Final project report: EEC 2092/91 (ORGANIC) Revision

This report summarises the findings of the project that have been presented in a number of separate reports and publications. In the Chapters 2 to 5 the approach, results and conclusions of the project are summarised, following the structure of the different work packages. Chapter 2 summarises the work on ethical values of organic agriculture. Chapter 3 looks at the differences in the implementation of Regulation (EEC) 2092/91 across Europe and compares the European Regulation with international standards. Chapters 4 and 5 summarise the findings that relate to reducing the dependency on non-organic inputs in the case of feed and seed. The final Chapter 6 consolidates the recommendations of the whole project arising from the various different work packages in one place. Recommendations are aimed in particular at the second stage of the ongoing revision process of the European Regulation, the transfer of the detailed rules from the Annexes of the Regulation (EEC) 2092/91 that is expected to start after the completion of the project. Further recommendations for standard setting bodies, regulators and research recommendations are also presented. The overall objective of the project was to provide recommendations for the revision and further development of the Regulation (EEC) 2092/91 and other standards for organic agriculture, broken down into a number of specific objectives that resulted in 12 seperate reports. The basic ethical values and value differences of organic agriculture in Europe was identified through stakeholder consultation (D 2.1) and through literature as part of developing a procedure for balancing and integrating the basic values in developments of EU regulation (D 2.3). Organic standards from national and private organisations in Europe were compared with the EU regulation with help of database (www.organicrules.org) and differences were analysed to give recommendations on further harmonisation of the EU regulation (D 3.2). The knowledge on how to achieve 100 % organic rations in diets for livestock was expanded through a meta-analysis of literature and an overview of the current situation to characterise the availability of protein sources for 100% organic diets for pigs and poultry was produced (D 4.1 part 1 and 2). Criteria for use of organic inputs, evaluation criteria for Annex II C: Feed materials and Annex II D: Dietary supplements of Regulation (EEC) 2092/91 were developed (D. 4.2). A guide for operators was developed (D 4.3). The knowledge on how to reduce the use of non-organic seed and vegetative propagation materials was improved through reports on seed borne diseases in organic seed and propagation material (D 5.1), on the importance of quality characterising in organic seed and propagation material (D 5.2) and analysis of national derogation regimes (D 5.3). The project produced 12 reports, 7 scientific publications in peer-reviewed journals, and a project web-page at www.organic-revision.org where all reports and further documents are available. It organised 3 workshops with stakeholders and had ongoing communication with the Unit on Organic Farming in DG Agriculture responsible for the Organic Regulation. Members of the team produced in total more than 250 dissemination items

Voting Advice Applications and Political Theory: Citizenship, Participation and Representation

Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) are interactive online tools designed to assist voters by improving the basis on which they decide how to vote. In recent years, they have been widely adopted, but their design is the subject of ongoing and often heated criticism. Most of these debates focus on whether VAAs accurately measure the standpoints of political parties and the preferences of users and on whether they report valid results while avoiding political bias. It is generally assumed that if their methodology is sound, then VAAs can be seen as strengthening the democratic process. But as we argue in this chapter, the setup of VAAs raises basic questions of normative democratic theory as well. Insofar as VAAs are supposed to improve the functioning of the democratic process, it must be clarified in what sense they aim to make a contribution, before it even makes sense to discuss their effectiveness at doing so. VAAs are often intended to enhance the democratic process by one or all of the following: (I) informing voters about the policy standpoints of political parties (or individual candidates), (2) increasing voter turnout, and (3) ensuring that the composition of parliaments more accurately reflects the political attitudes of the electorate. In the next three sections, we discuss three central bones of contention in current democratic theory that are crucial to these ways in which VAAs typically take themselves to contribute to strengthening the democratic process: 1. Questions about citizen competence: What forms of competence do citizens need to have, and to what extent, for a democracy to function properly? 2. Questions about political participation: What forms and extent of participation are vital to democracy? 3. Questions about democratic representation: How should the relation between the elected and the electorate be understood? For each issue we aim to show, first, how the design and setup of mainstream VAAs are tacitly structured by a specific conception of the democratic aim at issue and, second, what some alternative positions on these questions are within contemporary political theory. In the final section, we will discuss some of the implications of this analysis for the responsibilities of VAA developers, and particularly for the procedural neutrality to which they are typically committed. Our conclusion will be that once these issues are identified, developers of VAAs should either argue in favour of their views on democratic competence, participation and representation, or they should rethink the design of VA As in ways that move beyond their current assumptions, or both

Does the European company prevent the 'Delaware-effect'?

This article analyses the history of EU company law and locates a stable ‘non-competitive equilibrium’. This equilibrium follows from Member States that founded the EU unwilling to give up their lawmaking authority regarding company law issues. From the outset, Member States were determined to prevent the ‘Delaware effect’. Since then, stability has ruled. The agenda-setting in EU company law has changed little during the existence of the EU. Operative incentives, market structure and regulatory results have been more constant than dynamic, even as the recent enactment of the European Company has triggered discussion about competitive lawmaking in Europe

The Amended Proposal for a Fifth Company Law Directive--Nihil Novum

The Commission of the European Communities has recently submitted to the Council of Ministers of the Communities an Amended Proposal for a Fifth Company Law Directive1 concerning the management structure of companies. This Amended Proposal was submitted eleven years after the Original Proposal, ostensibly for the purpose of addressing some of the widely criticized features of that proposal. However, the Amended Proposal is not markedly different in substance from the Original Proposal. The purpose of this article is to briefly analyze the Amended Proposal and to draw some general comparisons with United States corporation law

Putting Up…or Shutting Out? Accommodation of Welfare Chauvinism by Denmark’s Social Democrats

Welfare chauvinism first appeared in academic literature when Norwegian and Danish political parties began framing immigration as a threat to the social democratic system’s survival; since then, it has become a cornerstone of populist ideology in Europe. A form of quasi-retrenchment, welfare chauvinism has been advanced in Denmark by the Danish People’s Party (DF), which sees immigration as a threat to the welfare state and presents chauvinism as the cure – pursuing one form of retrenchment to “prevent” another. DF’s electoral popularity puts the Social Democratic party (S) between a rock and a hard place, torn between the electoral necessities of accommodating chauvinism and maintaining support for the welfare state. In this paper, I argue that indirect retrenchment is too politically costly an option for S to pursue; instead, it will accommodate DF’s chauvinism by supporting direct retrenchment. I hypothesize that, via votes in the Danish parliament from 2004 to 2019, S has attempted to make it more difficult to obtain citizenship and residency rights (thus making it more difficult to obtain benefits) and make it easier for these rights, and thus the benefits, to be revoked. My findings broadly, but tentatively, support this claim. I also find that S has supported a third form of direct retrenchment: encouraging repatriation of foreigners to their home countries, which would entail a loss of benefits