Impact of the EU Structural Funds on Financial Capacities of Non-profit Organizations

To fulfil their role, non-profit organizations (NPOs) need sufficient capacities. These include, first and foremost, financial capacity. EU Cohesion Policy commands financial resources of 351.8 bn. EUR. The EU is also willing to support NPOs from this source. With such considerable funding, the research questions arise: How much money have NPOs received? What are the effects of such assistance on the financial capacities of NPOs? On a sample of 2715 non-profit organizations in the Czech Republic, we have found that EU subsidies have a positive impact on financial capacities, measured as real assets. It is caused by using EU funds for investment. We have not proved an effect on short-term financial capacities measured on revenues. Moreover, the distribution of financial support among PBOs is unequal as 4% of NPOs collected 80% of subsidies due to differences in skills among NPOs’ managers.     

Brexit,uncertainty, and migration decisions

We leverage the British Brexit referendum decision to leave the European Union, to demonstrate how changes in uncertainty about a country's future socio-political condition can impact migratory behaviour. Using official bilateral migration statistics, we report an excess increase in migration from the UK to the EU of approximately 16% post-referendum, compared to movements between the remaining EU countries over the same period. In addition, we analyse in-depth interviews conducted with UK migrants in Germany to show that uncertainty about future bilateral relations, a negative economic outlook, and perceptions of negative social consequences in the UK have been by far the most dominant drivers of migration in the post-referendum period. We further corroborate the effect of changes in uncertainty on migration-related behaviour with exceptional spikes in naturalisations, indicating that UK citizens living in other EU member states are actively taking decisions to mitigate the negative impact that Brexit is having on their livelihoods.     

Towards a European public sphere?

In this paper we address the alleged communication or public sphere deficit of the EU. We develop a systematic approach to the Europeanization of public spheres, which distinguishes three forms of Europeanized political communication: supranational, vertical and horizontal. We propose that the spatial reach and boundaries of public communication can be determined by investigating communicative flows and assessing the relative density of public communication within and between different geopolitical spaces. We apply this model to data on political claim making in seven issue fields in German print media in the year 2000. We find that the degree and forms of Europeanization of political communication vary considerably among policy fields. These differences are strongly linked to the extent and type (supranational or intergovernmental) of competencies of the EU in these fields. Contrary to the hypothesis of a public sphere deficit, the German mass media seem to quite accurately reflect the Europeanization of policy making, at least in those policy fields where a clear‐cut transfer of competencies to the supranational EU level has taken place.     

How to Overcome Deadlock in EU Immigration Politics

Immigration policy is a very unlikely case for EU integration. EU policy‐making is constrained by member states' sovereignty claims and interest heterogeneity. Still, tentative integration towards EU conditions of entry and residence for some immigrant categories can be observed. By using the example of the skilled labour migration directive, the article explains how deadlock in policy‐making was overcome. It explores the factors that led to agreement in the EU immigration policy area, from the Commission's first proposal on labour migration in 2001 to its adoption in 2009. Explanations for integration in the policy area are member states' venue shopping the EU level for changing domestic legislation, their interest in locking‐in national standards in EU law, and the EU Commission's agenda‐framing. Strategic partitioning of policy was also used by actors to overcome deadlock in policy‐making. The reframing of policies, by reducing their scope to a few narrowly defined immigrant categories, influenced their adoption. This mechanism was observed in studying the eight years of policy‐making leading to the labour migration directive. The longitudinal analysis helps to identify the key dynamics that define this nascent EU policy area.     

The new grounds for deportation of European Union citizens in the United Kingdom

Politicians often mention immigration enforcement, and deportation in particular, as a means to assert state sovereignty. This article looks at deportation through exiting the European Union, an event that was interpreted as regaining sovereignty from the supra-national organisation. New immigration regulations in the United Kingdom were meant to end the EU Freedom of Movement and equalise the statuses of EU- and non-EU migrants in the United Kingdom. The research question this article addresses is the following: how do the new immigration regulations and policies affect the possibility of deportations of EU citizens in the United Kingdom? With the lens of Interpretive Policy Analysis, the article analyses primary sources and expert interviews. It concludes that the deportability of EU citizens has increased post-Brexit. It also anticipates that the deportability of EU citizens will be differentiated, as rough sleepers, former convicts and irregular migrants may be first to be targeted with deportation.     

Framing an EU Level Regularization Mechanism: Mission Impossible?

European Union Member States have so far tackled the problem of irregular migration in Europe by adopting common policies which aim to prevent irregular arrivals on the EU borders. In their EU‐level policies, they have neglected regularization as an alternative EU‐level policy addressing irregular migration. This represents a contrast to regularizations which are performed by many EU Member States. However, the EU Commission has gradually adopted a more positive stance about regularization. This article will discuss the principles of an EU‐level regularization scheme through the analysis of the Commission's ideas on the issue. It will be argued that, rather than adopting a common policy, the flexible set of measures, which guide Member States in formulating regularization mechanism for protection/humanitarian reasons, can be formulated at the EU level.     

