67,776 research outputs found
Social Justice in the EU â Index Report 2016 Social Inclusion Monitor Europe
1. Social justice in the EU â participation opportunities have improved in the majority of EU member states, but are still a long way behind precrisis levels
Social justice has improved slightly in the majority of EU member states compared
with last yearâs Social Justice Index (SJI 2015). It appears that, after years of decline,
the majority of countries reached their lowest point between 2012 and 2014.
Whether the improvement is a genuine, stable turnaround or just a slight temporary
easing will only become apparent in future reports. At least the downward
trend observed since 2008 in terms of equal participation opportunities has halted
in the majority of member states. However, even seven years after the global economic
crisis first hit, participation opportunities in the vast majority of EU states
â with a few exceptions â are still noticeably worse than before the crisis. Only
five of the 28 EU countries â the Czech Republic, Germany, Luxembourg, the UK,
and Poland â are showing moderate improvements in terms of participation opportunities,
compared with the situation before the economic and financial crisis
Geopolitics of Natural Gas Supply in Europe - Poland Between the EU and Russia
The article analyses possible interests, attitudes and activities of the major actors in the ânatural gas supply gameâ in Europe after 1990: Russia/Gazprom, alternative suppliers like countries in the Caspian Sea area, the main consumers of gas and transit countries. It stresses that behaviour of the actors depends on the changing international political and economic situation and conditions in individual countries. Special attention is paid to pipeline projects: Nord Stream, South Stream and Nabucco, and reactions to them, such as building a LGN terminal at ĆwinoujĆcie (Poland), North-South (Baltic-Adriatic) energy corridor and the Polish-Russian gas contract of 2010
Fiscal transparency and policy rules in Poland
This paper assesses the current stance and desirable progress in the implementation of fiscal transparency and rules in Poland. An index of transparency based on Report on the Observance of Standards and Codes (ROSC), with some modifications, is also constructed in this paper, followed by proposals for making transparency and fiscal rules more efficient within Poland's fiscal policy. This study attempts to answer the following questions: Firstly, to what extent is fiscal policy transparent in the context of the standards set by the EU's regulations and the IMF's ROSC? Secondly, have the fiscal rules adopted by Poland proved to be successful in establishing fiscal policy discipline? Finally, what still needs to be changed to make both transparency and fiscal rules more efficient for the conduct of fiscal policy? To set the work in context we also provide an overview of recent advances in both the theoretical and empirical literature on fiscal transparency and rules
Governmental Positions on European Treaty Reforms: Towards a Dynamic Approach.
Governmental positions are a powerful predictor of European treaty reforms. Yet, few empirical studies analyze the conditionalies between positions over different issues or conflict dimensions. If governmental positions are conditional upon the real or expected outcome on other issues, the sequence of decisions becomes increasingly important for our understanding of European treaty reforms. So far, not many studies analyze the sequence of intergovernmental decisions.
In the present paper, I argue that governmental preferences over the reform of the EU decision rule dependent on the delegation of competences to the EU and vice versa. Moreover, I present a statistical model which allows for estimating this conditionality. Subsequently, I apply this model to an extensive data set of reform positions revealed by national governments at the Intergovernmental Conferences (IGC) 2003/4. Next, I analyze the sequence of decision taken by this particular IGC in chronological order. For this purpose, I predict the change of governmental position in response to the decisions over subsets of issues and I compare these predictions to public statements issued by governmental leaders at the time. Finally, I discuss the implications for our understanding of the intergovernmental bargaining outcome
Social Justice in the EU â Index Report 2017 Social Inclusion Monitor Europe. Bertelsmann Stiftung Social Inclusion Monitor Europe 2017
1. Europe is recovering not only economically,
but also in the domain of social justice
After years of downward movement, an upward trend in the domain of social
justice is evident in the broad majority of EU member states. Although far from
all member states have regained their pre-crisis levels, the most recent EU Social
Justice Index data give cause for hope that the worst is over not just in economic
terms, but also from a social perspective. At the top of this yearâs Social Justice
Index are the northern European states of Denmark, Sweden and Finland. Rounding
out the top group are the Czech Republic, Slovenia, the Netherlands, Austria
and Germany, while Greece, despite again posting slight gains this year, remains
clearly in last place
Social Justice in the OECD â How Do the Member States Compare? Bertelsmann Stiftung Sustainable Governance Indicators 2011
A cross-national comparison of social justice in the OECD shows considerable variation in the
extent to which this principle is developed in these market-based democracies. According to the
methodology applied in this study, Iceland and Norway are the most socially just countries.1 Turkey,
which ranks among the bottom five in each of the six targeted dimensions, is the OECDâs least
socially just country. The findings of the cross-national study can be summarized as follows:
The north European states comprise a league of their own. Leading by far on the Justice Index,
Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland achieve particularly good results in the dimensions
of âaccess to education,â âsocial cohesionâ and âintergenerational justice.â Yet even in
Scandinavia, there are some areas in want of action. Despite its overall strong showing, Sweden,
for example, struggles with a rate of youth unemployment three times as high as the general
unemployment rate.
Most central and northwestern European states rank in the upper midrange, although the Netherlands
(6), Switzerland (7) and France (10) rank higher than Germany (14).
The east-central European OECD members Hungary (17), Poland (20) and Slovakia (24) rank in
the lower midrange together with their southern European neighbors. The high-ranking outlier
here is the Czech Republic (11) due to its very low poverty levels in cross-national comparison.
All southern European countries lie considerably below the OECD average, with Turkey and
Greece in the bottom group of the ranking. In both these countries, fair access to education and
intergenerational justice (i.e., equity in burden-sharing across generations) are particularly underdeveloped.
Canada (9) is the top performer among the non-European OECD states. Its high ranking can be
attributed to strong results in the areas of education, labor market justice and social cohesion.
Australia (21), despite its relatively inclusive labor market, is struggling with larger problems
in poverty prevention and educational justice, and is therefore lagging behind in terms of creating
a sound framework for social justice.
Japan (22) and South Korea (25), where income poverty is relatively spread, fail to rank above
the bottom third of the Justice Index. Japan also receives particularly low marks for intergenerational
justice
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