The European Union, borders and conflict transformation: the case of Cyprus

Much of the existing literature on the European Union (EU), conflict transformation and border dynamics has been premised on the assumption that the nature of the border determines EU intervention and the consequences that flow from this in terms of EU impact. The article aims to transcend this literature through assessing how domestic interpretations influence EU border transformation in conflict situations, taking Cyprus as a case study. Moreover, the objective is to fuse the literature on EU bordering impact and perceptions of the EU’s normative projection in conflict resolution. Pursuing this line of inquiry is an attempt to depart from the notion of borders being constructed solely by unidirectional EU logics of engagement or bordering practices to a conceptualization of the border as co-constituted space, where the interpretations of the EU’s normative projections by conflict parties, and the strategies that they pursue, can determine the relative openness of the EU border

From Lever to Club?: conditionality in the European Union during the financial crisis

How did the European Union come to develop so many instruments of conditionality during the Eurozone debt crisis, despite the well-documented limitations of such measures in other contexts? This article argues that major EU actors–Council, Commission, and Central Bank–were influenced by their own recent and positive experiences with conditionality, especially in the EU’s enlargement in the early 2000s and the early phase of the global financial crisis. However, despite the promise of conditional instruments in these two earlier episodes, further EU reliance on conditional policies has not brought the positive outcomes the main European institutions had hoped for. As EU institutions turned to harder and harder forms of conditionality in the Euro crisis, they relearned many of the familiar negative lessons of conditionality and ultimately had to concede that the apparent success of its conditionality tools in the two earlier phases was exceptional. The article documents the evolution of conditionality over these periods, showing how EU conditionality instruments changed over time, beginning as a ‘lever’ to assist the accession of candidate states in the enlargement period, and evolving into a ‘club’ used to impose macroeconomic discipline in the late 2000s. It shows why this approach to the Euro crisis failed and was ultimately downgraded as Eurozone policy shifted in favour of monetary measures in which conditionality played only a marginal role

The role of the electrocardiographic phenotype in risk stratification for sudden cardiac death in childhood hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.

AIMS: The 12-lead electrocardiogram (ECG) is routinely performed in children with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM). An ECG risk score has been suggested as a useful tool for risk stratification, but this has not been independently validated. This aim of this study was to describe the ECG phenotype of childhood HCM in a large, international, multi-centre cohort and investigate its role in risk prediction for arrhythmic events. METHODS AND RESULTS: Data from 356 childhood HCM patients with a mean age of 10.1 years (±4.5) were collected from a retrospective, multi-centre international cohort. Three hundred and forty-seven (97.5%) patients had ECG abnormalities at baseline, most commonly repolarization abnormalities (n = 277, 77.8%); left ventricular hypertrophy (n = 240, 67.7%); abnormal QRS axis (n = 126, 35.4%); or QT prolongation (n = 131, 36.8%). Over a median follow-up of 3.9 years (interquartile range 2.0-7.7), 25 (7%) had an arrhythmic event, with an overall annual event rate of 1.38 (95% CI 0.93-2.04). No ECG variables were associated with 5-year arrhythmic event on univariable or multivariable analysis. The ECG risk score threshold of >5 had modest discriminatory ability [C-index 0.60 (95% CI 0.484-0.715)], with corresponding negative and positive predictive values of 96.7% and 6.7. CONCLUSION: In a large, international, multi-centre cohort of childhood HCM, ECG abnormalities were common and varied. No ECG characteristic, either in isolation or combined in the previously described ECG risk score, was associated with 5-year sudden cardiac death risk. This suggests that the role of baseline ECG phenotype in improving risk stratification in childhood HCM is limited

Anaerobic digestion and gasification of seaweed

The potential of algal biomass as a source of liquid and gaseous biofuels is a highly topical theme, with over 70 years of sometimes intensive research and considerable financial investment. A wide range of unit operations can be combined to produce algal biofuel, but as yet there is no successful commercial system producing such biofuel. This suggests that there are major technical and engineering difficulties to be resolved before economically viable algal biofuel production can be achieved. Both gasification and anaerobic digestion have been suggested as promising methods for exploiting bioenergy from biomass, and two major projects have been funded in the UK on the gasification and anaerobic digestion of seaweed, MacroBioCrude and SeaGas. This chapter discusses the use of gasification and anaerobic digestion of seaweed for the production of biofuel

Modern Greece in South East Europe

A comprehensive survey of the countries and territories of this region, incorporating the latest economic and political developments. General Survey Essays by acknowledged experts in the region cover a variety of topical issues

Kosovo history

A comprehensive survey of the countries and territories of this region, incorporating the latest economic and political developments. General Survey Essays by acknowledged experts in the region cover a variety of topical issues. "Kosovo’s history since the first century CE was that of a region, part of the Roman, Byzantine, Bulgarian, Serbian and Ottoman Empires, consecutively, with a mixed Albanian and Slavic population. The Ottomans spread Islam among parts of the population in Kosovo and governed for around 500 years as the absolute ruler. Between 1878 and 1912, the period of the Albanian national awakening, Kosovo, with a predominantly Albanian population, was one of the regions where some nationalist organizations originated, with the aim of establishing an independent Albania. During the Balkan wars of 1912, when the state of Albania was created, Kosovo was split between the kingdoms of Serbia, principally, and Montenegro.

Russia and the balkan states: Variable speeds of engagement

This chapter discusses Russia's relationship with the Balkans by looking at three issues interchangeably: the mode of influence exerted from Russia on the different states of the Balkans; the local elites' reactions to Russia's influence in the region; and the diversity of public narratives and perceptions among the Balkan peoples. In order to show the range of linkages, the chapter looks at Russia's intentions in the region as a whole, as well as its bilateral relationships with individual states, all of which have a different connection with Russia, based on divergent cultural/historical memories, political/economic relations and degrees of influence. The chapter focuses on the current state of relations with emphasis on the post-1989 environment, but also takes a long historical view of the relationships in order to show the impact of the past on the present, and the continuities or ruptures through time. It argues that the Balkans are not Russia's first international priority and never have been; yet, as a region in its "near abroad, "Russia needs the Balkans to project its global influence in a strategic, often tactical way; for their part, all Balkan countries are tied firmly to the European (EU and transatlantic) anchor, yet some states more than others choose to play the Russian card to strengthen their own authority vis-a-vis the West, and each other. This amounts to "politics of opportunism, "where the different sides choose to engage at a low cost in their respective foreign policies

World War I and the fall of the Ottomans: consequences for South East Europe

Territorial disputes and demographic shifts shaped Ottoman relations with the Balkans before, during, and after the First World War. Ottoman Great War aims included recovery of territory in Thrace, Macedonia, and the Aegean Islands lost in the Balkan Wars. Wartime deportations of Greek Orthodox Christians reached their climax in the Turkish War of Independence and the population exchanges of 1922–23. The resulting Turco-Greek antagonism was one of the more enduring legacies of the Ottoman Great War