The social dimension of European cohesion policy in a 27-state Europe: an analysis of the European Social Fund

On the basis of the relevant content of the Treaty of Lisbon (rejected in the Irish referendum of June 2008), this paper examines European Union cohesion policy as a fundamental dimension of the scant European social policy. In the context of a 27-state union with a slim budget, the European Social Fund remains the main social instrument of cohesion. An analysis of its application in the Spanish Autonomous Community of Galicia affords insights into the economic and political impact of European Union economic, social and territorial cohesion policy.     

Territorial impact assessment: integrating territorial aspects in sectoral policies

Territorial impact assessment has recently gained attention as a tool to improve the coherence of sector policies with territorial cohesion objectives. The paper presents a method for territorial impact assessment and the results of applying this method on Slovenian energy policy. A two phase approach first disaggregates the problem into a three-dimensional matrix, consisting of policy measures, territorial objectives and territorial units. The synthesis phase aggregates measures and objectives in physical, economic or socio-cultural groups and observes their interrelation through an input-output matrix. The results have shown that such a two level approach is required to obtain complete and useful information for policy developers. In contrast to the relatively favourable evaluation of individual measures on the first level of assessment, the synthesis has revealed substantial and systemic weaknesses: considerable imbalance of energy policy favouring territorial effectiveness and mainly neglecting territorial identity as well as its counterproductiveness in reducing regional disparities.     

Eroding societal trust: a game-changer for EU policies and institutions?†

Trust is a fundamental condition for a fair and cooperative society. But what if trust collapses? This article is interested in the disrupting effects a further erosion or even collapse of trust could have for European Union (EU) policies and institutions. It is argued that a breakdown of trust could create serious risks, but also opportunities, and is therefore an important factor that the EU must consider when designing its future policies and strategies. To this end – by using a forward-looking and trend impact analysis approach – the article provides insights and options on how strategic political responses for the EU could look like to turn the trend around and again enhance trust in the European project. Empirically, it addresses issue and policy areas such as trust in political systems, justice, science, economic regulation, cyberspace, surveillance as well as ethnic and religious diversity.     

Young people,future hopes and concerns in Finland and the European Union: classed and gendered expectations in policy documents

In this article, I examine the ways in which governing bodies at the Finnish national and also European Union levels talk about young people and our shared future in Finland. I use their youth policy documents as material for critical discourse analysis. My argument is that, besides presenting visions of a desired future, these papers also produce and reproduce divisions between young people that reflect gender and class positions. Young people are divided into those who have potential, those who will take care of others’ needs, and those who are at risk of marginalisation. I also argue that the Nordic policy tendency to conceive of youth as a resource rather than as a problem is not consistent. Finnish youth policy has changed, firstly because of the changing economic environment – the politics of austerity – and secondly because of Europeanisation.     

Bureaucracy and place: expertise in the European Quarter

Bureaucratic structures and procedures are an integral part of the production of political space today. Analyses of geopolitical practices must therefore unpack the bureaucratic context in which these practices unfold on a daily basis. This is particularly important if we wish to understand transnational processes that operate at scales and in contexts other than the familiar contours of the nation‐state. In this article, I focus on one bureaucratic centre of geopolitics – the European Quarter in Brussels, Belgium, the institutional centre of the European Union. Drawing from scholarship on geopolitics and policy‐making, as well as primary interview material from field research in Brussels, I make two related points – (1) that we need detailed close‐up studies of the bureaucratic settings of contemporary geopolitics, and (2) that we must carefully situate such settings in their place‐specific contexts to reveal dynamics that remain unnoticed from afar. Empirically, the article contributes to the interdisciplinary scholarship on the EU as a transnational power centre of global importance. Theoretically, it seeks to improve our understanding of geopolitics as a bureaucratic and material practice.     

The politics of the Digital Single Market: culture vs. competition vs. copyright

This paper examines the implications for European music culture of the European Union’s (EU) Digital Single Market strategy. It focuses on the regulatory framework being created for the management of copyright policy, and in particular the role played by collective management organisations (CMOs or collecting societies). One of the many new opportunities created by digitalisation has been the music streaming services. These depend on consumers being able to access music wherever they are, but such a system runs counter to the management of rights on a national basis and through collecting organisations which act as monopolies within their own territories. The result has been ‘geo-blocking’. The EU has attempted to resolve this problem in a variety of ways, most recently in a Directive designed to reform the CMOs. In this paper, we document these various efforts, showing them to be motivated by a deep-seated and persisting belief in the capacity of ‘competition’ to resolve problems that, we argue, actually lie elsewhere – in copyright policy itself. The result is that the EU’s intervention fails to address its core concern and threatens the diversity of European music culture by rewarding those who are already commercially successful.     

