The least developed countries, international trade and the European Union

Author(s):  
Gerrit Faber ◽  
Jan Orbie
2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 37-47
Author(s):  
Sorin Burnete ◽  
Abiola E. Ogunmokun

Abstract Industrialization laid the foundation for contemporary civilization but also begot environmental problems, which have been building up and remained unsolved to this day. There is widespread belief that, if industrial manufacturing lies at the root of environment degradation through endless spewing of residual waste, trade among nations is to blame for scattering residual waste the world over. Yet paradoxically, it is the very international trade that might be the ground for major remedies thereto. The 20th century witnessed the shift from free trade to fair trade; it is about time to shift from fair trade to clean trade. Nevertheless, such serious problems had barely been dealt with until the post-World War II period. An awareness-raising effort in this line was made by the European Union (EU) which, since the early 1970s, has been dealing with environmental and social issues, especially the ones deriving from international trade, in a decisive and responsible manner. Still, EU’s new policy in the field of environment protection has a downside in that it affects trade relations with partners from outside the Union, both developing and developed countries, thereby drawing fierce international reaction. The good part is that EU’s actions will most likely prompt other nations to follow suit.


2007 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 507-514
Author(s):  
Ivan Vuković

In this paper we researched European Union starting with the Agreement from Maastrich from year 1992, even though the European Union has a long traditional history and its origin is founded on regulations of economical integrations in Europe beginning from the 1950’s through the Roman treaty from year 1957 and the forming of the European Union Committee in year 1965. Further we follow her expansion and introduction of the European economic and monetary policy, to last, the joining perspective of Croatia. According to the Agreement from Maastrich, European Union lies on three posts: 1) Legal-political and regulative post, 2) Economical post, where the forming of European economical and monetary policy is in the first plan, especially the introducing of Euro as the unique European currency, 3) Post of Mutual foreign security policy within European Union. In that context we need to highlight the research conducted here and in European Union, including the world, regarding development of European Union and its economical, legal, political and cultural, as well as foreign diplomatic results, which are all perspectives of European Union. All the scientists and researches which were involved in exploring the development of EU with its modern tendencies and development perspective, agree that extraordinary results are achieved regards to economical, legal, political, foreign-security and diplomatic views, even tough many repercussions exist in progress of some particular members and within the EU as a whole. The biggest controversy arises in the perspective and expanding of European Union regarding ratification of the Constitution of EU from particular country members, but especially after the referendum was refused from two European countries, France and Netherlands. According to some estimates, the Constitution of EU would have difficulty to be adopted in Switzerland and some other Scandinavian countries, but also in Great Britain and other very developed countries. However the European Community and European Union were developing and expanding towards third European countries, regardless of Constitutional non-existence, where we can assume that if and when the Constitution of EU will be ratified, the EU will further develop as one of the most modern communities. This will enable economical development, especially development of European business, unique European market and free trade of goods and services, market of financial capital and labour market in free movement of labour. Being that EU has become one of the most largest dominating markets in the world, it offers a possibility to all new members to divide labour by using modern knowledge and high technology which insure economical, social and political prosperity. This results to forming a society of European countries which will guarantee all rights and freedom of development for all nations and ethnic groups. As well as, all European countries with somewhat less sovereignty, but in international relations will be stronger and significant, not only in sense of economics, but also in politics and military diplomatic relations. Therefore, Croatia has no choice and perspective if she does not join the European Union till year 2010, but until than it needs to create its strategy of economical and scientific-technological development, including demographic development, which will insure equal progress of Croatia as an equal member of European Union.


2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 19-36
Author(s):  
Anis Kacem

Tunisia has signed a free trade agreement with the European Union in 1996, which provides for the reduction of tariff barriers between Tunisia and the EU. In this article, we aim to know and test whether the similarity of the institutional framework has to stimulate international trade between Tunisia and the European Union. In this context, we built a variable called “Institutional distance” to valid the institutional dimension of international trade, near borders effects reported in the literature. To this end, a gravity model was used initially (Tunisia and 21 European countries). Secondly, the estimate shows the existence of spatial autocorrelation. The latter has been corrected using spatial econometrics. The results show that the geographical distance remains more important than the institutions in this type of agreement between north and south shores of the Mediterranean.


Author(s):  
Ciprian Iftimoaei ◽  
Cristian-Ionuţ Baciu

In the three decades since the collapse of communism in Romania (1989), human resources have gone through several distinct moments in the process of social and economic transition, from the state economy to the market economy: (1) the period 1990-2007 characterized by declining employment, rising unemployment, low wages, employee poverty, labour migration to developed countries; (2) the period 2007-2019 in which Romanian employees experienced the benefits of the European integration process, which meant economic macrostability, increased foreign investment, projects financed by European operational programs that led to increased living standards, increased employment, labour crisis; (3) the period beginning with the 2020 pandemic year and the economic and social crisis, the effects of which are already quantified by official statistics. This paper proposes a retrospective analysis of the evolution of labour resources in Romania, after joining the European Union. The methodology used combines descriptive statistical analysis (labour resources, activity rate, employment rate, unemployment rate, average net earnings), hierarchical cluster analysis to compare the employment situation in Romania in the year of accession to the European Union (2007) versus the year before the onset of the pandemic crisis (2019) and the simple linear regression analysis, having as an independent variable the „unemployment rate” and as a dependent variable „the number of employees”. Simple linear regression is used not only for teaching purposes, but in addition to testing the link between variables, we wanted to find out how much the number of employees decreases if the unemployment rate increases by one percentage point nationwide. The data used come from the TEMPO Online database of the National Institute of Statistics and were processed with the SPSS.


2017 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 104-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valerie Fleming ◽  
Beate Ramsayer ◽  
Teja Škodič Zakšek

While abortion has been legal in most developed countries for many years, the topic remains controversial. A major area of controversy concerns women’s rights vis-a-vis the rights of health professionals to opt out of providing the service on conscience grounds. Although scholars from various disciplines have addressed this issue in the literature, there is a lack of empirical research on the topic. This paper provides a documentary analysis of three examples of conscientious objection on religious grounds to performing abortion-related care by midwives in different Member States of the European Union, two of which have resulted in legal action. These examples show that as well as the laws of the respective countries and the European Union, professional and church law each played a part in the decisions made. However, support from both professional and religious sources was inconsistent both within and between the examples. The authors conclude that there is a need for clear guidelines at both local and pan-European level for health professionals and recommend a European-wide forum to develop and test them.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document