in the context of the Eastern enlargement have favored rational institutionalist approaches highlighting a credible membership perspective as the key explanatory variable. However, studies analyzing the impact of enlargement policy on the Western Balkan countries and Turkey have shed light on some of the limitations of the rationalist approaches and sought to identify new explanatory factors. After the completion of the fifth enlargement with the accession of Bulgaria and Romania in 2007, the research shifted to analyzing the continuity and change of EU enlargement policy and its impact on the candidate and potential candidate countries. There is also a growing number of studies examining the sustainability of the impact of EU conditionality after accession by looking into new members’ compliance with EU rules. The impact of EU enlargement policy on the development of European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) and comparative evaluations of the Union’s performance across the two policy frameworks have also shaped and expanded the debate on the mechanisms and effectiveness of the EU’s influence. The impact of the Eastern enlargement on EU institutions and policy making is another area of research that has emerged over the last decade. In less than two decades the study of EU enlargement policy has produced a rich and diverse body of literature that has shaped the broader research agendas on Europeanization, implementation, and compliance and EU policy making. Comprehensive theoretical and empirical studies have allowed us to develop a detailed understanding of the impact of the EU on the political and economic transformations in Central and Eastern Europe. The ongoing accession process provides more opportunities to study the evolving nature of EU enlargement policy, its impact on candidate countries, the development of EU policies, and the advancement of the integration project.

Integration with the European Union has been far less distressing for the three Baltic States than for numerous other accessing countries owing to their strong societal impetus to (re)join Western political, economic, and legal culture after they regained their independence from the Soviet Union in 1990. However, the accession of these states—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—had several distinctive features related to constitutional background and settings, which heavily influenced problem solving between government and the EU institutions. In general, the controversial issues regarding how to solve the problems with supranational power have never been dramatic with regard to the Baltic States, which leads to the assumption that often the governments have taken rather compliant positions. The latest cases, such as the European Stabilization Mechanism, indicate the change in paradigm: the three Baltic States are more aware of the margin of appreciation and actual borderlines between policy making- and decision making. Today, in setting up an EU-related agenda, more skills than previously are needed in finding allies and choosing partners. The road the Baltic States took in joining the EU was a difficult one, nor has their role in the EU been easy. Should a small state with a big initiative be allowed to mentor other member states regarding that initiative, meaning in particular Estonia and its digital development? Another peculiar aspect of the Baltic States is their (inter)relationship with Russia. Considering themselves a bridge between East and West, the Baltics have been active in Eastern Partnership and Development Aid initiatives and have also spoken out strongly against intervention in Georgia and Ukraine. This position sometimes complicates any EU attempt to achieve consensus on foreign policy.

The banking union constitutes not only a major advance in supranational economic integration but also increases differentiated integration among the member states of the European Union. Although the banking union is open to all EU member states, only euro area countries participate. Other member states have been opponents, bystanders, or interested non-participants. This article explains the variation in participation as a result of path-dependency arising from the original differentiation between euro area countries and the rest of the EU. In the euro crisis, these two groups of member states were subject to differential pressure to integrate further. In addition, the banking union reinforced the causes that had led to the original differentiation of the monetary union. This path-dependency overrides variation in sector-specific economic interests, governance capacity, and policy paradigms that might otherwise explain governmental preferences in banking regulation. These factors can, however, par...

It is often argued that the crucial democratic body of the European Union (EU) is the European parliament. Over time, the European parliament's role has increased from being a consultative body to one which has an institutionalised co-decision authority in EU lawmaking. After the Lisbon treaty and the abolition of the Western European Union (WEU), the European parliament also has an increasingly important role as an intergovernmental European assembly. This article examines the British discussion about the country's commitment to parliamentary scrutiny, representation and supervision, in which the need for a genuine debate over representation within the EU is highlighted. British prime ministers have, in most cases, defined both the government's and parliament's stance on European integration either through their personal role, or through wide-ranging discussions in their cabinets. However, in the 2000s, the Houses’ parliamentary committees have also influenced the shaping of the British position through their scrutiny of European policies. They were effective in the scrutiny of the Common Foreign and Defence Policy (CFDP), arguing that the government should keep parliament informed of discussions concerning the CFDP, and that the quality of the democratic process depended largely on the relationship between the British national parliament and the government. The parliamentary committees and the government both agreed that parliamentary scrutiny should not be left to the European parliament alone; the participation of national parliamentarians with specialist knowledge of the EU level was also seen as especially important.

The main target of the paper is to identify the influences of the financial and trade liberalization in the EU and the functioning of the EMU on the realization of the cross-border mergers and acquisitions among the selected states of the European territory. We analyse in the paper, concerning the theoretical background of the foreign scientific studies on the influence of the integration processes in Europe on the realization of the cross-border mergers and acquisitions, the influence of the selected predictors on the cross-border mergers and acquisitions realized in 16 source countries and 25 target countries in the European territory from 1998 to 2012 (database data created by the authors) through the generalized linear model. Empirical results of several foreign studies (e.g. Bjortvan, 2004, Neary, 2007, Brouwer, Paap, Viaene, 2008, Coeurdacier, De Santos, Aviat, 2009 etc.) indicate that European integration had a positive impact on the development of cross-border mergers and acquisitions especially in manufacturing sector. We came to the same conclusion based on our analyses, while the integration into the EU has a critical influence, which is significantly higher in manufacturing sector. The influence of the integration into the EMU can be regarded as additional and it is identical for manufacturing sector and service sector. We can claim definitely that the institutional changes, such as the unified market of the European Union and the European Monetary Union were releasing factors of capital reallocation all over the world. The European Monetary Union encouraged the capital reallocation through the effects of unilateral financial liberalization (a decrease of marginal and fixed costs for execution of reallocation transactions) and thus facilitated the implementation of cross-border mergers and acquisitions in the European area.