Enforcement Actions under EU Law: The New Member States. EIPA Working Papers 2007

Through the infringement procedure, provided for by Article 226 of the Treaty establishing the European Community (TEC), the Commission can stimulate Member States to comply effectively with their obligations under Community law. In cases of non-compliance, the Commission may bring Member States before the Court of Justice of the EC (ECJ). Indeed, the Commission may use this possibility because it is the "guardian of the Treaty" and has to ensure the proper application of Community law, in line with Article 211 TEC. The White Paper on European Governance published by the Commission in 2001 emphasises that the primary responsibility for applying Community law lies with national administrations and courts in the Member States. Therefore, the primary objective of enforcement actions against Member States is to monitor their compliance and to respond to cases of non-compliance. However, through adequate exercise of its discretion and improved cooperation with Member States, the Commission aims to encourage them to comply voluntarily with Community law as quickly as possible. Furthermore, under the current Commission's strategic objectives for the period 2005-2009, prompt and adequate transposition and vigorous pursuit of infringements are considered critical to the credibility of European legislation and the effectiveness of policies. The infringement procedure is of crucial importance to the new Member States and of high relevance to the candidate countries that have applied for accession to the EU. On the one hand, they have to adopt the whole acquis upon accession with only few transitional periods granted in a limited number of areas. New Member States have already submitted a large number of transposition notifications to the Commission. On the other hand and despite their huge efforts, new Member States experience considerable difficulties in implementing directives and other EC legislative instruments. The process of implementation is a challenging stumbling block for all new Member States. This paper will focus on the recent and main trends in the application of enforcement actions against new Member States, not only taking an empirical angle (infringements by Member States and by sectors) but also involving analytical reasoning. This analysis serves to present the fundamentals and relevance of the infringement procedure in the framework of the enlarged European Union (the object of the first part of this paper) where administrations of the new Member States will have to adopt this new way of thinking and of implementing know-how (addressed in the second part) while acquiring a better understanding of the principal characteristics of the EC/EU's legal system (direct effect, supremacy, indirect effect, state liability) and of the EC's general principles of law. Therefore, the second part of the paper will also focus on justifications deemed acceptable by the ECJ and others that are considered inadmissible. New Member States have to adjust to the requirements of the acquis (possibilities of opting out are not included in the Accession Treaties) and this obligation applies to all independent state institutions (including the judiciary where reforms represent a prerequisite for accession by some candidate countries). Efficient further implementation of the acquis and adequate understanding of the infringement procedure will facilitate new Member States' (and candidate countries') integration in the EU and, eventually, make their accession a success

Obscured clusters. II. GLIMPSE-C02 - A new metal rich globular cluster in the Milky Way

The estimated total number of Milky Way globulars is 160+-20. The question of whether there are any more undiscovered globular clusters in the Milky Way is particularly relevant with advances in near and mid-IR instrumentation. This investigation is a part of a long-term project to search the inner Milky Way for hidden star clusters and to study them in detail. GLIMPSE-C02 (G02) is one of these objects, situated near the Galactic plane (l=14.129deg, b=-0.644deg). Our analysis is based on SOFI/NTT JHKs imaging and low resolution (R~1400) spectroscopy of three bright cluster red giants in the K atmospheric window. We derived the metal abundance by analysis of these spectra and from the slope of the RGB. The cluster is deeply embedded in dust and undergoes a mean reddening of Av~24.8+-3 mag. The distance to the object is D=4.6+-0.7kpc. The metal abundance of G02 is [Fe/H](H96)=-0.33+-0.14 and [Fe/H](CG)=-0.16+-0.12 using different scales. The best fit to the radial surface brightness profile with a single-mass King's model yields a core radius rc=0.70 arcmin (0.9pc), tidal radius rt=15 arcmin (20pc), and central oncentration c=1.33. We demonstrate that G02 is new Milky Way globular cluster, among the most metal rich globular clusters in the Galaxy. The object is physically located at the inner edge of the thin disk and the transition region with the bulge, and also falls in the zone of the "missing" globulars toward the central region of the Milky Way.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysic

Obscured clusters.I. GLIMPSE30 - Young Milky Way Star Cluster Hosting Wolf-Rayet Stars

