The Europeanization of social movements in the Czech Republic: The EU and local women’s groups

2010 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-219 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ondřej Císař ◽  
Kateřina Vráblíková

The goal of this paper is to analyse the impact the EU has had on Czech women’s groups since the1990s. Drawing on both Europeanization and social movement theories, the first section defines the theoretical framework of the paper. The second section is focused on the impact of changes in the funding of women’s groups which, since the end of the1990s, have relied more than before on European funding. The third section analyses the shift in the political context and the domestic political opportunity structure in the Czech Republic that has occurred in connection with the accession process. The fourth section analyzes transnational cooperation for which new opportunities have appeared with the EU’s eastward expansion. The paper concludes by summarizing its main findings.

2018 ◽  
pp. 140-170
Author(s):  
Conor O'Dwyer

This chapter completes the close comparison of Poland and the Czech Republic. In 2004, both became EU members, a change that weakened transnational leverage and reshaped the political opportunity structure such that the costs of repressing LGBT-rights movements fell. In Poland, this shift led to an immediate increase in direct and indirect repression under a newly elected hard-right government. Over the longer term, however, this backlash reinforced solidarity, prevented internal framing contests, and helped win movement allies. The chapter focuses in particular on how Polish activism became electorally mobilized through an alliance with the political party Your Movement. The Czech Republic, where the hard right remained irrelevant, saw no such backlash; nor, however, did the Czech movement reap backlash’s benefits. Instead, it continued the demobilizing and deinstitutionalizing trends described in the previous chapter.


2018 ◽  
pp. 57-83
Author(s):  
Conor O'Dwyer

This chapter presents a framework for understanding the consequences of hard-right electoral breakthrough for the framing of homosexuality and LGBT rights. It begins by describing the extant framings of homosexuality under late communism in Poland and the Czech Republic. It then compares how the differing electoral success of hard-right political parties over the course of the EU accession process led to differing degrees of reframing homosexuality in both countries. In Poland, hard-right mobilization transformed the framing of LGBT rights by linking them with EU accession, which it portrayed as a threat to national identity. Because the Czech Republic did not experience hard-right backlash, the predominant framing of LGBT rights did not become as closely identified with the EU. The final part of the chapter moves from framing contests to frame resonance by presenting a quantitative content analysis of LGBT issues in both countries’ press from 1990 through 2012.


2017 ◽  
Vol 67 (4) ◽  
pp. 511-538 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikolaos Stoupos ◽  
Apostolos Kiohos

The sovereign debt crisis of 2010 in the euro area significantly decelerated the monetary integration of the EU. The main purpose of this paper is to explore whether five post-communist member states of the EU are mature enough to adopt the euro. We used nominal exchange rates in the error correction model with asymmetric power ARCH (ECM-APARCH). Our results highlight that EU membership positively increased the impact of the euro on the currency of each of these countries in the short-run. In contrast, the long-term effect of the euro on each currency is negative for the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Croatia. Wholly different results were obtained for Poland and Romania. The APARCH model showed that the negative responses of the euro had a greater or neutral effect on the conditional variance of each currency instead of the positive responses. The debt crisis of the euro area had no impact on the dynamic linkages between the currencies. Our research concludes that Croatia, the Czech Republic, and Hungary are not ready to join the euro area in the near future. On the other hand, the currencies of Poland and Romania are already aligned with the fluctuations of the euro.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-134
Author(s):  
Aneta Pivoňková ◽  
Jana Tepperová

Abstract The anti-tax avoidance directive (ATAD) implemented in the EU countries in 2019 has brought, among other things, a common rule for tax-deductibility of exceeding borrowing costs of corporate taxpayers – the interest limitation rule. For interest limitation, the Czech Republic had so far used the so-called safe haven thin capitalisation rule. With the implementation of ATAD, companies need to test not only the thin capitalisation rule but also the new interest limitation rule according to ATAD. This paper aims to review the impact of the new interest limitation rule on the 200 largest Czech companies by their 2017 revenue as recorded in the Albertina database. Results covering the new rules, i.e. following the ATAD implementation, are being compared to the situation before the implementation. Most of the analysed companies seem unaffected by the new interest limitation rule. The analysis also showed that most of the analysed companies do not imply exceeding borrowing costs, either before or following the ATAD implementation.


Author(s):  
Wojciech Józwiak ◽  
Zofia Mirkowska ◽  
Wojciech Ziętara

The study focuses on the analysis of labor productivity in Polish agriculture in 2005 and 2016 in comparison to selected EU-15 countries (group 1) and some countries that joined the EU after 2004. In group 1, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany are included, while in group 2 - the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Lithuania, Latvia and Hungary. The analysis particularly considers the role of large farms, the size of which was contractually agreed at 30 ha of UAA. The aim of the study was to determine the impact of large farms on the level of labor productivity in total farms and to determine the possibility of reducing the differences between labor productivity in Polish large farms in relation to analogous farms in EU-15 countries, and determining whether changes occurring in Poland differ from those occurring in large farms in other post-socialist countries. In both groups of countries there was a decrease in the number of farms and an increase in labor productivity in agriculture in general and in surveyed classes in large farms. In the countries of group 2. the rate of labor productivity growth was higher than in group 1. However, it slightly reduced the differences. Labor productivity in agriculture in the countries of Group 1 was significantly higher than in Group 2. The increase in the number and share of large farms in the structure of farms was positively correlated with labor productivity in agriculture.


