The European Agenda: Issues of globalization, equity and legitimacy series

I propose to discuss below some of the broader issues linked to the Union's main agenda. They will be grouped under three headings, namely globalization, equity and legitimacy. They are all highly political issues usually camouflaged in official documents under a technocratic cloak. The emergence of a stronger and larger EU very much depends on how these issues are tackled. They are, of course, highly political issues, despite the fact that the specific parts are mostly of an economic nature. This should be hardly surprising. Who says that high politics can be divorced from economics in our societies?--I. Introduction --II. Globalization and the European Model --III. Equity and Redistribution --IV. The Legitimacy Deficit --V. Conclusion --Bibliography --Biographical Not

¿Por qué necesitamos un Fondo de Ajuste a la Globalización?

Fundación Helénica para Europa y Política Exterior. Documento de Discusión preparado para la Presidencia del Reino Unido. Octubre de 2005

BIM-Based Risk Identification and Assessment in Building Projects at their design Phase

The complexity and dynamics of construction sites, interwoven with the uncertain behaviour of human factors, may result in severe injuries in the workplace, illness, and may even lead to fatality. Despite the drafting of a strict legislative framework, the statistics in construction industry remain dissatisfactory and worrisome. Therefore, the demand for a thorough risk management process, based on automated safety modelling and preventive strategy, stands out in order to identify and eliminate potential hazards early in the design phase of a construction project, resolving thus safety issues in the field by extending traditional safety management practices. The underlying purpose of this study is to investigate whether and how Building Information Modelling (BIM) can be used within the health and safety framework to enhance risk identification and assessment in building projects at their design phase. To this aim, a case study is conducted via a BIM software, namely Revit, to develop an effective Building Information Model of a two-storey building in which safety measures are introduced according to State legislation and field practices at a specific construction phase. In the proposed way, the real-life complexity of the risk management process is simplified, due to the object-oriented approach of BIM, the variety of BIM libraries and the experiential recognition of unsafe conditions with 3D simulations in place of the non-judgmental and merely bureaucratic lawenforcement methods. In conclusion, BIM enhances the communication between engineers and workers, using interactive tools, and facilitates the Safety Officer duties in the direction of preventing potentials hazards from the early planning phases

Enlargement and the Historical Origins of the European Community's Democratic Identity, 1961–1978

This article examines how and when democracy entered the discursive politics of the European Community to become one of the fundamental tenets of European political identity – and in the process influenced how decision-makers approached the question of enlargement. Building on multiple archival sources, the article traces how all three Community institutions (Commission, Council and European Parliament) legitimised the expansion and continuation of the process of European integration through the discursive construction of democracy. It focuses on the debates elicited by the attempts of southern European countries to accede to the EEC in the 1960s and 1970s

Building the New Europe: Western and Eastern Roads to Social Partnership

[Excerpt] While the ways in which neoliberalism and economic integration undermine social partnership and the welfare state have been extensively studied, less attention has been given to the ways in which such economic forces may push actors together, in reinvigorated bargaining relationships, to find workable solutions to difficult problems. In his article, we examine the contemporary status of social partnership in four case study countries—Germany, the United Kingdom, Bulgaria and Poland—as well as for Europe as a whole. In the west, while Germany presents a case of established social partnership under pressure, the United Kingdom has stood over the past two decades on the opposite neoliberal side. In the east, Bulgaria is one of the more developed cases of post-communist tripartism, while Poland exemplifies a weaker tripartism that emerged at a later stage of the transformation process. In selecting more and less developed social partnership cases in both west and east, we test the argument that the rise of Thatcher/Reagan/ Friedman ‘free market economics’ is paradoxically driving a resurgence and consolidation of social partnership relations across the new (both western and eastern) Europe

Does Europe Matter? A Comparative Study of Young People’s Identifications with Europe at a State School and a European School in England.

This article explores the extent to which young people in predominantly middle-class environments identify with Europe and considers the influence of European education policy, school ethos and curricula. We compare data drawn from individual and focus group interviews with students aged 15–17 at a state school and a European School in England. The empirical analysis was informed by post-structuralism and found that young people at both schools developed multidimensional, multifaceted identities. Students at the European School, which has an ethos of developing both national and European identities, identified themselves more as European than their peers at the state school, which integrated students on the basis of a common British citizenship. The findings suggest that the policy on the European dimension in education contributes towards developing students’ identification with Europe and to their knowledge of Europe, though not at the expense of their ethnic and national identities, which were stronger than their European identities. Lack of a European dimension in education (both in and out of school) seems to result in a lack of identification with and knowledge about Europe