scholarly journals 1918 barrier on the road to the membership of the European Union

Author(s):  
Miroslav Jovanovic

The European Union (EU) and Serbia?s accession to this international organization in a relatively distant future are linked, in the eyes of the Serbian public, with numerous expectations, dilemmas, misunderstanding fears, joys and periodical manipulations. The topic is important, broad and complex, so there is a need for the basic and understandable explanations. While in Serbia this topic is one of the most important and high on the government?s agenda. In the EU and its member countries, it attracts almost no attention and is not a priority issue. Simply, the EU is concerned with much more important issues, such as its future constitutional system security, energy, globalization, unemployment, immigration, demographic problem (population ageing), monetary union, preservation of the single market and adjustment to the EU eastern enlargement of 2004 and 2007. After introduction to the advantages and problems relating to Serbia?s potential accession to the EU, the attention is turned to the issues that include geopolitical conditions for accession to the EU, legislation and functioning of the EU, as well as its budget. Effects of integration, the EU?s interest in Serbia and Serbia?s interest in the EU are presented before conclusions.

2014 ◽  
Vol 15 (7) ◽  
pp. 1223-1255 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miroslava Scholten ◽  
Marloes van Rijsbergen

Although not explicitly regulated by the EU treaties, EU agencies not only exist but also have increased in number and power. In addition, while EU agencies may exercise very similar functions to those of the Commission, Articles 290 and 291 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) do not list agencies among the possible authors of non-legislative acts. The existing situation raises the questions of the extent to which the ongoing agencification in the EU is legitimate and what its limits are. This article addresses these questions in the light of the old and new Treaties and case law, including the just releasedESMA-shortsellingcase. It shows that while the Lisbon Treaty made a few steps forward on the road of legitimizing EU agencies and delegating important powers to them, the scope of powers that EU agencies can have remains unclear. In this respect, the European Court of Justice's lenient approach in theESMA-shortsellingcase is unfortunate because it neither clarifies the issue nor pushes the Union Legislator and the Member States to address it. Consequently, in the absence of clear limits, further agencification is likely to persist at the risk of increasing the democratic legitimacy deficit and remaining accountability gaps.


2021 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 114-128
Author(s):  
Milica Škorić

Although public agencies have existed for several decades, in Serbia, they are new forms of government bodies. The aspiration to modernize the public administration and harmonize it with modern trends can be an opportunity to see the stages of development and models of control and autonomy of the agency from the decades-long development of Swedish public agencies. The example of Croatia will show the potential of the former socialist state for such reforms and how important reforms are on the road to the European Union in the XXI century. Through the analysis of relevant literature and a comparative method, there are presented the reforms of public agencies being implemented in selected countries since their first appearance till nowadays. This paper focuses on the process of creation and development of public agencies in Sweden and Croatia, as members of the European Union, whose development of a public administration differs significantly, all in order to answer the questions: How much do public agencies contribute to decentralization? Are these bodies necessary for the approach and accession to the EU?


Human Affairs ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bedrudin Brljavac

AbstractThe concept of Europeanization has become very popular in studies of European integration and particularly in analyses on the post-communist countries undergoing extensive transformation on the road to European Union membership. Although the Europeanization process has been quite successful in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), the same scenario has not played out in the western Balkans region. With the purpose of analysing the effectiveness and impact of the Europeanization process in the western Balkans, the main subject of the paper is Bosnia and Herzegovina’s EU-related reform processes. Although Bosnia has been undergoing thorough Europeanizing reforms since the late 1990s, when the country entered the Stabilization and Association Process (SAP), it is still an unstable and dysfunctional country. That makes it the perfect case for assessing the possible shortcomings of the Europeanization process. Thus far, most scholars have concluded that domestic political elites in Bosnia are the only party responsible for Bosnia’s political deadlock. However, this paper analyses the continued Bosnian deadlock from a different perspective, trying to figure out the degree of responsibility the European Union shares in the country’s Europeanization process. Although uncooperative Bosnian political elites are to a great extent responsible for the continued political and social status quo, EU leaders are not faultless either. In fact, so far European leaders have often appeared to be deeply divided, incoherent, and short-sighted in terms of Europeanization policies in Bosnia, thus further deepening the political deadlock in the country. Therefore, we can ask whether Bosnia represents a litmus test which the EU has failed.


