Growth and Competitiveness

After two prosperous decades, the European Union suffered a serious setback in the late 1970s and early 1980s, with sluggish growth and weak competitiveness in high-tech sectors compared to the USA and Japan. The creation of the single European market in 1993 was a major boost to growth and competitiveness in Europe. Yet, today, even abstracting from the coronavirus crisis, the European Union again faces some economic troubles. Growth has been subdued for a while and the EU is suffering yet again from weak competitiveness in high-tech sectors compared to the USA and to China, which has replaced Japan as the main Asian powerhouse. At the same time, however, the geopolitical situation has changed dramatically. In the earlier days, the world was divided between East and West, and all three main economic powers, the EU, Japan, and the USA, were in the same political camp. Their rivalry was therefore purely economic. Today, there are political dividing lines between the three main economic powers. The EU’s competitiveness problem vis-à-vis China and the USA in some key technologies is therefore not just economic but also geopolitical. Yet, the European Union remains largely an economic entity, though it has started to think and even to act geopolitically. The obvious question is whether Europe will be able to repeat its achievement of nearly 30 years ago and come up with a new design that will boost its growth and competitiveness in this new geopolitical era, or whether this quest will prove elusory.

Parliamentary Scrutiny of the European Semester: The Case of Poland

The European Semester became an essential part of the revised governance architecture of the Europe 2020 reform strategy for the Single European Market under the conditions of the global financial crisis and the emerging eurozone crisis a decade ago. The article examines to what extent the European Semester offers channels to establish <em>throughput legitimacy </em>by granting national parliaments the ability to effectively scrutinise executive decision-making in the annual policy cycle. Poland is chosen as the case study for parliamentary scrutiny of the EU’s system of multi-level governance in the East-Central European region. The analysis adopts a liberal intergovernmentalist two-level approach. On the domestic level it concentrates on the involvement of the Sejm, the lower house of parliament, on the drafting of the Polish National Reform Plans for the annual Semester policy cycle between 2015 and 2020. The basis for the analysis are official transcripts from the plenary debates in the relevant committees, the European Affairs Committee and the Public Finance and the Economic Committee. The Polish case study illustrates that the European Semester represents a predominantly elite-driven process of policy coordination, which is strongly geared towards EU-level executive bargaining processes between national governments and the European Commission at the expense of domestic parliamentary scrutiny.

Influence of Cement Type on Stability of Concrete Mixture

The continuous tightening of emission limits for the production of harmful substances into the air and the rising price of emission allowances gradually force construction material producers to limit the use of binders with a high content of Portland clinker. In the production of concrete, this is achieved by using admixtures, which make it possible to reduce Portland cement doses. However, the single European market uses a method that maximises the use of blened cements, making it easier for cement plants to meet emission limits while not reducing cement production. The performed experiment focused on the possibility of using CEM II and CEM III cements and their comparison with CEM I cement not only in terms of the physical–mechanical parameters of concrete but also in terms of the stability of concrete mixtures made from these cements. The stability of concrete mixtures was monitored using the water separation value in the pressure method. In the experiment, the relationship between water separation and physical parameters of cement was explored.

Market fragmentation and the rise of sub-national regulation

The evaluation of the Single European Market requires a better knowledge of the level of integration both between and within the EU countries. While some institutions are pushing for greater integration between EU countries, others may be introducing—purposely or collaterally—additional barriers to interaction. Several reports have reported the high levels of market fragmentation prevailing within Spain. This paper aims to determine whether regional borders influenced the patterns of intra- and interregional trade between the 18 regions of Spain (Nuts 2) over a long period of time (1995–2017). While trade is more intense within regions than between them, our results suggest the presence of spatial and temporal heterogeneity in the estimated home bias. We also investigate empirically the effect that the quantity and quality of national, regional and local regulations have on the economic performance of firms, in both the industrial and the service sectors. We use different non-spatial and spatial-gravity models, which yield robust results.

