scholarly journals Politics and Morality in the Novel “The Capital” by Robert Menasse

2021 ◽  
pp. 43-60
Author(s):  
Ivan Megela
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
European Commission ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
50Th Anniversary ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The European Union ◽  
European Union Policy ◽  
Common View ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
Robert Menasse

The article illustrates the relationship between politics and morality in the novel «The Capital» written by the famous Austrian writer Robert Menasse, a recipient of the German Book Prize in 2017. The research focuses on the study of the preliminaries for the 50th anniversary of the European Commission, one of the principal bureaucratic institutions of the European Union. The article highlights the anniversary celebration settings in the Department of Culture and Education. It considers different views on the event format in terms of the fundamental provisions of the European Commission with reference to historical memory and internal conflicts within the bureaucracy. The message of the primary slogan of the project “Concentration camps – never again!” is explained, integrating the past (remembrance of Auschwitz, the Holocaust) and the present (the real state of affairs in the European Union) along with a vision of the prospective political establishment of the shared European community. In this respect, some bullet points of the report made by the professor Alois Erhart from Vienna, a think tank member and the author’s alter ego, represent a common view of substantialization of the united Europe based on overcoming contradictions between the European Union policy and the national interests of the member countries. The research examines the peculiarities of the literary space in the «The Capital». It is determined that the complexity and diversity of the work produce a hybrid novel form, incorporating the features of the intellectual prose, essay, political pamphlet, and the thriller. An important aspect, highlighted in the article, involves the issue of fiction, fabrication, factuality in terms of the author-reader game accompanying the process of sense generation and text perception. The connotation of a grotesque image of a pig running through the center of Brussels is examined from different perspectives, both as an artistic device implicated in distinct plot lines, and as a metaphor attributed to the overall state of affairs in the capital of the united Europe.

scholarly journals Robert Menasse, The Capital. A satirical novel on the European Union

2021 ◽  
pp. 39-50
Author(s):  
Teresa Martins de Oliveira
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Short Introduction ◽  
Narrative Space ◽  
New Challenges ◽  
Robert Menasse ◽  
The Eu

After a short introduction to Menasse´s ideas about the European Union presented in different theoretical texts, the paper will concentrate on the novel The Capital, published in 2016. It will focus on the idea the reader will react with strangeness to the diminished narrative space taken in the text by topics like migrations, terrorism and islamofobia, which are generally accepted as the main issues affecting the EU today (Griffen 2019). Nonetheless, a more detailed analysis of three moments of the novel that critics tend to consider as subsidiary according to their place in the textual economy will show the importance of the aforementioned topics and their (possible) recognition as the new challenges that mark the EU.

Austrian Veto against European Union Membership Negotiations with Turkey

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-122
Author(s):  
Ewa Kaczan-Winiarska
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
European Commission ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
Negotiation Process ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Strategic Partner ◽  
Key Factor ◽  
European Standards ◽  
The Eu

The Austrian government is extremely sceptical about the accession negotiations which are conducted by the European Commission on behalf of the European Union with Turkey and calls for the negotiation process to end. Serious reservations of Vienna have been raised by the current political situation in Turkey under the rule of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, as well as by the standards of democracy in Turkey, which differ greatly from European standards. Serious deficiencies in rule of law, freedom of speech and independence of the judiciary, confirmed in the latest European Commission report on Turkey, do not justify, from Vienna’s point of view, the continuation of talks with Ankara on EU membership. In fact, Austria’s scepticism about the European perspective for Turkey has a longer tradition. This was marked previously in 2005 when the accession negotiations began. Until now, Austria’s position has not had enough clout within the European arena. Pragmatic cooperation with Turkey as a strategic partner of the EU, both in the context of the migration crisis and security policy, proved to be a key factor. The question is whether Austria, which took over the EU presidency from 1.7.2018, will be able to more strongly accentuate its reservations about Turkey and even build an alliance of Member States strong enough to block Turkey’s accession process.