The European Union's migration management aid: Developing democracies or supporting authoritarianism?

The European Union and its member states have invested billions of euros in migration management programs that purport to promote “good migration governance” around the world. But what is the impact of migration management aid on governance outside of the EU? In this article, we theorise the impact of migration management aid on governance in recipient countries by analysing the key policy areas of intervention. To do so, we focus on the effects of the European Union Emergency Trust Fund for Africa and draw on data collected from policy and government documents, in addition to secondary literature, to understand how migration management aid negatively impacts institutions of governance in recipient countries. While migration management aid may build the capacity of states to monitor borders and prevent irregular migration, we argue that this fails to account for negative externalities including human rights abuses and increased surveillance for migrants and citizens alike.     

Environmental Sustainability and Tourism in European Policy-making

The paper analyses decision-making in the field of European environmental regulation and examines the implications for tourist policy. It is argued that European Union (EU) environmental policy is influenced by three factors: (1) the EU bureaucracy is interested in expanding its influence and power vis-à-vis national bureaucracies and polities; (2) Northern European countries have selectively recruited regulators with environmentally sympathetic ideologies; and (3) a pro-environmental attitude contributes to the societal legitimation of business. These considerations give a unique character to environmental policy-making, which over time has tended to spill over to thematically connected areas, including to tourism policy.     

(IM)MIGRATION RESEARCH IN ITALY: A European Comparative Perspective

This article analyzes research on (im)migration in Italy since the early 1980s until the present as compared to research in other European receiving countries. Two periods are singled out. In the 1980s, the need to make sense of the dramatic Italian U-turn from an emigration to an immigration country prevails. Since the mid-1990s, some trends toward convergence emerge, following a number of theoretical and methodological challenges arising from North American research. Whereas for sociologist and anthropologist much of the debate is on social networks and transnationalism, in political science the gradual emerging of a policy approach to migration studies can be pointed out. However, despite the consolidating research infrastructure, there are still open questions and gaps in contemporary research on migration in Italy, for instance, second-generations, immigrants' associational and political participation, and last but not least, the impact of the European Union on Italian immigration and immigrant policy as well as policy making.     

Envisioning European Solidarity between Welfare Ideologies and the European Social Agenda

This article uses the debates of the Working Group ‘Social Europe’ of the European Convention for the Future of the European Union that drafted the Constitutional Treaty to explore the views on the European social model among representatives of the European political class. The debates within the European Convention on basic social values, social objectives, the Union's competences, the open method of coordination, the coordination of social and economic policies as well as the role of social partners provide insight into the emerging visions of European solidarity at the crossroads between welfare regime ideologies and Europeanization. It is argued that, despite an overall consensus regarding a greater future role of the European Union in social policy, the contours of the European social model and the scope of the Union's competences remain contested. However, the observed cleavages are to be found mainly on the left–right political scale, and this suggests that we might gradually be observing a re-politicization of the social policy discourse at European level. Nevertheless, the holding on to arguments of subsidiarity and especially sovereignty represents a barrier to envisioning European solidarity and developing a stronger European social agenda.     

Employment regulation,game theory and weak employee voice in liberal economies

This article analyses the impact of information and consultation regulations – specifically the European Information and Consultation Directive – on worker participation or “employee voice” in liberal market economies (LMEs), providing both empirical and theoretical insights to complement existing research on the Directive. Using game theory and the prisoner's dilemma framework, and empirical data from 16 case studies, the authors explain why national legislation implementing the Directive is largely ineffective in diffusing mutual‐gains cooperation in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Three theoretical explanatory propositions advance understanding of the policy impact of information and consultation regulations in LMEs.     

The creative economy: invention of a global orthodoxy

This essay considers how policy thinking about culture has been steadily transformed into an overwhelmingly economic subject matter whose central trope is the “creative economy”. The development of current ideas and their background are discussed. Policy ideas first fully developed in the UK have had a global resonance: the illustrative examples of the European Union and the United Nations are discussed. The embedding of creative economy thinking in British cultural institutions such as the BBC and cultural support bodies is illustrated. The impact of current orthodoxy on academic institutions and research is also considered. Countervailing trends are weak. New thinking is now required.     

EU rural development policy in the new member states: Promoting multifunctionality?

European Union (EU) enlargement has seen 10 new member states (NMS) adopt the full range of EU policies. Within this, the rural development arm of the Common Agricultural Policy offers particular points of interest. Member states chose from an extensive list of policy measures developed within the EU15 and intended, in particular, to operationalise the concept of rural multifunctionality within the ongoing CAP reform process. This paper identifies the rural development policy choices made by the eight central and eastern European NMS and develops a taxonomy to ascertain the extent to which the NMS are directing public funds to promote multifunctionality. A number of factors are then identified as helping to influence the policy choices made across countries.     

