Unpacking the influence of the council presidency on European Union external policies: the Polish council presidency and the eastern partnership

The special position of the rotating Council Presidency has raised a long-standing debate on the extent to which this function allows a Member State to exert additional influence on European Union decision-making, in particular in external policy. This article argues that a broader and more differentiated study of Presidency influence could further this debate. In doing so, the article analyses the Polish Council Presidency (during the second half of 2011) and its influence on the European Union's Eastern Partnership policies across three dimensions: (i) differences between influence on the agenda and influence on the contents of decisions, (ii) the forums (different levels in the Council and international forums) where the Presidency can exert influence, and (iii) different types of external policies, an area that has received relatively little scholarly attention thus far in the literature on the Presidency. The analysis shows that (i) the Presidency can determine the agenda to a certain extent, but the position of the chair does not allow the incumbent to exert additional influence on the contents of decisions; (ii) most Presidency influence of external policies is observed in the preparatory bodies of the Council, while at the ministerial or international level this influence is much smaller; and (iii) although the Presidency can play a rather prominent role in organizing multilateral events, this rarely amounts to real political influence. In turn, the Presidency's influence is most tangible in specific bilateral dossiers

An approach to produce a stack of photo definable polyimide based flat UTCPs

Getting output of multiple chips within the volume of a single chip is the driving force behind development of this novel 3D integration technology which has a broad range of industrial and medical electronic applications. This can be achieved by laminating multiple layers of spin-on polyimide based ultrathin chip packages (UTCPs) with fine pitch through hole interconnects