Search

In this article we present a new proposal for the measurement of development, applied to the Pacific Countries of the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group (ACP), conditional on their insularity, and with privileged relations with the European Union. Our index has been constructed attending to the criteria defined in the Goals of the Millennium Declaration. For this purpose we will use the P distance method for the year 2007, the last year for which data are available. This index integrates socio-economic variables that permit a territorial ordering of the Pacific ACPs, in terms of those partial indicators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Union is presently constructing a new model of regional cooperation that includes not only economic objectives but also social, cultural and environmental agendas. One of the main challenges this project faces is the development of closer ties to neighbouring states without offering outright membership to the EU. As a result, however, cooperation and security-oriented agendas of the EU will automatically compete with each other for influence. The European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) can be thus understood in terms of an ongoing project of re-territorialisation that combines traditional geopolitical concerns and a 'politics of regional difference' with a post-national focus on mutual interdependence and partnership. Evidence for the consequences of these competing territorialities will be presented from the results of European research on civil society networks between the EU and neighbouring states. The focus will be on EU-Ukrainian relations within the ENP context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conflicts between European Union (EU) members about enlargement result from its redistributive effects. EU members are more likely to suffer from enlargement if they profit from EU transfers and if they are relatively close to applicant countries in which unemployment is significantly higher than in member countries. Phasing in membership rights serves to compensate the relative losers of enlargement to accomplish EU widening. Using data from all previous enlargement rounds until 2004, we demonstrate that EU members are more likely to demand a discrimination of new members if distributional conflicts arise. The existence of these distributional conflicts in turn increases the odds of EU members and the accession candidates actually agreeing on a phase-in period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Education is a crucial determinant of people's life chances, and it particularly affects the integration of youth into labour markets. The article shows how different kinds and levels of education shape the access of young people to jobs of varying advantage and the smoothness of the transition from school to work. It elaborates the common patterns in the relationship between education and early career labour market outcomes and investigates - especially for EU member countries - how varying institutional arrangements in the educational systems and in the regulation of labour markets lead to varying integration outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents an editorial regarding health inequalities in the European Union. Differences in health experience and health status between countries, regions, and social groups; Reference to a summit meeting called "Tackling Health Inequalities: Governing for Health"; Awarding of the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for 2005 to Barry J. Marshall and J. Robin Warren for their discovery of the bacterium Helicobacter pylori, which is associated with low socioeconomic status and poor living and housing conditions in childhood; Rate of infection among the populations of central and eastern European countries in comparison to western Europe; Inequalities of morbidity and mortality.