Obywatelstwo i obywatelskość w Unii Europejskiej

2014 ◽  
pp. 44-67
Author(s):  
Monika Poboży

Celebration of the 20th anniversary of the EU citizenship in 2013 was a good occasion for reflection on this institution. Has anything changed during this period in the status of European citizens and their role in the EU’s political system? Do they have opportunities to participate in the European decision-making process and to influence the European law and the direction of the EU’s development? Is the EU citizenship only a symbolic project that brings no added value? Can it be called “citizenship”? The article is devoted to answering these questions. The institution of the EU citizenship was analysed in two aspects: 1) citizenship as formal status connected with some rights and 2) civilness as mechanisms that guarantee participation in decisions on the future of a political community. The conclusion is that after 20 years the importance of the EU citizenship has been significantly increased, but only on declarative level – in the wording of treaties and institutional acts. However, this change has not caused the factual increase of citizen participation in the shaping of the European Union politics. It is the effect of a discrepancy on the EU level between citizenship as formal status and civilness as real empowerment of individual in the political system.

Author(s):  
Mads Dagnis Jensen ◽  
Peter Nedergaard

The Danish EU coordination system is set up to secure a consensus-oriented and consistent positioning of Denmark in the EU decision-making process. It was established in connection with Danish membership in 1973, but it has roots that go further back. Over time, the Danish coordination system has undergone changes with increased decentralization to the sectoral ministries, through parliamentarization, and via increased transnationalization with linkages to the administrations in the EU and other EU member states. The system secures that the negotiators have a high degree of credibility in the eyes of other delegations, and it ensures a high score when it comes to implementation of EU legislation in Denmark. However, it also has some disadvantages. The key coordination lens in the form of the European Affairs Committee of the Danish Parliament is overloaded, and it is often involved too late in the Brussels negotiations. All in all, the Danish EU coordination system corresponds to the way the Danish political system works in other venues.


2020 ◽  
Vol 338 ◽  
pp. 277-285
Author(s):  
Katja Posselt

The digital transformation poses major challenges for local authorities. In order to keep pace with modern development, various basic administrative procedures need to be digitized. The status of digitization in German municipalities demonstrates that they are reaching their limits. As administrative units are to be considered as an interface between society and state, the following paper will focus on this topic. This paper reflects on the necessary expansion of eGovernment services in local authorities against a European background, with the aim of bringing together the European and municipal levels. The European Union (EU) has set itself the goal of contributing to the modernisation of digital public services and serving as a catalyst through various programs. This paper discusses to what extent the EU achieves its stated goal and whether its actions generate added value in local authorities by using eInvoicing as an example. With the Directive 2014/55/EU the EU set a standard, henceforth all European public administrations must be able to accept invoices in electronic format from their suppliers. The paper aims to demonstrate the significance of the above stated directive, with a specific focus on local authorities.


Author(s):  
Joseph Lacey

This chapter provides a conceptual map of the European Union. Using the ideas of political system and Sartori’s ladder of abstraction and rules of concept formation as a scaffold, the point of constructing a conceptual map of the EU is to identify the salient features of an unusually complex and idiosyncratic political entity with a view to conceptually packaging these features in a way that can be useful for theoretical and empirical work. The emerging concept of demoi-cracy is at the heart of the account in this chapter, an intermediate category whose conceptual power consists in its ability to provide a sound framework for understanding the EU’s political community and regime.


Author(s):  
David Matijasevich

Outside of some states still struggling with post-communist transitions, Europe itself may be the first European democracy to collapse in decades. Though never a bastion of participatory democracy and even subject to continuous criticism due to its democratic deficit, the European Union (EU) has provided hope to those who envision a post-national democratic political community. As such, whether the EU survives its present crisis or not, cosmopolitan democrats will look to the EU as a vindication of their ideals. Though perhaps surprising given their track record, this paper will argue that political scientists, especially those concerned with democratization, can also be optimistic about what the EU has brought to the table in terms of how we conceive processes of democratic development. Throughout the paper it will be demonstrated that the creation and maintenance of the European democracy has challenged much of the literature's fundamental assumptions of what makes democracy work. Five key lessons from the European democratic experience will be presented in an attempt to disrupt some of these assumptions including lessons regarding the diversity of the demos, the contingency of democratic upkeep, the challenges of the state, the role of elites in political transformation, and the necessity of exclusion within inclusive spaces. Though a general theory of democracy will not be presented, suggestions will be made as to how we can incorporate some of these lessons into the dominant approaches to democracy found in the literature.   Full text available at: https://doi.org/10.22215/rera.v7i1.214


2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 25-31
Author(s):  
Xénia Szanyi-Gyenes ◽  
György Mudri ◽  
Mária Bakosné Böröcz

