The complexity of the development of environmental policy within EU law: a case study

The paper aims to show that the development of European Union law needs further examination, which could help to understand the factors involved in the process. The expansion of competences cannot be explained with the sole focus of the Court of Justice of the European Union and the legislative work of the European Commission. For this purpose, the paper presents a case study concerning the development of environmental law within EU law until the adoption of the Single European Act. The international trends influenced the work of international organizations that later became an example for the Commission. The conduct of the Member States and the growing role of the European Parliament emphasised the importance of protecting the environment by highlighting the everyday issues relating to that matter. The Commission experienced its own personal struggles between the commissioners regarding environmental protection, which led to the adoption of action programmes and directives concerning the environment. All of these however highlighted the question of their legal basis. Finally, it was the Court of Justice that legitimised the process by providing the acceptance of the protection of the environment in its case law. These contributed to the emergence of environmental policy as a competence of European integration, which became explicitly embedded in the founding treaties with the adoption of the Single European Act

Revisiting Two Robust Techniques for Contaminant Removal from Road Runoff

Treatment of road runoff is a requisite for any environmentally sound infrastructure design. However, investment and maintenance budget is often a limiting factor during the planning and the operation phase of such projects. In order to cost-efficiently decrease the loads of a wide range of contaminants that are usually present in road runoff (posing a long-term threat to the aquatic and soil environments), simple and robust techniques are sought for. The paper deals with the re-evaluation of two such processes, sedimentation and filtration, putting emphasis on using authentic runoff samples during the tests in order to properly characterize the performance of these easy-to-manage solutions in this specific field of application. The results presented in this paper are aimed to aid the proper design of low-cost, low-maintenance road runoff treatment facilities, serving with background information that can be used to ensure that the expectations for the degree of pollutant removal are surely met

A novel approach for road runoff sampling

Conventional methods of road runoff sampling come with various difficulties. Hence, a novel experimental method was tested in and around Budapest, using a passenger car to collect wheel splash samples. Total concentrations of selected heavy metals were compared to the results of an earlier conventional runoff sampling program for verification. Despite the inhomogeneous set of splash samples, the ratio of measured heavy metals was found to be fairly stable throughout the entire data set. Ratios in the new splash samples and the formerly collected gully drain runoff samples were also found to be identical, showing that sample composition is not distorted by the new method. Urban sites generally exhibited higher concentrations than motorway sites, especially for Cu and Pb, the suspected cause of which is the difference in traffic dynamics. Traffic volume dependence is indirectly indicated by the clearly observable differences between weekday and weekend samples collected from urban sites

A közös kereskedelempolitika uniós külkapcsolati jogon belüli jelentősége: jogfejlődésijogtörténeti megközelítés

A legtöbb uniós joggal foglalkozó megközelítés az Európai Unió Bíróságának esetjogát emeli a középpontba. Esetenként azonban szükséges lehet más megközelítéseket is alkalmazni annak érdekében, hogy az uniós jogfejlődés egyes aspektusai árnyaltabban azonosíthatók legyenek. Erre remek például szolgálhat a közös kereskedelempolitika. A kereskedelempolitika hosszú ideig központi (majdhogynem egyeduralkodó) szereppel bír az uniós külkapcsolati jog fejlődése során, amelyre rámutat az Európai Unió Bíróságának esetjoga is. A tanulmány ugyanakkor az esetjog mellett kifejezetten a közös kereskedelempolitika születésének körülményeit és korai szakaszát kívánja bemutatni: a nemzetközi kontextust, az EGK-Szerződés korai időszakában a közös kereskedelempolitika helyzetét, valamint az Európai Bizottság viszonyulását a szakpolitikai területhez. Ezen túl a tanulmány kitér az abban az időszakban az uniós jogi szakirodalom álláspontjára a közös kereskedelempolitika esetén, amely álláspontok rámutatnak a szakpolitika egyes tartalmi és hatásköri kihívásaira. Ezek a körülmények és tényezők azon túl, hogy alátámasztják az Európai Unió Bíróságának pragmatikus megközelítését, rámutatnak arra is, hogy a nemzetközi környezet, a Bizottság és az akadémiai szféra milyen befolyással volt a közös kereskedelempolitika alakulására

Business process development with the application of simulation technique

The object of our work to increase production efficiency with the use of cost-efficient development tools at a Hungarian small enterprise. We apply data gathering techniques besides process modelling and diagnostic methods to reduce the total process time of the assembly process so as to induce cost reduction in the production. In this respect we investigate and rank root causes of wastes by cost-effective process development tools, like timebased FMEA (failure mode and effects analysis) as well as the 5 whys method. With the use of Monte-Carlo simulation companies can evaluate the change in the process, therefore, they can decide whether they want to carry out corrective measures or not. The accomplished changes can generate increasing competitive edge in the long run