The rise and fall of governance's legitimacy: the case of international direct taxation

Paper prepared for the exploratory workshop on 'Soft Law, New Policy Instruments, and Modes of Governance in the EU', University of Exeter, 28 January 2005This paper covers the long-term development of governance in international and EU direct taxation. It makes three claims. Firstly, informal governance is ‘old’ governance as far as direct taxation is concerned. Evidence for this claim comes from the emergence of an epistemic community within the League of Nations before World War Two and the soft mechanisms used to diffuse principles of income taxation in the first part of the last century. Principles, rules, and instruments were then somewhat institutionalised by the OECD in the context of the model treaty convention and guidelines for transfer pricing between the 1960s and the 1980s. The OECD approach – based on informal governance - was quite successful both in terms of diffusion and in terms of legitimacy. During these years, the European Commission tried to promote formal governance of direct tax policy, with ambitious plans for directives, but the achievement was limited. In the 1990s, the OECD launched more ambitious and multilateral plans aimed at cracking down harmful tax practices in member states and in non-OECD jurisdictions. At the EU level, the fight against harmful tax competition provided the opportunity to ‘discover’ informal governance with the code of conduct on business taxation. The code, however, was nested in a tax package containing a directive on savings – a classic example of formal governance. This leads to the second claim. Overall there is no linear pattern of informal governance. The OECD-promoted international tax order is more formal than in the past, but in the EU there is more interest in informal governance than in the past. The third claim is about legitimacy. The legitimacy of international tax governance has declined over the last 100 years or so. There are several reasons for that, most importantly the scope of governance and the range of actors involved therein. The wider the scope and the range of actors targeted by informal governance, the larger the loss in legitimacy. This seems to lead to the paradoxical conclusion that legitimacy has been higher under conditions of close, technocratic governance networks – a point hard to reconcile with democratic theory. The final part of the paper makes some steps towards reconciliation by looking at the issue of ‘legitimacy for whom’ and at politicisation as resource for developing the notion of public interest in international taxation

Governance arenas in EU direct corporate taxation

Report produced for the NewGov Project: the project is funded by the 6th Framework Programme of the European Union

Microcirculatory Monitoring in Children with Congenital Heart Disease Before and After Cardiac Surgery

In this prospective observational study, we investigated whether congenital heart disease (CHD) affects the microcirculation and whether the microcirculation is altered following cardiac surgery with cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB). Thirty-eight children with CHD undergoing cardiac surgery with CPB and 35 children undergoing elective, non-cardiac surgery were included. Repeated non-invasive sublingual microcirculatory measurements were performed with handheld vital microscopy. Before surgery, children with CHD showed similar perfused vessel densities and red blood cell velocities (RBCv) but less perfused vessels (p < 0.001), lower perfusion quality (p < 0.001), and higher small vessel densities (p = 0.039) than children without CHD. After cardiac surgery, perfused vessel densities and perfusion quality of small vessels declined (p = 0.025 and p = 0.032), while RBCv increased (p = 0.032). We demonstrated that CHD was associated with decreased microcirculatory perfusion and increased capillary recruitment. The microcirculation was further impaired after cardiac surgery. Decreased microcirculatory perfusion could be a warning sign for altered tissue oxygenation and requires further exploration

Microcirculatory Monitoring in Children with Congenital Heart Disease Before and After Cardiac Surgery

In this prospective observational study, we investigated whether congenital heart disease (CHD) affects the microcirculation and whether the microcirculation is altered following cardiac surgery with cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB). Thirty-eight children with CHD undergoing cardiac surgery with CPB and 35 children undergoing elective, non-cardiac surgery were included. Repeated non-invasive sublingual microcirculatory measurements were performed with handheld vital microscopy. Before surgery, children with CHD showed similar perfused vessel densities and red blood cell velocities (RBCv) but less perfused vessels (p &lt; 0.001), lower perfusion quality (p &lt; 0.001), and higher small vessel densities (p = 0.039) than children without CHD. After cardiac surgery, perfused vessel densities and perfusion quality of small vessels declined (p = 0.025 and p = 0.032), while RBCv increased (p = 0.032). We demonstrated that CHD was associated with decreased microcirculatory perfusion and increased capillary recruitment. The microcirculation was further impaired after cardiac surgery. Decreased microcirculatory perfusion could be a warning sign for altered tissue oxygenation and requires further exploration. Graphical abstract: [Figure not available: see fulltext.].</p