The role of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) is unquestionable in the European economies, while financial opportunities are still inadequate for them. The more than 20 million SMEs play a significant role in European economic growth, innovation and job creation. According to the latest EC Annual Report , SMEs are accounting for 99% of all non-financial enterprises, employing 88.8 million people and generating almost EUR 3.7 tn in added value for our economy. Despite the fact that there is plenty of EU funding available for these SMEs, for certain reasons these funds hardly reach them. But we have to see that the EU supports SMEs by various way, e.g. by grants, regulatory changes, financial instrument, direct funds. On the other hand, SMEs and decision makers realised that the environmental sustainability has to be attached to the economic growth, therefore more and more tools are available for these enterprises. Over the last few years, public institutions, the market, the financial community and non-governmental associations have explicitly demanded that firms improve their environmental performance. One of the greatest opportunities might lay in the Climate- and Energy Strategy till 2030 as 20% of the EU budget is allocated to climate-related actions, however the easy access to finance is still a key question. Does the EU recognise the actual difficulties? Is there a systemic reason behind the absorption problems? Is the EU creating a more businessfriendly environment for SMEs, facilitating access to finance, stimulates the green and sustainable growth and improving access to new markets? The paper analyses the current European situation of the SMEs and the effectiveness of some new tools, which are specially targeting SMEs. JEL classification: Q18


Author(s):  
Andreas Fisahn

The crisis of the European Union cannot be solved by austerity programs. Therefore a closer look at the reasons of the crisis seems to be reasonable, which includes a description of the development of the EU from 1951 to present times. The Union started as a tariff union and evolved through different steps to an order of competitive states. The main fields of competition between the states are taxes and social costs, which leads to tax dumping and a race to the bottom in social benefits. Starting in 1990 the EU achieved the status of an open financial market, with the duty of deregulation of capital movements being stipulated in Treaties. In the end the problem is not a debt crisis but a crisis of the structure of the European Union. The solution – which especially the German government prefers – may be the first step on the way to an authoritarian state.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolina Iglesias-Lopez ◽  
Antònia Agustí ◽  
Antonio Vallano ◽  
Merce Obach

Several advanced therapy medicinal products (ATMPs) have been approved in the European Union (EU). The aim of this study is to analyse the methodological features of the clinical trials (CT) that supported the marketing authorization (MA) of the approved ATMPs in the EU. A systematic review of the characteristics of pivotal CT of ATMPs approved in the EU until January 31st, 2021 was carried out. A total of 17 ATMPs were approved and 23 CT were conducted to support the MA (median, 1, range, 1–3). Of those studies, 8 (34.78%) were non-controlled and 7 (30.43%) used historical controls. Only 7 (30.4%) were placebo or active-controlled studies. Among all CT, 21 (91.3%) were open-label and 13 (56.52%) had a single-arm design. To evaluate the primary endpoint, 18 (78.26%) studies used an intermediate and single variable. The median (IQR) number of patients enrolled in the studies was 75 (22–118). To date, ATMPs’ approval in the EU is mainly supported by uncontrolled, single-arm pivotal CT. Although there is a trend toward an adaptive or a life cycle approach, a switch to more robust clinical trial designs is expected to better define the benefit and the therapeutic added value of ATMPs.


2021 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. e72661
Author(s):  
Ariadna Ripoll

This conclusion to the special issue reflects on the evolution of European integration since the early 1990s in order to better understand the contested origins of the Treaty of Lisbon and the consequences the latter have had for the EU’s political system. It considers the various contributions of the special issue and shows how the Treaty emerged in an era of shifting cleavages, disputed steps towards a more political Union and rising populism. This legacy has led to more polarisation and politicisation – a phenomenon that the Treaty of Lisbon struggles to encapsulate and conciliate with the culture of consensus and compromise inherent to its institutional structures. As a result, we observe a bias towards policy stability – and even failure – that affects the legitimacy and democratic standards of the European Union. In a context of polycrisis, the difficulty to find compromises – especially in highly normative issues – leads to the de-politicisation of the EU and reinforces the gap between EU institutions and its citizens. The COVID-19 pandemic is a window of opportunity for the EU, in which to choose between integration and disintegration; between values and inaction.


2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 189-200
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Woch

The right of family members of Union citizens to live with them in the host Member State has always been considered essential for an effective freedom of movement of citizens. However, the provisions of Directive 2004/38/EC contain a different description of the scope of rights of family members of Union citizens taking advantage of the freedom of movement of persons as to the possibility of accompanying or joining EU citizens taking advantage of the freedom of movement of persons, depending on whether they belong to the circle of ‘closer’ or ‘distant’ family members. This issue acquires particular significance in the context of family members who are not citizens of any Member State of the Union. For individuals belonging to the circle of ‘closer’ family members, the EU legislator grants the subjective right to accompany or join a Union citizen exercising the right of the freedom of movement of persons. In the latter case, the legislator only obliges the host Member States to facilitate entry and residence for such individuals in accordance with their national legislation. The glossed judgment, by determining the status of individuals under legal guardianship within the framework of the Algerian kafala system as a ‘distant’ family member of a Union citizen, clearly touches upon a significant issue in the context of the Union’s freedom of movement of persons.    


2007 ◽  
Vol 41 (10) ◽  
pp. 1349-1370 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Manow ◽  
Holger Döring

Voters who participate in elections to the European Parliament (EP) apparently use these elections to punish their domestic governing parties. Many students of the EU therefore claim that the party—political composition of the Parliament should systematically differ from that of the EU Council. This study shows that opposed majorities between council and parliament may have other than simply electoral causes. The logic of domestic government formation works against the representation of more extreme and EU-skeptic parties in the Council, whereas voters in EP elections vote more often for these parties. The different locations of Council and Parliament are therefore caused by two effects: a mechanical effect—relevant for the composition of the Council—when national votes are translated into office and an electoral effect in European elections. The article discusses the implications of this finding for our understanding of the political system of the EU and of its democratic legitimacy.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document