Author(s):  
Eliška Stromská ◽  
Dominika Tóthová ◽  
Katarína Melichová

The implementation of the Common Agricultural Policy of the EU in the Czech Republic brought many changes in the functioning and financing of agriculture in the Czech Republic with political, economic, and social impacts and many challenges and threats for Czech farmers. Since the Czech Republic acceded to the EU, the Common Agricultural Policy has been reformed several times. The aim of the article is to evaluate the impact of the Common Agricultural Policy on Czech farmers in 2014–2020. The evaluation is based on a qualitative survey among selected farmers in the Moravian-Silesian and Olomouc regions. The research results show that enterprises positively evaluate financial stability and the overall protection of the agricultural sector. Support for the diversification of agriculture and support for the investment was also highlighted. On the contrary, the administrative burden, great emphasis on cross compliance rules, differences in the payments in EU countries, reducing the competitiveness of Czech agriculture and unfavourable conditions for livestock farmers were assessed negatively.


2021 ◽  
pp. 019251212110410
Author(s):  
Fiona Buckley ◽  
Mack Mariani

Despite concerns that women candidates are hampered by gender gaps in campaign financing, few scholars have examined how gender quotas impact women candidates’ access to campaign funds. We examine the effect of a party-based gender quota on women candidates’ financing and electoral success in Ireland. Under the gender quota, the number of women candidates increased and parties acted strategically to provide women challengers with increased financial support. However, women challengers spent less candidate funds than men challengers and were less likely to have prior officeholding experiences associated with fundraising. Women challengers’ disadvantage is concerning because candidate expenditures are associated with winning votes. Our findings show that the effectiveness of a gender quota is partly determined by how the quota interacts with the campaign finance system and the political opportunity structure.


2000 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marek Mora

This article deals with pension policy in three most developed transition countries: the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. Unreformed public pension systems suffer under a number of deficiencies and it is likely that pension policy will be a part of negotiations in the EU accession process, mainly due to its fiscal and social impacts. The progress in pension reform made so far differs broadly among those three countries. Hungary has adopted a multi-pillar system in July 1998 with a significant role of mandatory, fully funded pillar. Poland has made important preparation steps in the same direction and the laws have recently been approved by the Parliament. In the Czech Republic the main importance is still attached to the public pay-as-you-go pillar which was in 1994 complemented by private capital pension funds. This article search for explanations of this different development and makes some minimum recommendations for the Czech pension policy. A warning for the Czech government should be that the most pension reforms have been implemented in countries where the old system stood before collapse or had already collapsed. The Czech Republic should not wait until this moment and should take immediate actions to avoid this danger.


Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (18) ◽  
pp. 5612
Author(s):  
Michał Gostkowski ◽  
Tomasz Rokicki ◽  
Luiza Ochnio ◽  
Grzegorz Koszela ◽  
Kamil Wojtczuk ◽  
...  

The main purpose of this paper is to assess energy consumption with a breakdown into main sectors of the countries that belong to the Visegrad Group. The specific objectives aim to determine changes in energy absorption, its productivity, structure by sectors and to show the similarities of the Visegrad Group countries to the other EU states in terms of the sectoral energy absorption structure. All members of the Visegrad group, i.e., Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, were purposefully selected for the study as of 31 December 2018. The research period covered the years 1990–2018. The sources of gathered information were the literature on the subject and OECD data. The following methods were used for the analysis and presentation of materials: explanations, tabular and graphical depictions, descriptive statistics, dynamics indicators, and cluster analysis performed with the following methods: k-means, hierarchical agglomerative clusters and DIvisive ANAlysis (DIANA). There is a limited number of previous studies on the relationship between the national level of economic development and energy consumption in different sectors of industry. Additionally, there are no such analytical projects concerning EU states. The article fills the research gap in this area. It was established that the dynamics of productivity growth over the nine years (2010–2018) was similar in the countries of the Visegrad group and on average for the EU. This means that the members of the Visegrad group did not actually improve their energy efficiency as compared to the EU average. The reason may be the increasingly faster implementation of modern technologies in developed economies of Western Europe as compared to the developing countries, which include the members of the Visegrad group. The conversion of the economy had a very large impact on changing the structure of energy absorption by sector. Industry and agriculture lost their importance. On the other hand, the transport and service sectors benefited. As a result of the cluster analysis, all EU (European Union) states were divided into four groups. Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary found themselves in one group, along with most Western European countries. This may mean that the economies of these states have become unified with highly developed economic systems. Slovakia found itself in the group of states with a greater importance of industry. The study complements the contribution to the theory. From a practical point of view, it shows the impact of economic transformation on changes in energy consumption in individual sectors, which may be a model of transition in this area.


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