Priority problems of the work of Ukrainian customs authorities in the terms of European and Euro-Atlantic integration

Today, more and more companies focus on problems in customs clearance of products crossing the border during the implementation of export-import activities. In the context of European and Euro- Atlantic integration, which promote the accession of Ukrainian enterprises to the single European market, one of the priority tasks is the urgent solution of existing problems in the customs sphere. After all, one of the integral stages of Ukraine’s economic integration into the European Union is the successful accession of customs authorities to the Customs Union through harmonization of customs procedures with European norms, introduction of common customs principles and permanent improvement of customs activities on the basis of progressive customs instruments. The results of the survey of domestic exporters and importers that was conducted by the Institute for Economic Research and Policy Consulting indicated the following key problems in the work of Ukrainian customs authorities: insufficient quality of customs legislation; low level of transparency and openness of customs authorities; corruption and bribery among customs officers; intentional overstatement of the customs value of goods; low level of quality of technical support of customs authorities; low level of qualification of customs officers; frequent changes in the organizational management structure of customs authorities and their management; burdensome fiscal function of customs authorities. The identified problems in the work of customs authorities of Ukraine in the context of European and Euro-Atlantic integration made it possible to identify priority directions for improving customs procedures: increasing efficiency, transparency and non-discrimination of customs procedures for export-import operations, reducing the cost of customs clearance for export-import, absolute harmonization of domestic customs legislation with European norms, unification of customs procedures with European customs practices in export-import operations, reduction of bureaucracy of customs procedures in export-import operations, optimization of customs payments in export-import operations, etc. The implementation of these directions of improvement of customs procedures in the export-import operations should take place with the use of specific urgent customs instruments, which will promptly solve the existing urgent problems in the work of customs authorities.

Basic Elements of Quality Assurance for University Graduates—Practical Needs based on Thirty Years of Experience

Over the last few decades, the operation of the Single European Market and the task to eliminate technical barriers to trade underlined the need for adequate and reliable quality infrastructure. [...]

19. The Single Market

This chapter examines the European Union’s (EU’s) original decision to create a single market and the moves to complete the internal market—what became known as the single market programme—in the 1980s. The economic ideal of a common or single European market lies at the core of the EU. The decision to institute a drive to achieve a single internal market by the end of 1992 played a key role in the revival of European integration. The chapter first traces the development of internal market policy before discussing the record of implementation beyond 1992. It then considers recent policy developments in relation to the single market in the context of the Barroso (2005–14) and Juncker (2014–19) Commission presidencies. It also reviews the academic literature on the single market, focusing on the main explanations for its development and some key ideological or normative perspectives on its consequences, including political economy critiques.

Gender, violence and Brexit

What would be the implications of Brexit for gender, for violence, and for gendered violence? While most attention on Brexit has concerned the economy, and the relationship of the UK to the Single European Market, this article focuses on violence, and the relationship of the UK to the European Area of Freedom, Justice and Security. Brexit potentially restructures the balance of multiple polities, including the UK and EU, and their capacities and powers to govern. This potentially has implications for gender relations, insofar as gender is governed by the EU rather than the UK, for violence, insofar as violence is governed by the EU rather than the UK, and for gendered violence, at the intersection of these processes. The article addresses the likely outcomes of different forms of Brexit (from hard to soft) by analysing the significance of the UK and the EU in governing gender and governing violence. This includes engagement with the theories of gender regimes and the theories of violence, and the significance of different forms of governance in shaping gender and violence. The article concludes that the detrimental implications of socio-legal changes that would be consequent on Brexit for the rate of gendered violence are underestimated.

Poland in the single European market—changes in the similarity of import and export structures in comparison with the EU-10 countries in 2004–2017

It is a common knowledge that the eastern enlargement of the European Union (EU) was an extremely important undertaking for both the New Member States (EU-10) and the “old Union” countries (EU-15). One of the most important effects was significant acceleration of the development of mutual trade links, including changes in their commodity structure. In the study presented in this article, we attempted to verify the hypothesis whether, as a consequence of the eastern enlargement, the EU-10 and EU-15 markets were increasingly treated by the exporters and importers from Poland as a single market. In analyzing changes in the similarity of import and export structures, we calculated “Euclidean distance” (in 2004–2017), the measure based on absolute differences of individual structure indices. We compared the results for Poland with the other New Member States operating on the single European market. We found that for more than a dozen years Polish exporters and importers have contributed to the increasing similarity of the structures of their respective countries’ trade and the EU patterns mostly shaped by the EU-15. The results reflect the ongoing unification of the foreign trade system and its arrangement toward the recognition of both areas as a single market.