Free Cross-Border Movement, Lucifer’s Effect and National Security of the Visegrad Countries

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (32) ◽  
pp. 37-63
Author(s):  
Petr Rožňák

Since 2015, the migration crisis continues with varying intensity, and international security crisis as well as debt, institutional, and personnel crises are worsening, not only in the Eurozone. Probably war, economic and climate immigrants will continue to move into the Schengen area, showing how helpless the European Union is. Angela Merkel said there was no upper limit for the number of people admitted to escape political persecution. Germany leaves the Dublin system inconsistently, runs counter to European cohesion and stops differentiating between immigrants and refugees. Migration is shared by the EU Member States. Between “old” and “new” EU countries, scissors are opened. Moreover, in some European regions (France, Belgium, Germany, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Spain, Greece) there are closed communities where majority law is not valid. Our current socio-political and economic existence is based on a traditional understanding of security. However, in the third decade of the 21st century the image of prosperity and security is to be seen from a different perspective than in previous years. Dramatic development has led to the mass migration of African and Asian people and to the division of the European Union, especially regarding the mechanism of redistribution of asylum seekers.

Author(s):  
Radovan Malachta

The paper follows up on the arguments introduced in the author’s article Mutual Trust as a Way to an Unconditional Automatic Recognition of Foreign Judgments. This paper, titled Mutual Trust between the Member States of the European Union and the United Kingdom after Brexit: Overview discusses, whether there has been a loss of mutual trust between the European Union and the United Kingdom after Brexit. The UK, similarly to EU Member States, has been entrusted with the area of recognition and enforcement of judgements thus far. Should the Member States decrease the level of mutual trust in relation to the UK only because the UK ceased to be part of the EU after 47 years? Practically overnight, more precisely, the day after the transitional period, should the Member States trust the UK less in the light of legislative changes? The article also outlines general possibilities that the UK has regarding which international convention it may accede to. Instead of going into depth, the article presents a basic overview. However, this does not prevent the article to answer, in addition to the questions asked above, how a choice of access to an international convention could affect the level of mutual trust between the UK and EU Member States.


Author(s):  
Francesco Martucci

‘Another Legal Monster?’ That was the question asked by the Law Department of the European University Institute on 16 February 2012 in a debate about the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union (TSCG), also known as the Fiscal Compact Treaty. On 2 March 2012, twenty-five Member States of the European Union minus the United Kingdom and the Czech Republic signed the TSCG. A month before, on 2 February 2012, the euro area Member States signed the Treaty Establishing the European Stability Mechanism (ESM Treaty), another legal monster. In both cases, the monstrosity lies in the fact that Member States have preferred to conclude an international treaty, rather than to use the European Union (EU) institutional system. Why did the European Commission not propose a legislative act to establish a financial assistance mechanism in the Eurozone and strengthen the fiscal discipline in the EU? Does this mean the end of community method and a victory for the intergovernmental method? As Herman Van Rompuy commented about the crisis; ‘often the choice is not between the community method and the intergovernmental method, but between a co-ordinated European position and nothing at all’. In 2010, Angela Merkel defended her vision of a new ‘Union Method’ in a speech held at the College of Europe. This approach can be defined by the following description: ‘co-ordinated action in a spirit of solidarity–each of us in the area for which we are responsible but all working towards the same goal’. Each of us means the European institutions and Member States. The new ‘Euro-international’ treaties (or inter se treaties) raise a number of questions regarding their compatibility with EU law, implications for the Union legal system, institutional balance, national sovereignty and democratic accountability. These questions are all the more important because international treaties raise a number of questions on their compatibility with EU law, implications for the Union legal system and institutional balance.


Author(s):  
U. Stoliarova

In the early 2010s due to the aggravation of the situation in the Middle East and North Africa, the European Union faced an unprecedented escalation of the migration problem, which put serious pressure on many EU mechanisms. The article analyzes Brussels’ response to the increase in the number of victims in the Mediterranean Sea during the migration crisis, which peaked in 2015. The adoption of new initiatives that were aimed at easing the immigration issue did not lead to the expected results. The EU struggled to cope with a rise in the number of migrants who sought to reach European shores. The real challenge for the arriving migrants was crossing the Mediterranean Sea. Amid the increase in unmanaged flows of refugees and regular shipwrecks that led to the death of many migrants, non-governmental organizations stepped out. The organization and conduct of search and rescue operations (SARs) by NGOs led to the emergence of a new type of SARs, non-state ones, since even large NGOs began to conduct such operations for the first time. The article examines the contribution of European non-governmental organizations to the provision of search and rescue operations, as well as analyzes the main problems and challenges that these NGOs faced while implementing such activities from 2014 to 2020. It is concluded that European non-governmental organizations have saved tens of thousands of lives of migrants and refugees, thus becoming an important element in the EU’s migration crisis settlement. At the same time, they faced a number of problems and challenges, including criticism from some EU member states, which considered the activities of NGOs as a pull-factor for new migrants.


2002 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Best

The Product Liability Directive of 1985 (85/374/EEC) (“the Directive”), which sought to harmonise a strict liability regime for defective products across the European Union, has now been implemented into domestic law by all EU member states. In some countries the implementing legislation has been in force for more than 10 years. Nevertheless, until recently, there were few decided cases, both in the United Kingdom and across Europe generally, considering in detail the often critical provisions of articles 6 (definition of defectiveness) and 7(e) (the development risks defence).


