The European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation: An Innovative Advancement of Regional Cross-Border Governance but Still Far From Being a Panacea. European Diversity and Autonomy Papers EDAP 01/2020

To overcome the detrimental impact of the so-called “border effect”, the European Union and its member states established the INTERREG programs in 1990. The issue of a persisting “institutional void” hampered, however, substantially the actual policy impact of these cooperation over the years. In order to tackle this issue, the European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation (EGTC) regulation was finally adopted in 2006 and amended in 2013 and provides since then a comprehensive institutional framework for cross-border cooperation. Through an analysis of the regulation and a comprehensive assessment of the various monitoring reports, two particular added values can be identified. First, while national governments maintain their role as gatekeepers of Regional Cross-Border Governance, the EGTC enables its members to exploit the newly provided supranational legal and institutional framework for cooperation. At the same time, institutional flexibility and various diversification opportunities concerning the policy, polity, and politics dimensions are implemented, which allows the creation of innovative and place-based territorial cooperation structures. A central conclusion of this article is that despite the EGTC regulation’s added value, this instrument constitutes no panacea concerning Regional Cross-Border Governance. Cooperation is still primarily dependent on the individual commitment by the members to create sustainable results, which is still the most decisive factor whether a cooperation succeeds or not

"Regulating Healthcare Technologies and Medical Supplies: A Comparative Overview"

A complex relationship exists among EU regulations, current national practices and rules, institutional capacities to implement regulatory adjustments and the legacy of past health and regulatory policy and traditions. However, there is little empirical information on medical devices policy, the medical devices industry, and the assurance of medical device safety and usage. Drawing on a review of the secondary literature and on-going field work, the evidence suggests that the current mix of statecentric and self-regulatory traditions will be as important in determining the implementation and final outcomes of EU-rules as the new rules themselves. EU directives redesign rules, but they do not necessarily lead to institutional change, create institutional capacities, or alter old practices in the short term. Neither EU directives nor national regulatory adjustments determine the "man-machine/skill-experience" interface which is shaped and influenced by local medical traditions and the acceptance of these traditions by local publics

Tax administration reform in transition: the case of Croatia

This Occasional Paper reports the research results of a project on the tax administration in Croatia conducted by the Institute of Public Finance in Zagreb for the Croatian Tax Administration. The project team report was finalised in summer 1997 and it includes ten papers which are published in Croatian in the Institute’s journal “Financijska praksa”, Volume 22 , Number 1-2 (April 1998). This paper is the summary of the project written by Katarina Ott (Institute of Public Finance)

The Growing Importance of Risk in Financial Regulation

This paper traces the developments that have contributed to the importance of risk in regulation. Not only does it consider theories associated with risk, it also discusses explanations as to why risk has become so important within regulatory and governmental circles. Two forms of risk regulation, namely risk based regulation and meta regulation are considered. As well as considering the application of both in jurisdictions such as the UK, the paper places greater focus in discussing the importance of meta regulation in jurisdictions such as Germany, Italy and the US. The preference for meta regulation is based on the premises, not only of the advantages considered in this paper but also on the application of Basel 11 in several jurisdictions. Whilst meta regulation also has its disadvantages, the impact of risk based regulation on the use of external auditors plays a part in the preference for meta regulation

Empire, Hegemony, and Leadership: Developing a Research Framework for the Study of Regional Powers

Regional powers are often conceived of as “regional leading powers,” states which adopt a cooperative and benevolent attitude in their international relations with their neighbors. The paper argues that regional powers can follow a much wider range of foreign policy strategies in their region. Three ideal-typical regional strategies are identified: empire, hegemony, and leadership. The paper is devoted to a theory-led distinction and clarification of these three terms, which are often used interchangeably in the field of international relations. According to the goals pursued, to the means employed, and to other discriminating features such as the degree of legitimation and the type of self-representation by the dominant state, the paper outlines the essential traits of imperial, hegemonic, and leading strategies and identifies subtypes for better classifying hegemony and leadership.regional powers, empire, hegemony, leadership, strategy

An Outcome-Based Approach for Ensuring Regulatory Compliance of Business Processes

In service industries, such as healthcare, catering, tourism, etc., there exist regulations that require organisations’ service comply with the regulations. More and more regulations in the service sector are, or are aimed to be, outcome-focused regulations. An outcome prescribed in the regulation is what users should experience or achieve when the regulated business processes are compliant. Service providers need to proactively ensure that the outcomes specified in the regulations have been achieved prior to conducting the relevant part of the business or prior to inspectors discovering noncompliance. Current approaches check system requirements or business processes, not outcomes, against regulations and thus this still leaves uncertain as to whether what the users actually experience are really achieved. In this thesis, we propose an approach for assessing the compliance of process outcomes and improve the noncompliance. The approach is designed through the U.K’s. CQC regulations in the care home environment

EU Conditionality on Nationality-Sensitive Matters in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Promoting Democracy or Maintaining the Status Quo? EDAP 5/2013

This paper will analyse the impact of the EU conditionality in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) and its efficacy in promoting democratic changes in this country. It will be argued that as BiH is a unique case, its constitutional constraints must be taken into account because every reform that affects the difficult balance between the three main ethno-religious groups of BiH is perceived as a nationality-sensitive issue and is therefore vulnerable to political pressure. With reference to two specific situations where EU has demanded the BiH political elites to adopt EU-compatible reforms, namely the police reform process and the implementation of the Sejdić and Finci ruling, it will be argued that the use of the conditionality tool has increased inter-ethnic polarization among the political parties, thus preventing Bosnia and Herzegovina from moving forward in the EU integration process