Legal Maxims: Summaries and Extracts from Selected Case Law

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sébastien Brisard ◽  
Guglielmo Cantillo ◽  
Ramona Grimberger ◽  
Victoria Hanley-Emilsson ◽  
Rebeka Hevesi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
European Commission ◽  
Vice President ◽  
Case Law ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Grand Chamber

Council of the European Union v. European Commission, Case C-409/13, Grand Chamber, Judgment, 14 April 2015European Commission v. Vanbreda Risk & Benefits, Case C‑35/15 P(R), Order of the Vice-President of the Court, 23 April 2015Geoffrey Léger v. Ministre des Affaires sociales, de la Santé et des Droits des femmes, Établissement français du sang...

scholarly journals Sustainability in the European Union: Analyzing the Discourse of the European Green Deal

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 80
Author(s):  
Eva Eckert ◽  
Oleksandra Kovalevska
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
European Commission ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Main Question ◽  
The European Union ◽  
International Media ◽  
Institutional Power ◽  
The One ◽  
The Eu

In the European Union, the concern for sustainability has been legitimized by its politically and ecologically motivated discourse disseminated through recent policies of the European Commission and the local as well as international media. In the article, we question the very meaning of sustainability and examine the European Green Deal, the major political document issued by the EC in 2019. The main question pursued in the study is whether expectations verbalized in the Green Deal’s plans, programs, strategies, and developments hold up to the scrutiny of critical discourse analysis. We compare the Green Deal’s treatment of sustainability to how sustainability is presented in environmental and social science scholarship and point out that research, on the one hand, and the politically motivated discourse, on the other, do not correlate and often actually contradict each other. We conclude that sustainability discourse and its keywords, lexicon, and phraseology have become a channel through which political institutions in the EU such as the European Commission sideline crucial environmental issues and endorse their own presence. The Green Deal discourse shapes political and institutional power of the Commission and the EU.

scholarly journals A Review of Bioplastics and Their Adoption in the Circular Economy

Polymers ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 1229
Author(s):  
Alberto Di Bartolo ◽  
Giulia Infurna ◽  
Nadka Tzankova Dintcheva
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
European Commission ◽  
Circular Economy ◽  
Environmental Risks ◽  
Plastic Waste ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Sustainable Society ◽  
Net Zero

The European Union is working towards the 2050 net-zero emissions goal and tackling the ever-growing environmental and sustainability crisis by implementing the European Green Deal. The shift towards a more sustainable society is intertwined with the production, use, and disposal of plastic in the European economy. Emissions generated by plastic production, plastic waste, littering and leakage in nature, insufficient recycling, are some of the issues addressed by the European Commission. Adoption of bioplastics–plastics that are biodegradable, bio-based, or both–is under assessment as one way to decouple society from the use of fossil resources, and to mitigate specific environmental risks related to plastic waste. In this work, we aim at reviewing the field of bioplastics, including standards and life cycle assessment studies, and discuss some of the challenges that can be currently identified with the adoption of these materials.

scholarly journals Joint bodies in the European Union's international agreements: Delegating powers to the European Commission in EU external relations

2021 ◽  
pp. 146511652110273
Author(s):  
Markus Gastinger ◽  
Andreas Dür
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
European Commission ◽  
Empirical Support ◽  
International Agreements ◽  
Principal Agent ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Original Dataset ◽  
Voting Rule ◽  
External Relations ◽  
Set Up

In many international agreements, the European Union sets up joint bodies such as ‘association councils’ or ‘joint committees’. These institutions bring together European Union and third-country officials for agreement implementation. To date, we know surprisingly little about how much discretion the European Commission enjoys in them. Drawing on a principal–agent framework, we hypothesise that the complexity of agreements, the voting rule, conflict within the Council, and agency losses can explain Commission discretion in these institutions. Drawing on an original dataset covering nearly 300 such joint bodies set up by the European Union since 1992, we find robust empirical support for all expectations except for the agency loss thesis. Our findings suggest that the European Commission is the primary actor in the implementation of many of the European Union's international agreements, allowing it to influence EU external relations beyond what is currently acknowledged in the literature.

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