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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.

The post-Maastricht era is characterised by a growing importance of the European Council in the integration of various policy-fields. In this respect, EU energy policy is no exception. The fragmentation in three coexisting strands and external shocks has emphasised the need for intergovernmental coordination and oversight. This new intergovernmentalism, exemplified prominently by the recent move towards Energy Union, is surprising in two respects. On the one hand, energy is an area of diverse member state interests that repeatedly thwarted ambitious plans for deepening European integration. On the other hand, the European Council’s new intergovernmentalism challenges the classical role of the European Commission in the field that was rooted in its single market competence. However, rather than implying a shift in the interinstitutional balance, developments of the past decade reveal increased cooperation between the two key institutions and flexible working mechanisms through which the Commission has retained substantial policy initiative capacities.

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.

This article examines the political dynamics behind Europe’s new banking union in two stages. First it examines the accretion of political power to two European institutions – the European Commission and the European Central Bank (ECB) – during the financial crisis, emphasising the ways in which the European Central Bank (especially under Mario Draghi) altered the relationship between principals and agents in the European institutional architecture. Second, it process-traces the policy conflicts and compromises that led to a Europeanisation and centralisation of bank supervision, recapitalisation, recovery and resolution in a remarkably short two years – a transfer in sovereignty to the supranational level equal to that involved in the creation of Economic and Monetary Union. The article argues, contrary to other analyses that stress the intergovernmental nature of the process and the bargains concluded, that the emergence of banking union reflected something of a neo-functionalist logic whereby s...

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.

To manage the challenges resulting from the Euro crisis, EU institutions and member state governments established a number of measures aimed at enhancing coordination of budgetary and economic policy. The development of these measures came with considerable political conflicts. This article investigates empirically the extent to which political parties in the German Bundestag contributed to these conflicts by employing their information and control instruments. Differences in level of activity between parliamentary parties in the Bundestag are explained by strategic behaviors. The article contributes to political science debates regarding both the role of national parliaments in EU politics and on political conflicts in Germany resulting from the Euro crisis.

The European Union legislator has tackled the cross-border enforcement of protection measures within the European Union by adopting two instruments: Regulation 606/2013 and Directive 2011/99/EU. This paper tries to sketch the approach followed by the European Union legislator, to point out some of the deficiencies of the new regime and to map both instruments within the existing body of European Union private international law.

The purpose of this article is to analyse Spain’s contribution to the advancement and consolidation of the European political union on the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of Spain joining the European Community. The article describes profound transformations that the European Community underwent in the process of transforming into the European Union showing that Spain has been part of the group of countries that led these transformations becoming a country that belongs to the core of the European Union with a status similar to that of the six founding countries.

Why did Europe fail to manage the euro area crisis and what lessons can be drawn from this failure for Europe’s future? Studying the EU/IMF program that was imposed on Greece in May 2010 — the original sin of the crisis — highlights both the nature of the problem and the difficulty in resolving it. The mismanagement can be traced to the flawed political structure of the euro area that permitted governments of some member states to exploit problems in other member states that share the common currency. Undue influence of key euro area governments compromised the IMF’s role to the detriment of other member states and the euro area as a whole. Rather than help Greece, the May 2010 program was designed to protect specific political and financial interests in other member states. The ease with which the euro was exploited to shift losses from one member state to another and the absence of a corrective mechanism render the current framework unsustainable. In its current form, the euro poses a threat to the European project.

This paper surveys the history of the United States policy towards European integration from 1945 up to 1968 before President Nixon came into office. Drawing on a detailed analysis of the documents mostly obtainable from the official websites of the US Department of State, the US National Archives, and the EU Historical Archives, the paper argues that it was the European geopolitical and economic context after the Second World War and the United States national interests which moulded this country’s pro-European integration policy. Thus, the paper will begin with an analysis of the search for global influence between the United States and the Soviet Union before examining how the United States redefined its core interests in recognition of the Soviet threat. Then, it will explore the role that the United States played in reconstructing Western European economy and defending it physically. Also, it is argued that the United States and Western Europe took concerted action together to create the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), European Economic Community (EEC), and the European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC or Euratom), the very first supranational institutions which have made the European integration process irreversible. It will be concluded that the vitality of the European integration project depended on US economic and political capital for its success.

The protracted euro area crisis has led to a resurgence of academic interest in integration theories. In a recent piece in this journal, Bauer and Becker argue that the euro crisis allowed the European Commission to strengthen its role in economic governance, in particular with regard to its implementation powers. Contrary to Bauer and Becker’s claim, I contend that the euro crisis has resulted not in strengthening the Commission. Rather, the Commission is undergoing “subtle disempowerment”, that is, a gradual transfer of decision-making authority and resources from the Commission to the intergovernmental level and to the European Central Bank. I illustrate the Commission's subtle disempowerment along three dimensions: the creation of the intergovernmental European Stability Mechanism; enhanced oversight mechanisms of the Commission via the troika constellation; and the creation of the European System of Financial Supervision, Banking Union and Single Supervisory Mechanism under the aegis of the E...

The euro area crisis has exposed flaws in the institutional framework of the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). The immediate causes of the crisis have been widely debated — including weak governance, persistent erosion of competitiveness in some countries and easy financing by banks. However, there is little discussion about a fundamental shift in the nature of European integration, which took place in mid-1990s when plans for launching the euro became credible and binding. It was not understood that Europe had shifted from a Common Market Era, during which EMU’s foundations were laid, to a ‘Union Era’ which in retrospect exhibited an incomplete institutional framework. This article reviews the leap in governance now taking place, whilst taking stock of what has worked and proved resilient over the previous 60 years. This is done by means of an index — the European Index of Regional Institutional Integration (EURII) — providing a tool to synthesise and monitor European institutional inte...

During a first step of the process of European integration, from the Treaty of Rome of 1957 to the Single Act of 1986, the Economic European Community equipped itself with legal tools to build a ‘common market’ and common rules for the setting up of the free movement of goods. The extension of the Community competences – most often shared competences between the European Union and Member States – led to the implementation of direct intervention tools which, without having been defined as ‘public enterprises’ until now, seem to have, or could have, part or essential characteristics of such enterprises. Our focus is, in particular, on European joint undertakings, such as Galileo, created since the adoption of the Single Act on the basis of Article 187 TFEU (ex-Article 171 TEC); the development of ‘European agencies’, particularly of ‘executive agencies’; European funding for infrastructure; the statute of the European company.