2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 333-350
Author(s):  
Artur Adamczyk ◽  
Mladen Karadzoski

The main purpose of the article is to present how the Greek- -Macedonian naming dispute influenced the problem of implementation the international identity of Macedonia. Despite the initial problems of the government in Skopje related to determining their international identity, Macedonians managed to define the principles regarding the identification of a new state on the international stage. As a small country with limited attributes to shape its international position, Macedonia has basically been determined to seek guarantees for its existence and security in stable and predictable European international structures such as NATO and the European Union. The main obstacle for Macedonians on the road to Euro-Atlantic structures was the veto of Greece, a member of these organizations, resulting from Athens’ refusal to accept the name the Republic of Macedonia. The Prespa Agreement of 2018 gave a new impetus to the realization of the international identity of North Macedonia.


2011 ◽  
Vol 60 (4) ◽  
pp. 1017-1038 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurens van Puyenbroeck ◽  
Gert Vermeulen

A critical observer would not deny that the practice of European Union (‘EU’) policy making in the field of criminal law in the past decade since the implementation of the Tampere Programme has been mainly repressive and prosecution-oriented.1 The idea of introducing a set of common (minimum) rules, guaranteeing the rights of defence at a EU-wide level, has not been accorded the same attention as the introduction of instruments aimed at improving the effectiveness of crime-fighting. What does this mean for the future of EU criminal policy? Will the EU succeed in the coming years in developing an area where freedom, security and justice are truly balanced? According to several authors, to date the EU has evolved in the opposite direction. As one observer put it:[I]f Procedural Criminal Law arises from the application of Constitutional Law, or indeed if it may be described as “a seismograph of the constitutional system of a State”, then as a consequence the Procedural Criminal Law of the European Union shows the extent of the Democratic Rule of Law, of the existence of a true “Rechtsstaat”, within an integrated Europe. This situation may be qualified as lamentable, as the main plank of the EU's criminal justice policy relates to the simplification and the speeding up of police and judicial cooperation—articles 30 and 31 of the Treaty of the EU—but without at the same time setting an acceptable standard for fundamental rights throughout a united Europe.2


Author(s):  
Dmitrii О. Mikhalev ◽  
◽  
Egor’ A. Sergeev ◽  

The article presents a retrospective analysis of relations between the government of Italy and the European Union institutions in the context of supranational fiscal regulation in 2002–2019. The authors analyze the influence of external and internal factors on the state of public finance in Italy, note the reasons that made it difficult to meet the requirements of the Stability and Growth Pact, study the main issues on the agenda in the EU-Italy relations and their evolution. The authors also come to conclusion that unlike the earlier discussions about correcting budget deficit in Italy, current focus of supranational fiscal governance is shifted to preventing it, what challenges the economic sovereignty of Italy and country’s opportunities to conduct a discretionary fiscal policy.


2002 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Ring ◽  
Roddy McKinnon

Across the European Union, national governments are re-assessing the institutional mechanisms through which pension provision is delivered. This articles sets the debate within the wider context of the ‘pillared’ structural analysis often adopted by international institutions when discussing pensions reform. It then sets out a detailed discussion of developments in the UK, arguing that the UK is moving towards a model of reform akin to that promoted by the World Bank – referred to here as ‘pillared-privatisation’. The themes of this model indicate more means-testing, greater private provision, and a shift of the burden of risk from the government to individuals. An assessment is then made of the implications of UK developments for other EU countries. It is suggested that while there are strong reasons to think that other countries will not travel as far down the road of ‘pillared-privatisation’ as the UK, this should not be taken as a ‘given’.


Author(s):  
Simon Bulmer ◽  
Owen Parker ◽  
Ian Bache ◽  
Stephen George ◽  
Charlotte Burns

This chapter examines two important developments in the history of the European Union (EU): the signing of the Maastricht and Amsterdam Treaties. In June 1989, the European Council agreed to European Commission President Jacques Delors’s three-stage plan for monetary union by 1999, despite British opposition. In 1991, intergovernmental conferences (IGCs) were held on both monetary union and political union. The proposals of these IGCs were incorporated into the Treaty on European Union (TEU), agreed at Maastricht in December 1991. The TEU marked a major step on the road to European integration. It committed most of the member states to adopting a single currency and introduced the concept of European citizenship, among others. This chapter considers the events leading up to the signing of the TEU, from the Maastricht negotiations to the issue of enlargement, the 1996 IGC, and the Treaty of Amsterdam.


2015 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph Krenn

Opinion 2/13is a sweeping blow. After four years of negotiations, it took the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU or the Court) only a few paragraphs to pick to pieces the draft accession agreement on the EU's accession to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), finding a conflict with the EU Treaties on ten grounds. The Court's message is clear: Accession, under the terms of the draft agreement, would risk undermining the very essence of the EU's constitutional system.


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