European Neighbourhood Policy and Economic Reforms in the Eastern Neighbourhood

The paper discusses the current and potential role of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) in anchoring economic reforms in the countries of the EU's Eastern Neighbourhood. It claims that it is too early to assess the success of the ENP in this sphere especially given that the actual progress of the ENP agenda has been limited. A review of the empirical evidence on external reform anchors confirms that the ENP shares some features with the EU accession process that has proven to be an effective mechanism supporting major economic, political and social changes in the countries concerned. The eventual ENP economic offer is meaningful and integration with the EU is getting stronger public support in several CIS countries and among their political elites. On the other hand several factors limit the reform anchoring potential of the ENP. This paper offers recommendations on policies that could strengthen this potential.ENP, CIS, EU, political economy, economic reforms, reform anchoring

Parameter degeneracy in models of the quadruple lens system Q2237+0305

The geometry of the quadruple lens system Q2237+0305 is modeled with a simple astigmatic lens: a power-law mass distribution: m \propto r^\beta with an external shear \gamma. The image positions can be reproduced with an accuracy better than 0.01 arcsec for any 0.0 < \beta < 1.85 and the corresponding value of \gamma = 0.1385 - 0.0689 \beta. This is a factor of about 4 more precise than what can be achieved by the best constant M/L lens models. The image intensity ratios and the time delay ratios are almost constant along our one parameter family of models, but the total magnification varies from 8 to > 1000, and the maximum time delay (between leading image B and trailing image C) for H_0 of 75 km/sec/Mpc varies from more than 20 hours to about 1.5 hours, while \beta increases from 0.0 to 1.85.Comment: 15 pages uuencoded compressed postscript text plus 4 postscript figures; MPI Astrophysik report MPA-821; to appear in Astronomical Journa