Optimising the Mechanism for ‘Enhanced Cooperation’ within the EU: Recommendations for the Constitutional Treaty. CEPS Policy Brief No. 33, May 2003

[Executive Summary]. Policy development in the EU is often impeded by member states being either unwilling or unable to participate. One way to overcome that problem is to resort to flexible approaches accommodating diversity. Convinced that an enlarged Union would require more flexibility, the current member states agreed in 1997 to introduce a new safety valve in the treaties, named ‘enhanced cooperation’. Thanks to that mechanism, a group of member states may be authorised to use the EU framework to further their cooperation or integration in policy areas under EU competence whenever it appears impossible to do so with all of the member states. There are a number of reasons why the Constitutional Treaty under negotiation should not only uphold such a mechanism, but should improve it in various respects. The future treaty should start by suppressing redundant preconditions for authorisation, introducing the possibility for a group of willing and able to gear up (i.e. adopt more efficient decision-making procedures and embrace higher ambitions), as well as extending the scope of enhanced cooperation to foreign and defence matters. It should also suppress the minimum participation threshold and clarify the last resort stipulation. As to authorisation, the future treaty should simplify the proposal procedure, specify what may be included in the proposal, streamline the consultation and deliberation procedures, and provide that, for CFSP too, the authorisation is given by the Council acting by qualified majority or superqualified majority. Participation in enhanced cooperation should be open to all, provided that objective criteria are met. The same conditions should apply for initial and subsequent participation. Admission to enhanced cooperation should be managed by the Commission under a single procedure. Regarding enhanced cooperation’s operating mode, the future treaty should stick to the current system of ‘institutional isomorphism’ (no variable geometry in the European Parliament or the Commission). Nevertheless, participating member states should be allowed to decide, acting unanimously, that enhanced cooperation shall be governed by qualified majority instead of unanimity and/or by codecision procedure. They should also be authorised to hold restricted meetings at an informal level. The future treaty should further introduce the possibility to differentiate between the ‘pre-in’ (member states willing to participate but unable to do so from the start) and the ‘out’ (member states unwilling to participate). Finally, the status of the acts and decisions resulting from enhanced cooperation could be revisited. In any case, the future treaty should authorise the Council to decide by a qualified majority that the Union’s budget will support enhanced cooperation’s operational costs

We Don’t Learn Enough from Incidents: the Roots of Human Errors

PresentationProcess Safety aims to prevent and control incidents that have the potential to release hazards that could result in serious undesired outcomes. It has been widely agreed for some time now that human error is a causal factor in most accidents. Therefore, adequate human error management is indispensable for comprehensive Process Safety Management. Regulatory requirements to consider human factors in Safety and Environmental Management Systems have motivated companies to address human error; and so, efforts dedicated to the analysis of human factors in investigations have been increasing. However, these efforts are generally not effective at reaching the root causes of the errors, leaving organizations with the false sense of security that human error is being adequately managed. We are not learning enough, particularly from offshore incidents, and as a result, we keep having incidents that would have been preventable and organizations are not able to continuously improve. Human factors needs to be taken more seriously as a discipline that requires not just a basic understanding and some tools with guidance, but competency; i.e., deep knowledge and skills that have been developed through effective practice. This paper provides an overview of the incident investigation process, and overview of the fundamentals of human error, and discusses why, in the experience of the presenter, many organizations, while investing time and effort, don’t learn enough from incidents

Improving Business Performance Through The Integration Of Human Factors Engineering Into Organizations Using A Systems Engineeri

Most organizations today understand the valuable contribution employees as people (rather than simply bodies) provide to their overall performance. Although efforts are made to make the most of the human in organizations, there is still much room for improvement. Focus in the reduction of employee injuries such as cumulative trauma disorders rose in the 80 s. Attempts at increasing performance by addressing employee satisfaction through various methods have also been ongoing for several years now. Knowledge Management is one of the most recent attempts at controlling and making the best use of employees knowledge. All of these efforts and more towards that same goal of making the most of people s performance at work are encompassed within the domain of the Human Factors Engineering/Ergonomics field. HFE/E provides still untapped potential for organizational performance as the human and its optimal performance are the reason for this discipline s being. Although Human Factors programs have been generated and implemented, there is still the need for a method to help organizations fully integrate this discipline into the enterprise as a whole. The purpose of this research is to develop a method to help organizations integrate HFE/E into it business processes. This research begun with a review of the ways in which the HFE/E discipline is currently used by organizations. The need and desire to integrate HFE/E into organizations was identified, and a method to accomplish this integration was conceptualized. This method consisted on the generation of two domain-specific ontologies (a Human Factors Engineering/Ergonomics ontology, and a Business ontology), and mapping the two creating a concept map that can be used to integrate HFE/E into businesses. The HFE/E ontology was built by generating two concept maps that were merged and then joined with a HFE/E discipline taxonomy. A total of four concept maps, two ontologies and a taxonomy were created, all of which are contributions to the HFE/E, and the business- and management-related fields

Gouvernance à niveaux multiples et relations extérieures : le développement de la « para-diplomatie » et la nouvelle donne belge (Note)

Les autorités subnationales s'affirment de plus en plus sur la scène internationale à travers différentes formes de « paradiplomatie ». Au sein de l'Union européenne, ces nouveaux acteurs internationaux bénéficient de divers canaux de représentation, dont la portée symbolique et pratique est variable. Le cas extrême de la Belgique met en évidence les coûts et bénéfices, mais aussi les effets multiplicateurs internes et externes du développement de politiques extérieures coopératives, parallèles et concurrentes dans le cadre d'un système de gouvernance à niveaux multiples.The subnational authorities are more and more assertive on the international stage through various forms of "paradiplomacy". These new international actors have access to a number of channels of representation within the European Union, varying in symbolic and practical importance. The extreme case of Belgium emphasizes the costs and benefits, as well as the multiplier effects internally and externally of the development of co-operative, parallel and competitive foreign policies in a multi-level governance framework

Pseudo real-time forecasting: a model comparison for Portuguese Gdp

GDP is one of the most important economic indicators, yet it presents a significant publishing delay. Many nowcasting models have proven to be successful and have outperformed standard forecasting regressions. This paper compares different nowcasting approaches for estimating quarterly Portuguese GDP, using estimated factors from mixed frequency real-time data. We discuss the out-of-sample forecasting accuracy for each of the models. Furthermore, we investigate the contribution of current-quarter monthly data to the forecasting performance. The results point to an outperformance of the dynamic model averaging and using current-quarter monthly dataonly improves the forecasts of oneof the models

Suivi scientifique de l’efficacité des nouvelles échelles à poissons sur la Berwinne aux barrages de Berneau et Mortroux. Bilan global des études et perspectives.

Définition de bases biologiques et éco-hydrauliques pour la libre circulation des poissons dans les cours d'eau non navigables de Wallonie