Differentiated implementation and European integration: the development of EU food quality labelling

The article examines how differentiated national implementation of EU policies affects later European integration – whether it leads to renewed unified vertical integration, differentiated integration, the status quo or renationalisation. It examines the case of geographical indications (GIs), an EU labelling system for food and drink based on place of origin and processes of production. Despite features such as diverse national interests and gastronationalism, differentiated implementation has resulted in renewed unified vertical integration. The article identifies three processes: EU legislative requirements encouraging the establishment of producer groups; European Court of Justice decisions which gave priority to quality over cross-border trade; the use of free trade negotiations to alter EU rules. While the integration outcomes are those expected by neo-functionalist analyses, the processes are more institutionally-based. Differences in implementation may aid rather than hinder further integration due to institutional features of EU legislation and decision making

Editorial: Special issue on ARES 2022

In the rapidly evolving landscape of technology, modern society critically relies on a multitude of complex and sophisticated systems. These technological solutions play an indispensable role in various aspects of our daily lives, from communication and transportation to healthcare and entertainment. Given their pervasive nature, it is crucial to explore research areas related to the availability, reliability, and security of these systems. The objective of this special issue is thus to collect innovative research contributions that tackle different open challenges related to the availability, reliability, and security of modern systems. In particular, this special issue was open to the authors of papers accepted at the 17th International Conference on Availability, Reliability, and Security (ARES 2022), which was held at the University of Vienna in Vienna, Austria. Since 2005, ARES has served as an important platform to exchange, discuss, and transfer knowledge related to various aspects of dependability. The 2022 edition has seen contributions tackling several important research topics, including: privacy, cloud security, web security, secure software, and malware detection, network and hardware security, awareness and incident response, threat intelligence and intrusion detection, cryptography, and authentication

I modi acquisitivi della messaggistica chat o email: verso letture rispettose dei principi

Alcune prese di posizione della Corte costituzionale e della Corte di giustizia impongono un ripensamento sulle forme di acquisizione della messaggistica chat o e-mail. Una volta che le medesime sono ricondotte nel nucleo delle “conversazioni” non può prescindersi dall’esigenza di un provvedimento autorizzativo di natura giurisdizionale.Some stances of the Constitutional Court and the Court of Justice impose a rethink on the acquisitive forms of chat or email messaging. Once they are brought back to the core of the “conversations” the need for an authorizing provision of jurisdictional nature cannot be disregarded

The gender gap in PhD entrepreneurship: Why balancing employment in academia really matters

We use original data from a questionnaire survey of 9062 individuals enrolled in PhD programmes in Italy between 2008 and 2014 to conduct an empirical investigation of gender issues in PhD entrepreneurship. The analysis focuses on the influence of the gender balance among academics at the parent university, to measure the opportunities available to female students to engage with same-sex role models and the effect of such engagement on female students' attitudes to applied research and entrepreneurship. Our evidence shows that there is a gender gap in PhD student entrepreneurship and suggests that the gender composition of the academic faculty has a significant impact on female students' attitudes to business-oriented research and its commercialisation, which, in turn, affects their entrepreneurial intention and probability of starting a business. Our results indicate that female students' entrepreneurship would benefit from the opportunities offered by a more gender-balanced work environment and reinforces arguments calling for equality in the academic workplace

Technology, global value chains and functional specialisation in Europe

This paper provides empirical evidence on the role of technology in affecting the relationship between the participation of EU countries and industries in Global Value Chains (GVCs) and their employment structure over the period 2000–2014. The empirical analysis is based on country-sector level data for 21 EU countries on employment, trade in value added, patents and investments in intangible assets, and focusses on backward linkages within GVCs. The role of technology is analysed by taking into account both the technological intensity of country-sectors participating in GVC and that of their GVC partners. We study the employment structure by looking at the shares of managers and manual workers, which reflect the “functional specialisation” of the country-sector within GVCs. We find that participation in GVC per se is not related to the employment structure of a country-sector. We show that different patterns of GVC integration and functional specialisation emerge that depend on the initial patents/intangibles intensity of the country-sector integrating in GVC and those of the partners

Habits and demand changes after COVID-19

In this paper, we investigate how a transitory lockdown of a sector of the economy may have changed our habits and, therefore, altered the goods’ demand permanently. In a two-sector infinite horizon economy, we show that the demand of the goods produced by the sector closed during the lockdown could shrink or expand with respect to their pre-pandemic level depending on the lockdown’s duration and the habits’ strength. We also show that the end of a lockdown may be characterized by a price surge due to a combination of strong demand of both goods and rigidities in production