Author(s):  
Antonio Tizzano

The introductory note describes the main developments of 2018 with regard to the functioning and the organization of the Court of Justice of the European Union, as well as to its case law. The Court of Justice and the General Court were confronted with many delicate legal questions pertaining to all aspects of EU law. Amongst others, the EU courts were confronted with the unresolved issues raised by the so-called “migration crisis,” by the exit of the United Kingdom from the European Union, and by the threats to the values inherent in the rule of law, which are worryingly emerging in various member states. The introductory note provides an overview of the most important judgments that were delivered in 2018, in an array of legal domains, including rights and obligations of third-country migrants, fundamental rights, rules of competition and internal market, common commercial policy, and common foreign and security policy.


2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (01) ◽  
pp. 1950003
Author(s):  
AUGUSTIN IGNATOV

The European Union (EU) has certainly reduced its influence in the global economic affairs. Despite the fact that it unites 28 nations, including the former great powers such as the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Italy, the political and economic power of the community has considerably decreased starting with the second half of 2000s. The present research is undertaken with the aim of increasing the readers’ awareness regarding the necessity of enforcing the EU economic security through consolidating the authority of the supranational bodies in relation with national representatives. The objectives to be reached in this regard include assessing how much the governance efficiency alternations among the EU member countries influence the efficiency of the single market in a globalised society. It was found that several processes determined the decline of Europe’s strength including raising globalisation and increasing competition, economic weaknesses of the EU which worsened during the crisis, stagnation of the integration process, feeble leadership and lack of resoluteness, especially in the most developed EU nations, declining adherence to “core” values, migration crisis, little political commitment to protecting EU’s citizens’ interests, and countries’ individualism in promoting key initiatives.


2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 25-43
Author(s):  
Janusz Balicki

This article focuses on the solidarity of EU member states with the so-called “front” country, Greece, which found itself during the migration crisis in 2015 and in the following years on the most burdened East-Mediterranean route, i.e. the route by sea from Turkey to Greece and onwards to various European Union countries. Refugees from Syria but also from Iraq and Afghanistan continue to arrive along this route. The destinations for boats carrying immigrants and refugees via Turkey to Greece are the islands in the Aegean Sea including the island of Lesbos whereon the infamous Moria camp still plays a special role. The island which hosts Moria is the subject of European solidarity research with Greece. The structure of this article consists of three parts. The first discusses the principle of solidarity which, like any community, lies at the heart of the European Union. Part Two deals with the migration crisis and its challenges regarding the solidarity of EU Member States from Greece. The third part focuses on the humanitarian consequences of the lack of solidarity between EU member states and Greece. The source material is scientific publications on the EU, information from EU portals and press agencies and their recordings of developments in Greece related to the infl ux of immigrants along the Eastern Mediterranean route along with the author’s own observations of the Moria camp during a visit at the end of November 2019. This article also partly refers to the new humanitarian challenges arising in the context of the situation of immigrants on their way to Europe during the Coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19).


Author(s):  
Daria Sevastianova ◽  
Leili Rustamova

This article analyzes the German leadership in settlement of the three crises faced by the European Union – the eurozone crisis (2009-2015), migration crisis (2015-2020), and COVID-19 crisis (2020-2021) – in order to determine the specificity of the leadership of Germany in the EU. The conceptual approach for the analysis includes the leadership criteria offered by the German researcher Joachim Schild, which allow drawing the line between the hegemonic and non-hegemonic leadership, as well as consider the factor of legitimacy and soft power. The author also discusses the role of factors that hold back the fulfillment of the leadership potential of Germany. The novelty this research consists in application of this approach for determining the specificity of German leadership on the example of settlement of crises and challenges faced by the European Union, including the ongoing crisis caused by COVID-19 pandemic. The use of case study method allows concluding that Germany, indued with, is capable to show its leadership potential only in the conditions of cooperation with France. The author believes that its successful leadership is impeded by the domestic political factors and politicization of the European agenda in the EU member-states. The relevance of drawn conclusions consists in their contribution to further analysis and forecast of the foreign policy actions of Germany aimed at settling the COVID-19 crisis and other challenges faced by the European Union at the current stage of development.


Author(s):  
Federico Fabbrini

This chapter assesses the European Union besides Brexit, shedding light on the multiple other crises that the EU has recently faced in addition to the withdrawal of the United Kingdom. In the last decade, the EU has weathered the euro-crisis, the migration crisis, and the rule of law crisis, each of which has continued to sour throughout the Brexit negotiations. In addition to these old crises, the EU has now faced new ones—as shown by the difficulties of dealing with the issue of enlargement, the problem of climate change, and particularly the catastrophic Covid-19 pandemic. All of these crises have exposed the disunity of the EU—a counter-point to the unity that emerged in the Brexit negotiations. The chapter explains the difficulties of the EU27 in successfully tackling once and for all any of these crises, and the growing centripetal pulls at play, owing to the rise of very different visions of European integration—what can be called a ‘polity’, a ‘market’, and an ‘autocracy’ conception of the EU, which are competing with each other.


IG ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 136-143
Author(s):  
Michael Kaeding ◽  
Johannes Pollak ◽  
Paul Schmidt

Based on a new anthology on the future of Europe in the light of Euroscepticism, this article examines how the increasing prominence of Eurosceptic and nationalist parties is affecting the thinking of mainstream parties, their representatives in the European Parliament and the future of European integration. The publication of the anthology is timed to coincide with the strategic vision of the European Council, the Council, the Commission and the Parliament as well as with the next phase of the negotiations on the future relations between the European Union (EU) and the United Kingdom and the Conference on the Future of Europe. It maps and analyses 39 national perspectives from all EU Member States as well as from neighbouring European countries and potential candidate countries.


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