Preserving the Rule of Law Through Transnational Soft Law: The Cooperation and Verification Mechanism

This contribution reflects on the role of soft law instruments to address the rule of law crisis, a topic of high relevance in the context of this special issue. Indeed, the EU-15 enlargement towards the ‘periphery’ proceeded also through soft law instruments, perceived to allow greater flexibility in monitoring. Soft law – or rules of conduct that have no legally binding force but may have legal and practical effects (Snyder 1993, 64) have been considered inappropriate by the literature in dealing with the regulation of values in EU law. However, a closer look at the career of soft law issued for Romania under the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism appears to suggest a more nuanced picture. Whilst time is not yet ripe for a full assessment of the effectiveness of the tools, there are signs that show that the reports issued by the Commission within the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism process have had an influence in fostering change. They did so by catalysing litigation and, as a result, informing and fuelling an institutional dialogue on the rule of law at the transnational level

Options for Long Distance Passenger Land Transport Infrastructure Expansion. Analysis Regarding Network-based Sustainable Development

AbstractIn the global reality of intense competition for financial resources, models for transport infrastructure and operational technologies development are to be taken into consideration in order to ensure that both service and physical network provision serves society's wider need. Proposed paper presents a detailed methodology for the substantiated choices of transport infrastructure development in case of long distance haul and high speed passenger travel, adequate for efficient resources consume (space, energy, finances). Practical aspects are revealed in the present comparative study regarding space and equivalent energy consumption, conducted for two land infrastructures, highway and high speed rail, connecting the same origin and destination points. As a result, although both services have their benefits and costs, high speed rail is recommended as a sustainable development action, ranking better than highway infrastructure. Recommendations concerning methodological clarifications and practical aspects are made in order to insure the best practice considering a sustainable network based transport infrastructure assessment process

BUNE PRACTICI PRIVIND FURNIZAREA SERVICIILOR ELECTRONICE PENTRU CETATENI SI MEDIUL DE AFACERI

In vederea identificarii si analizarii celor mai bune practici de guvernare electronica disponibile la nivel mondial am recurs la consultarea rapoartelor si studiilor anterior efectuate de o serie de universitati, institutii si organizatii din sectorul public si privat. Lucrarea prezinta pe scurt rezultatele unui studiu realizat de catre Centrul pentru Politici Publice din cadrul Brown University cu privire la evaluarea portalurilor de guvernare electronica care s-au situat pe primele pozitii in clasamentul realizat de specialistii centrului. De asemenea, articolul surprinde cateva experiente pozitive ale guvernarii electronice pentru mediul de afaceri din state membre ale Uniunii Europene.servicii electronice, cetateni, mediul de afaceri, bune practici

Unpacking tourism in the cold war : international tourism and commercialism in socialist Romania, 1960s–1980s

Published online: 08 March 2022The role of market-oriented tourist policies in the planned economies of socialist Eastern Europe has been long overlooked. This article examines how the socialist regime in Romania moved from sheer ideological rhetoric to commercialism and market-driven strategies when promoting Romania as a tourist destination in the ‘West’ between the 1960s and the 1980s. It argues that there was a continual shifting between using tourism as an ideological tool and a certain pragmatism that was needed to turn socialist Romania into a desirable tourist destination.The research leading to this article is part of the project PanEur1970s, which has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant Agreement No. 669194)

Considerations on the Psychological Status of the Patients Undergoing Radical Cystectomy

The psychological impact on patients suffering radical cystectomy is twofold - (both that of the underlying neoplastic disease and that measured by the quality of life subsequent to surgery) and increases as the urinary derivation technique is less physiological and affects more the local anatomy. Although there are numerous questionnaires that assess the quality of life of patients with cancer (HRQoL - health related QoL), not many probe bladder cancer morbidity or correlate the different types of urinary diversions’ impact on QoL (quality of life). We analyzed 39 cases in our clinic who underwent radical cystectomy between August 2013 and August 2014. Different diversions were performed, as follows: for 24 patients a cutaneous ureterostomy was performed, in 10 cases a Mainz II pouch, in 3 cases a Bricker derivation and in 2 patients a Studer neobladder was performed. In these patients, QoL - Cancer Version and FACT-BL questionnaires were administered and were followed for an initial period of 2 years. According to our survey, the Bricker derivation is best tolerated, followed by neobladder and the Mainz II pouch

Disorder control in crystalline GeSb2Te4 and its impact on characteristic length scales

Crystalline GeSb2Te4 (GST) is remarkable material, as it allows to continuously tune the electrical resistance by orders of magnitude without involving a phase transition or stoichiometric changes, just by altering the short-range order. While well-ordered specimen are metallic, increasing amounts of disorder can eventually lead to an insulating state with vanishing conductivity in the 0K limit, but a similar number of charge carriers. These observations make disordered GST one of the most promising candidates for the realization of a true Anderson insulator. While so far the low-temperature properties have mostly been studied in films of small grain size, here a sputter-deposition process is employed that enables preparation of a large variety of these GST states including metallic and truly insulating ones. By growing films of GST on mica substrates, biaxially textured samples with huge grain sizes are obtained. A series of these samples is employed for transport measurements, as their electron mean free path can be altered by a factor of 20. Yet, the mean free path always remains more than an order of magnitude smaller than the lateral grain size. This proves unequivocally that grain boundaries play a negligible role for electron scattering, while intragrain scattering, presumably by disordered vacancies, dominates. Most importantly, these findings underline that the Anderson insulating state as well as the system's evolution towards metallic conductivity are indeed intrinsic properties of the material

Preferential Query Answering in the Semantic Web with Possibilistic Networks

In this paper, we explore how ontological knowledge expressed via existential rules can be combined with possibilistic networks (i) to represent qualitative preferences along with domain knowledge, and (ii) to realize preference-based answering of conjunctive queries (CQs). We call these combinations ontological possibilistic networks (OP-nets). We define skyline and k-rank answers to CQs under preferences and provide complexity (including data tractability) results for deciding consistency and CQ skyline membership for OP-nets. We show that our formalism has a lower complexity than a similar existing formalism