La “super clausola europea” contenuta nell’art. 11 della Costituzione italiana e il contrasto di ogni ipotesi di “Italexit” con i principi supremi

Il contributo si propone di rispondere alla domanda, formulata in termini ipotetici e astratti, su quali potrebbero essere i limiti costituzionali a un’ipotetica «Italexit» dall’Unione Europea. Si sostiene che qualsiasi ipotesi di uscita dell’Italia dall’Unione europea sia contraria ai principi supremi dell’attuale ordinamento costituzionale, e che pertanto tale uscita non possa avvenire né ovviamente con legge ordinaria, né tantomeno con una revisione della Costituzione del 1948. Tale opzione, qualora venisse perseguita, comporterebbe eventualmente la necessità di una nuova Costituzione, radicalmente diversa da quella attuale. A tal fine, il contributo muove da alcune considerazioni riguardanti l’art. 11 Cost., cioè la norma costituzionale che, come la stessa Corte costituzionale ha riconosciuto, ha funzionato come «chiave di volta» dell’attuale ordinamento proprio perché, fungendo da clausola europea implicita e generale – una sorta di «super clausola europea» – formulata in termini molto aperti e flessibili, ha consentito una profonda e fittissima integrazione dinamica tra l’ordinamento italiano e quello dell’Unione europea. In particolare, sulla base dei lavori dell’Assemblea Costituente, vengono forniti una serie di elementi di fatto atti a confutare la lettura, piuttosto diffusa, secondo la quale l’art. 11 Cost. sarebbe stato originariamente concepito esclusivamente per garantire l’adesione dell’Italia all’ONU, e per contrastare l’affermazione secondo cui l’estensione di tale previsionenormativa all’integrazione europea sarebbe stata il risultato di un’opzione operata unicamente dalla giurisprudenza della Corte Costituzionale. Successivamente, dopo aver sottolineato alcune caratteristiche strutturali dell’art. 11 Cost. e delle «limitazioni di sovranità» da esso previste, viene brevemente ripercorso il dibattito sulla configurazione dell’ipotesi di «Italexit» rispetto all’attuale Costituzione e vengono forniti alcuni argomenti volti a sostenere che la collocazione dell’Italia nell’Unione europea rappresenti un «principio supremo» dell’attuale Costituzione. In conclusione, si offre un accenno ad una questione più generale e delicata, sollevata dalla tesi qui sostenuta: vale a dire la questione del peso che la concreta attuazione della Costituzione esercita sull’interpretazione costituzionale.The contribution aims to answer to the abstract question of what might be the constitutional limits to a hypothetical «Italexit» from the European Union. It argues that any hypothesis of Italy’s exit from the European Union is contrary to the supreme principles of the current constitutional order, and that therefore such an exit cannot take place either obviously by ordinary law, or even by a revision of the 1948 Constitution. Such an option, in case, should it be pursued, would entail the need for a new Constitution, radically different from the current one. To this end, the contribution moves from some considerations regarding Article 11 of the Constitution, that is, the constitutional provision which, as the Constitutional Court itself has recognized, has functioned as the «keystone» of the current system precisely because, acting as an implicit and general European clause – a sort of «European super-clause» – formulated in very open and flexible terms, it has enabled a profound and very dense dynamic integration between the Italian and European Union legal systems. In particular, on the basis of the work of the Constituent Assembly, a series of factual elements are provided to refute the rather widespread reading according to which Article 11 of the Constitution was originally conceived exclusively to ensure Italy’s membership in the UN, and to counter the claim that the extension of this legal provision to European integration would have been the result of an option made uniquely by the Constitutional Court’s jurisprudence. Subsequently, after underlining some of the structural characteristics of Article 11 of the Constitution and of the «limitations of sovereignty» it foresees, the debate on the configuration of the hypothesis of «Italexit» in relation to the current Constitution is briefly reviewed and some grounds are provided to argue that Italy’s place in the European Union represents a «supreme principle» of the current Constitution. In conclusion, a hint at a more general and delicate issue is offered, raised by the thesis argued here: that is, the question of the weight that the concrete implementation of the Constitution exerts on the interpretation of the Constitution itself