scholarly journals Debating Future Harmonization of European Union VAT Regulations: Protests Among Swedish Nonprofit Organizations

2012 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanne Wallman Lundasen

The article discusses how the introduction of common European Union tax (VAT) regulations may affect the voluntary sector in Sweden. Historically nonprofit organizations in Sweden have enjoyed tax exemption given that their activities are considered to be of a common good purpose. The Commission of the European Union considers the tax exemption to be too generous in the case of Sweden and that it may distort competition in the free market. The protests are analyzed through a historical institutionalism framework where the Swedish paradigm for the voluntary sector is seen as deeply embedded in a specific institutional setting. The EU policy is interpreted by many nonprofit actors as threatening the existing institutional setting.

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-90
Author(s):  
Mentor Lecaj ◽  

This paper aims to explain the legal, political and moral obligation of the European Union institutions in the promotion, advancement, respect, and implementation of human rights and freedoms as a universal value, and above all as binding legal- political principles during their efforts in relations with actors both inside and outside the EU. This research work simultaneously analyzes and interprets international legal rules that regulate human rights. Moreover, the cases and means in promoting the human rights used by the European Union in different cultural regions have been compared and analyzed as well as the possibility of changing the approach of EU policy towards countries where the highest level of resistance exist in the accepting of such values.


Author(s):  
Michał Pietrzak ◽  
Marcin Mucha

In the period 1990–2013 sugar industry in Poland faced numerous legal transformations, shifting from nearly free-market conditions into a strongly regulated sector. Changes of the sugar industry regulations had a significant impact on the structure of the sugar market, companies’ actions and, as a result, on their performance. Accession to the European Union and the reform of the sugar regime conducted from 2006 to 2010 on the initiative of the European Commission involved deep restructuring and modernization of the factories, which caused growth of their productivity. However, prices of sugar in the EU and in Poland are much higher than prices on the world market.


Policy-Making in the European Union explores the link between the modes and mechanisms of EU policy-making and its implementation at the national level. From defining the processes, institutions and modes through which policy-making operates, the text moves on to situate individual policies within these modes, detail their content, and analyse how they are implemented, navigating policy in all its complexities. The first part of the text examines processes, institutions, and the theoretical and analytical underpinnings of policy-making, while the second part considers a wide range of policy areas, from economics to the environment, and security to the single market. Throughout the text, theoretical approaches sit side by side with the reality of key events in the EU, including enlargement, the ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon, and the financial crisis and resulting Eurozone crisis, focusing on what determines how policies are made and implemented. This includes major developments such as the establishment of the European Stability Mechanism, the reform of the common agricultural policy, and new initiatives to promote EU energy security. In the final part, the chapters consider trends in EU policy-making and the challenges facing the EU.


Author(s):  
Ralf Drachenberg ◽  
Alex Brianson

This chapter examines the process of policy-making in the European Union. It first considers how the EU originally made policy decisions before tracing the evolution of the formal balance between the EU institutions over time, with particular emphasis on the increasing legislative power of the European Parliament. It then describes the Community method, which remains the core of the EU policy process but is now complemented with a range of ‘new governance tools’ designed to produce coordinated member state action through iterated processes of standard-setting, best practice identification, and knowledge transfer. One of these processes is the open method of coordination (OMC). The chapter concludes with an analysis of the implementation of EU policy decisions by and in the member states, along with current trends in EU decision-making after the EU enlargements of the 2000s and the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty.


2001 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 184-208 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karlheinz Neunreither

In Early December 2000 The Political Leaders Of The European Union (EU) met in Nice in order to decide on the treaty adaptations needed before the enlargement envisaged for the next decade. The overall goal was to render the EU more efficient and its decision making more transparent. The outcome of this important event was widely considered as disappointing. Some observers even came to the conclusion that there were no leaders of the EU as such, but only rather narrow-minded, egotistical national leaders who did not – with minor exceptions – care about the ‘common good’ at all. Never had it become so evident, in the opinion of some, that the European perspective had been fading away for many years, and that it was being replaced by national considerations which are often short-sighted and limited to the horizon of the next national elections. One of the classical theories on European integration, neo-functionalism, measures the progress of integration in terms of the Europeanization of its political elites. From this perspective, the top decision-makers seem to be on a downward trend. Is it then a case for the opposite theory, that of intergovernmentalism, which claims that national interests continue to be in the centre of EU decision-making and that tough bargaining is of its very nature?


