Challenges and Prospects for the EU’s Area of Freedom, Security and Justice: Recommendations to the European Commission for the Stockholm Programme. CEPS Working Document No. 313, 16 April 2009

The upcoming Swedish presidency of the EU will be in charge of adopting the next multi-annual programme on an Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ), during its tenure in the second half of 2009. As the successor of the 2004 Hague Programme, it has already been informally baptised as the Stockholm Programme and will present the EU’s policy roadmap and legislative timetable over these policies for the next five years. It is therefore a critical time to reflect on the achievements and shortcomings affecting the role that the European Commission’s Directorate-General of Justice, Freedom and Security (DG JFS) has played during the last five years in light of the degree of policy convergence achieved so far. This Working Document aims at putting forward a set of policy recommendations for the DG JFS to take into consideration as it develops and consolidates its future policy strategies, while duly ensuring the legitimacy and credibility of the EU’s AFSJ within and outside Europe

The 2008 Newsletter of the International Association of Labour Inspection

: The IALI newsletter reflects on the organization’s activities in 2008, which included involvement in a number of conferences and reports addressing workplace monitoring, forced labor and human trafficking, workplace stress, migrant workers, and health and safety issues. The newsletter gives a summary plan for the organizations 2009 goals

Towards the Next Phase of the EU’s Area of Freedom, Security and Justice: The European Commission’s Proposals for the Stockholm Programme. CEPS Policy Brief No. 196, 20 August 2009

The European Union is currently engaged in formulating a new five-year strategy for the development of the next phase of the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ), to replace The Hague Programme of 2004, which expires at the end of this year. In June 2009, the European Commission published its views on the new so-called ‘Stockholm Programme’, which will be adopted under the Swedish Presidency in December, in its Communication “An area of Freedom, Security and Justice serving the citizen: Wider freedom in a safer environment”. In this Policy Brief, JHA specialists Elspeth Guild and Sergio Carrera take a closer look at the Commission’s Communication and highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the approaches adopted for each of the different policy domains falling under the AFSJ rubric. Their commentary on the three areas also provides answers to some of the thorny questions raised in the priorities for the Stockholm Programme, which are spelt out in the conclusions and policy recommendations

Multimedia delivery in the future internet

The term “Networked Media” implies that all kinds of media including text, image, 3D graphics, audio and video are produced, distributed, shared, managed and consumed on-line through various networks, like the Internet, Fiber, WiFi, WiMAX, GPRS, 3G and so on, in a convergent manner [1]. This white paper is the contribution of the Media Delivery Platform (MDP) cluster and aims to cover the Networked challenges of the Networked Media in the transition to the Future of the Internet. Internet has evolved and changed the way we work and live. End users of the Internet have been confronted with a bewildering range of media, services and applications and of technological innovations concerning media formats, wireless networks, terminal types and capabilities. And there is little evidence that the pace of this innovation is slowing. Today, over one billion of users access the Internet on regular basis, more than 100 million users have downloaded at least one (multi)media file and over 47 millions of them do so regularly, searching in more than 160 Exabytes1 of content. In the near future these numbers are expected to exponentially rise. It is expected that the Internet content will be increased by at least a factor of 6, rising to more than 990 Exabytes before 2012, fuelled mainly by the users themselves. Moreover, it is envisaged that in a near- to mid-term future, the Internet will provide the means to share and distribute (new) multimedia content and services with superior quality and striking flexibility, in a trusted and personalized way, improving citizens’ quality of life, working conditions, edutainment and safety. In this evolving environment, new transport protocols, new multimedia encoding schemes, cross-layer inthe network adaptation, machine-to-machine communication (including RFIDs), rich 3D content as well as community networks and the use of peer-to-peer (P2P) overlays are expected to generate new models of interaction and cooperation, and be able to support enhanced perceived quality-of-experience (PQoE) and innovative applications “on the move”, like virtual collaboration environments, personalised services/ media, virtual sport groups, on-line gaming, edutainment. In this context, the interaction with content combined with interactive/multimedia search capabilities across distributed repositories, opportunistic P2P networks and the dynamic adaptation to the characteristics of diverse mobile terminals are expected to contribute towards such a vision. Based on work that has taken place in a number of EC co-funded projects, in Framework Program 6 (FP6) and Framework Program 7 (FP7), a group of experts and technology visionaries have voluntarily contributed in this white paper aiming to describe the status, the state-of-the art, the challenges and the way ahead in the area of Content Aware media delivery platforms

Structure, conduct and performance of grain trading in Tigray and its impact on demand for commodity exchange: The case Maychew, Mokone, Alemata, Mekelle and Himora

Grain markets of Alemata, Maychew, Mokone, Mekelle and Himora are observed to operate in highly inefficient market structure, with very low level of trust at meso and macro level. As result the marking system is less developed and less efficient in terms of creating space and time utility. In which lack of finance is the most critical problem. Under such reality warehouse receipt system with receipts that can be used as collateral for loan are critical first stage needed to get the market right. If ECX’s exchange service has to be introduced it has to be low cost and low value added service, if not it may not find significant demand among grain traders.commodity exchange; Ethiopian Commodity exchange; social capital; networks; grain trade; warehouse receipt

International Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-scale Fisheries

The 'Zero Draft' of the International Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-scale Fisheries(SSF Guidelines) has been prepared based on the outcomes of the extensive consultation process that has taken place during the last few years. This preliminary draft text draws in particular on the Discussion Document: Towards Voluntary Guidelines on Securing Sustainable Small-scale Fisheries–prepared as a stock-taking exercise by the FAO SSF Guidelines Secretariat in July 2011 and the contributions to and the outcomes of the FAO Workshop on International Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-scale Fisheries held on 7-10 February 2012 in FAO, Rome. It has been prepared to stimulate further consultations among all concerned parties. The outcomes of these additional consultations will provide guidance to the FAO Secretariat when preparing the text of the SSF Guidelines that will be submitted as a draft to the formal inter-governmental negotiation process tentatively scheduled for May 2013