О сущности языковой компетенции

В статье даётся характеристика сущностных сторон языковой компетенции как био и социального и интеллектуального феномена.У статті подається характеристика сутнісних сторін мовної компетенції як біо та соціального та інтелектуального феномену.The characteristics of essential aspects of language competency as bio- and social and intellectual phenomenon is given in the article

Standardized postnatal management of infants with congenital diaphragmatic hernia in Europe: The CDH EURO Consortium Consensus - 2015 Update

In 2010, the congenital diaphragmatic hernia (CDH) EURO Consortium published a standardized neonatal treatment protocol. Five years later, the number of participating centers has been raised from 13 to 22. In this article the relevant literature is updated, and consensus has been reached between the members of the CDH EURO Consortium. Key updated recommendations are: (1) planned delivery after a gestational age of 39 weeks in a high-volume tertiary center; (2) neuromuscular blocking agents to be avoided during initial treatment in the delivery room; (3) adapt treatment to reach a preductal saturation of between 80 and 95% and postductal saturation >70%; (4) target PaCO2 to be between 50 and 70 mm Hg; (5) conventional mechanical ventilation to be the optimal initial ventilation strategy, and (6) intravenous sildenafil to be considered in CDH patients with severe pulmonary hypertension. This article represents the current opinion of all consortium members in Europe for the optimal neonatal treatment of CDH

Massively Parallel RNA Sequencing Identifies a Complex Immune Gene Repertoire in the lophotrochozoan Mytilus edulis

The marine mussel Mytilus edulis and its closely related sister species are distributed world-wide and play an important role in coastal ecology and economy. The diversification in different species and their hybrids, broad ecological distribution, as well as the filter feeding mode of life has made this genus an attractive model to investigate physiological and molecular adaptations and responses to various biotic and abiotic environmental factors. In the present study we investigated the immune system of Mytilus, which may contribute to the ecological plasticity of this species. We generated a large Mytilus transcriptome database from different tissues of immune challenged and stress treated individuals from the Baltic Sea using 454 pyrosequencing. Phylogenetic comparison of orthologous groups of 23 species demonstrated the basal position of lophotrochozoans within protostomes. The investigation of immune related transcripts revealed a complex repertoire of innate recognition receptors and downstream pathway members including transcripts for 27 toll-like receptors and 524 C1q domain containing transcripts. NOD-like receptors on the other hand were absent. We also found evidence for sophisticated TNF, autophagy and apoptosis systems as well as for cytokines. Gill tissue and hemocytes showed highest expression of putative immune related contigs and are promising tissues for further functional studies. Our results partly contrast with findings of a less complex immune repertoire in ecdysozoan and other lophotrochozoan protostomes. We show that bivalves are interesting candidates to investigate the evolution of the immune system from basal metazoans to deuterostomes and protostomes and provide a basis for future molecular work directed to immune system functioning in Mytilus

Governance Areas in EU Direct Tax Policy

Conventional scholarship on international taxation tends to address competition. It focuses on governments and does not integrate purposeful political strategy with the ideational dimension of policy change. In this article we examine co-operation, use a multi-actor perspective to explain the selection of modes of governance and bridge the gap between the strategic and ideational components of policy change. We show how a political strategy pursued by the Commission has led to the emergence of two functionally differentiated governance arenas, dealing with different definitions of tax problems and operating with modes of governance that suit the internal logic of individual arenas. We then examine the limitations of political strategy, by showing how a third governance arena dominated by the European Court of Justice has become increasingly important, with little control exercised by the Commission and the Member States. Copyright (c) 2008 The Author(s).