Young massive clusters are perfect astrophysical laboratories for study of massive stars. Clusters with Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars are of special importance, since this enables us to study a coeval WR population at a uniform metallicity and known age. GLIMPSE30 (G30) is one of them. The cluster is situated near the Galactic plane (l=298.756deg, b=-0.408deg) and we aimed to determine its physical parameters and to investigate its high-mass stellar content and especially WR stars. Our analysis is based on SOFI/NTT JsHKs imaging and low resolution (R~2000) spectroscopy of the brightest cluster members in the K atmospheric window. For the age determination we applied isochrone fits for MS and Pre-MS stars. We derived stellar parameters of the WR stars candidates using a full nonLTE modeling of the observed spectra. Using a variety of techniques we found that G30 is very young cluster, with age t~4Myr. The cluster is located in Carina spiral arm, it is deeply embedded in dust and suffers reddening of Av~10.5+-1.1mag. The distance to the object is d=7.2+-0.9kpc. The mass of the cluster members down to 2.35Msol is ~1600Msol. Cluster's MF for the mass range of 5.6 to 31.6Msol shows a slope of Gamma=-1.01+-0.03. The total mass of the cluster obtained by this MF down to 1Msol is about 3x10^3Msol. The spectral analysis and the models allow us to conclude that in G30 are at least one Ofpe/WN and two WR stars. The WR stars are of WN6-7 hydrogen rich type with progenitor masses more than 60Msol. G30 is a new member of the exquisite family of young Galactic clusters, hosting WR stars. It is a factor of two to three less massive than some of the youngest super-massive star clusters like Arches, Quintuplet and Central cluster and is their smaller analog.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysic

Regular Round Matroids

A matroid M is a finite set E, called the ground set of M, together with a notion of what it means for subsets of E to be independent. Some matroids, called regular matroids, have the property that all elements in their ground set can be represented by vectors over any field. A matroid is called round if its dual has no two disjoint minimal dependent sets. Roundness is an important property that was very useful in the recent proof of Rota\u27s conjecture, which remained an unsolved problem for 40 years in matroid theory. In this thesis, we give a characterization of regular round matroids

Stellar Photometry of the Globular Cluster NGC 6229. I. Data Reduction and Morphology of the Brighter Part of the CMD

BV CCD photometry of the central (1.5 arcmin x 2.0 arcmin) part of the mildly concentrated outer-halo globular cluster NGC 6229 is presented. The data reduction in such a crowded field was based on a wavelet transform analysis. Our larger dataset extends the previous results by Carney et al. (1991, AJ, 101, 1699) for the outer and less crowded fields of the cluster, and confirms that NGC 6229 has a peculiar color-magnitude diagram for its position in the Galaxy. In particular, NGC 6229's horizontal branch (HB) presents several interesting features, among which stand out: a well populated and very extended blue tail; a rather blue overall morphology, with (B-R)/(B+V+R) = 0.24+/-0.02; a bimodal color distribution, resembling those found for NGC 1851 and NGC 2808; and gaps on the blue HB. NGC 6229 is the first bimodal-HB cluster to be identified in the Galactic outer halo. A low value of the R parameter is confirmed, suggestive of a low helium abundance or of the presence of a quite substantial population of extreme HB stars fainter than our photometric limit (~ 2.5 mag below the RR Lyrae level in V). Twelve new possible variable stars were found in the central part of the cluster. The morphology of the red giant branch (RGB) also seems to be peculiar. In particular, the RGB luminosity function ``bump'' is not a prominent feature and has only been tentatively identified, on the basis of a comparison with a previously reported detection for M3 (NGC 5272). Finally, we compare the properties of NGC 6229 with those for other outer-halo globular clusters, and call attention to what appears to be a bimodal HB distribution for the outer-halo cluster population, where objects with very red or very blue HB types are much more frequently found than clusters with intermediate HB types.Comment: 31 pages, LaTeX, uses AASTeX v4.0, 11 postscript figures and 7 postscript tables pasted into text. To appear in The Astronomical Journal (Feb. 1997 issue

English teenage poetry : revealing teenage poetic identity

http://www.ester.ee/record=b4482221*es

The catalogue of OB associations in IC 1613

We present a catalogue of OB associations in IC 1613. Using an automatic and objective method (Battinelli's 1991 technique) 60 objects were found. The size distribution reveals a significant peak at about 60 parsecs if a distance modulus of 24.27 mag is assumed. Spatial distributions of the detected associations and H II regions are strongly correlated.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, A&A accepte

リーマン的特徴と情報幾何学におけるそれらの実現

Thesis (Ph. D. in Engineering)--University of Tsukuba, (B), no. 1406, 1998.3.2