2020 ◽  
pp. 096977642097061
Author(s):  
George Petrakos ◽  
Alexandra Sotiriou

Almost 30 years since the Maastricht Treaty and 20 years since the introduction of the euro, it is clear that the European Union (EU) has lost its appeal to wider constituencies and citizen groups that realize that the promises for convergence and prosperity have not been delivered. Rising dissatisfaction and Euroscepticism (expressed both in the ballot box and in Eurobarometer reports) is evident even in traditional pro-EU countries of the European core. As this long decade comes to an end, incidents (or accidents) like these ones, either in the form of open discontent, or in the form of rising populism, will exert pressure on the EU policy agenda that will either increase the frequency of deadlocks and inefficiency in policy making or will eventually lead to an honest effort to address the roots of these phenomena. This paper examines the drivers behind these two incidents (and the ones that may follow) and the limits of the current market and policy integration arrangements in the EU, arguing that a new policy agenda addressing the real weaknesses of the Union is inevitable if disintegration is to be avoided. Luckily enough, some elements of this new policy agenda may already be here.


Author(s):  
L. Gusev

In this paper the author considers policy of the European Union in the Central Asia. The author analyzes an updated EU strategy for the Central Asia and emphasizes its pragmatism, based on individual economic interests of the Central Asian countries in promoting bilateral relations. In the offered paper is also considered the evolution of the EU policy in the Central Asia.


Author(s):  
Lenka Anna Rovná ◽  
Jan Rovny

The collapse of communism in late 1989 released the Czechs to freely consider and shape the social and economic structures of their country. The diverse formulations of the contours that a democratic and market competitive Czech Republic should take were closely intertwined with the visions of Europe and the European Union. Two prominent postcommunist politicians, Václav Havel and Václav Klaus, offered two perspectives. While Václav Havel stressed the cultural, socially liberal anchoring represented by European democracy, Václav Klaus initially focused on Europe as a market-liberal economic model. By the time Václav Klaus replaced Václav Havel in the presidential office, Klaus shifted his European rhetoric from economic to sociocultural matters, opposing Europe as a limitation on Czech sovereignty. The discrete visions proposed by these statesmen are reflected in Czech public opinion, shaped between economic and sociocultural considerations. While Czech public opinion initially viewed the EU in economic terms, this changed around the time of the Czech Republic’s accession to the Union in 2004. By the early 2000s, Czechs started to view the EU rather as a sociocultural project. It was also around this time that public support for the Union started to significantly decline. The European Union, as a multifaceted organization with an encompassing legal framework, has been both an inspiration and a scarecrow in Czech politics. While for Havel, it has provided an imperfect but stable sociocultural expression of liberty and openness, for Klaus it was initially a symbol of free market economics, only to later become a much-opposed damper on Czech national independence. Klaus’s economic view dominated public understanding of the EU in the 1990s; however, the 2000s have seen a shift as the EU has come to be understood as a value-based, socially liberalizing project. While this development coincides with Havel’s vision of the EU, it has led, paradoxically, to increased public opposition to European integration.


2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 664-689 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mats A Bergman ◽  
Malcolm B Coate ◽  
Anh T V Mai ◽  
Shawn W Ulrick

ABSTRACT The European Union (EU) formally changed its merger policy in 2004, moving from a dominance standard to one based on a significant impediment of effective competition, which appears more closely aligned with the U.S. substantial lessening of competition standard. We use data from both before and after this reform to explore whether EU policy has converged toward the U.S. standard. We start by identifying changes in the EU regime and detect a softer EU policy for unilateral effects. We model the outcomes of EU and U.S. investigations with logit models and use their predictions in decompositions and other exercises to show policy convergence for unilateral effects cases.


2012 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 711-721 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronán Long

Abstract Several factors that have contributed to the success of the Law of the Sea Convention as a blueprint for the regulation of oceanic activities in the European Union (EU) are outlined, including the comprehensive nature of the Convention, the role of the Working Party on the Law of the Sea (COMAR) in coordinating EU policy, as well as the EU approach to dispute settlement and to global oceanic affairs.


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