Tax Uncertainty and Investment: A Cross-Country Empirical Examination

An empirical examination of uncertain tax policy is crucial to a full understanding of the interplay between taxes and investment, especially given the ambiguities in the limited theoretical literature. This article empirically investigates the impact on investment of volatility in effective tax rates on capital income in a cross-section of the 15 countries of the European Union, the United States, and Japan. Panel regression results suggest that the volatility of effective tax rates on capital income has a significant negative impact on investment per worker, with elasticities ranging from −0.012 to −0.029.     

Surveying the European Public Space - A Political and Research Agenda

This paper examines the reasons why it is justified to talk about a European 'democratic deficit'. The creation and consolidation of a European public space necessitates conceptual clarification at the normative theoretical level - as liberal democracy is historically closely bound to the nation-state - and action at the policy and political levels. A Union of European Citizens is a step towards, but not equivalent to, a democratic Union based on European citizenship. Formal announcements, normative convictions, or even institutional reforms are not enough to guarantee openness or support contestation. European democracy is de facto a process to be observed but it is also a project to be defined. The article outlines an agenda for European democracy both with regard to political deliberation and empirical research.     

European policy developments and their impact on social work†

ABSTRACT

Europe, in the throes of global trends, dissolves and yet re-establishes boundaries, both on its external perimeter and in terms of its internal social and political structures in a process reminiscent of the early period after the industrial revolutions. Once again it poses a fundamental question for social work: is the profession’s mandate limited to containing the effects of this process at the level of its individual victims or can it play a role in shaping European social policies which would deal with structural issues and further the cause of European integration? By examining the spaces created by the EU’s ambiguous initiatives on social issues – in areas like child welfare, poverty or migration – it will be shown that social ‘rescue’ attempts might only serve to legitimate exclusion and to further the decline of social solidarity within European states – and ultimately the disintegration of the European Union itself. The alternative lies in taking a wider political perspective and practising ‘relational citizenship’, giving people rights to belong and to participate.     

Land-use and environmental pressures resulting from current and future bioenergy crop expansion: A review

Recent energy and climate policies, particularly in the developed world, have increased demand for bioenergy² as an alternative, which has led to both direct and indirect land-use changes and an array of environmental and socio-economic concerns. A comprehensive understanding of the land-use dynamics of bioenergy crop production is essential for the development of sustainable bioenergy and land-use policies. In this paper, we review the patterns and dynamics of land-use change associated with bioenergy crops (hereafter referred to as ’bioenergy-driven land-use change’). The review focuses on four regions as the most prominent locations in which these patterns and changes occur: Brazil; Indonesia and Malaysia; the United States of America (U.S.A.); and the European Union (EU). The review confirms that bioenergy-driven land-use change has affected and will impact most severely on the ’land- and resource-abundant’ developing regions, such as Brazil, where economic development takes priority over sustainable land-use policies, and the enforcement capability is limited. Opportunities for more effective policy are available through the development of international climate change policy (e.g. REDD under the UNFCCC), and certification criteria for sustainable bioenergy products (e.g. EU RED). However, bioenergy produced from no and/or less land-using feedstocks (e.g. wastes and residues), and their associated technologies must be given higher priority to minimise bioenergy-driven land-use change and its negative impacts.     

Labor Market Impact of Migration: Employment Structures and the Case of Greece1

The impact of migration on the labor markets of host countries has fueled research and policy debates. While the impact of migration on the employment opportunities and wages of natives has come under extensive focus, another dimension of labor market impact of migration apparent in the case of Greece, the relations under which work is performed, has attracted less attention. The prevalence of family‐based forms of production and the relatively limited extent of waged employment have log made Greece an outlier with respect to European employment structures. However, much of the work previously carried out within the framework of the family is now undertaken by migrants for wages. This substitution of unpaid family labor by migrant wage‐labor is contributing to the convergence of Greek employment structures with those of other countries of the European Union.     

The Impact of European Monetary Union on Finance-Growth Nexus

This study examines the relationship between financial development and economic growth in 15 developed European countries before and after the formation of the euro. The results of the panel data analysis show that financial development is significant in promoting economic growth for both periods. The impact of the banking sector development on growth, however, is greater in the post-euro period, whereas the impact of stock market development on growth is reducing in the period investigated. The study concludes that the formation of European Monetary Union does not weaken the relationship between financial development and economic growth in developed European countries.