The Europeanisation of Integration Policies

This article analyses the development of integration policies concerning third country nationals at the level of the European Union (EU). Starting with the discovery of recent policy developments at the European level, including new European directives mainly granting social rights to non‐EU citizens, the paper proceeds to examine the reasons that enabled this shift from the national to the European level of decision making. It concludes that integration policies have been created as a new EU policy field amidst the also fairly new policy field of immigration policies. In light of the theoretical concept of “organisational fields,” the interests and motives of the main actors involved in the emergence of this policy field are analysed. The research combines neo‐functionalist and intergovernmentalist assumptions, and it results in the following conclusions: First, a European integration policy could only be established within the emerging field of immigration policies, which laid the groundwork for member state collaborations in this highly sensitive policy area. Secondly, the European Parliament, the Council of Europe, several non‐governmental organisations and most notably the European Commission played an important role in promoting integration policies at the European level. Their engagement is interpreted as a necessary but not as a sufficient condition for the establishment of this policy field. Thirdly, these actors tried to strengthen the status of integration policies by emphasising the linkage between successful integration policies and economic and social cohesion. This semantic strategy, among other discussed reasons, facilitated the member states’ decision at the European summit in Tampere 1999 that all third country nationals shall be granted comparable rights to EU citizens.     

European integration and external sustainability of the European Union: an application of the thesis of Feldstein and Horioka

The Feldstein–Horioka thesis was considered one of the greatest puzzles in economics. Formulated to measure international capital mobility, it has known a process of immunization to be conformed to empirical evidence and respect econometric knowledge. We apply to EU countries a formulation of this thesis which is adequate to test external sustainability and measure international capital mobility. Applying appropriate econometric methods we can accept the hypothesis of external unsustainability for the EU before the enlargement. The enlargement allows the external sustainability of the new EU. The lesser mobility of capital in the countries of the enlargement must be considered as a positive shock on EU industry of financial services.     

Best Practice Options: Turkey

At the ninth Migration Dialogue seminar, held 29–31 March 2001 in Istanbul, Turkey, opinion leaders discussed the major immigration and integration issues facing emigration, transit, and immigration countries. Several major issues regarding Turkey were discussed. 1 This report was prepared after the seminar for participants and others interested in migration and development issues. It has not been approved by participants, and thus should not be considered a consensus document.
First, the effect of the Turkish Government’s modernization effort, which began in the 1920s. In the 1960s the government began to promote the export of surplus labour, with the hope that sending workers abroad from less– developed parts of the country would bring remittances and returned workers with skills needed for modernization. Among the governments of labour–exporting countries, Turkey’s has been unique in its high hopes for recruitment, remittances, and returns. They were expected to bring about a transformation of the country. These high expectations help explain the widespread frustration with migration’s actual effects. Second, the Turkish Government’s current goal of gaining full membership in the European Union (EU). Ankara stresses that the EU should embrace full Turkish membership for a variety of reasons, including the country’s strategic position between Europe and Asia, and to send a signal to other Muslim societies, such as those of North Africa, that the EU will include Muslim societies that are secular and democratic. Third, Turkey’s fear that EU membership would lead to another wave of migration. Many Europeans fear that Turkish EU membership would lead to another wave of migration. Turkey hopes that admission to the EU will bring EU assistance and foreign direct investment (FDI) that creates jobs and pushes up wages, thus making migration insignificant. Finally, Turkey’s position as an emigration, transit, and immigration country. There are 3 to 4 million Turks abroad, 3 to 4 million foreigners living in Turkey (perhaps half Iranians), and tens of thousands who move through Turkey to Europe. Turkey is revising its asylum law in a manner that will allow persons fleeing persecution outside Europe to be considered refugees in Turkey, to establish for the first time a support system for refugees.     

Informed Consent in the Twenty‐First Century: What It Is,What It Isn't,and Future Challenges in Informed Consent and Shared Decision Making

Consent evolved from judge‐made law in Great Britain in 1767. The term informed consent entered the judicial lexicon in 1957. The first court case to articulate a reasonable person standard adopted by the high courts in Canada and Australia was heard in the U.S. in 1972. Today, informed consent continues to develop in four areas: (i) the court‐based doctrines of consent and informed consent in clinical care in judge‐made law; (ii) federal regulations related to research on human study participants; (iii) shared decision making adopted by care organizations and medical societies in the US, Canada, and Europe; and (iv) areas including decision analysis, discourse analysis, ethics, linguistic analysis, patient–physician communication, risk and evidence communication, and social theory. In this paper, we will focus on consent and informed consent in the first part of the twenty‐first century. We will examine a range of information and decision making frameworks from the oldest court‐established frameworks of consent and informed consent to recent conceptions of information and decision making in evidence‐based decision making and shared decision making in the patient–physician relationship. This paper is divided into three parts: I. What informed consent is, II. What informed consent isn't, and III. Future challenges in informed consent and shared decision making.     

The Effects of Children’s Health on Mothers’ Employment

When children have health problems, mothers face a tradeoff between the decision to work to satisfy increased expenses and the decision to stay home to fulfill enlarged caregiving needs, especially for children with chronic conditions. This research used an instrumental variables approach to investigate the labor market consequences of mothers due to burden to care children with health problems. We found mothers’ employment probability increased by 0.9% for every $100 of increased out-of-pocket medical spending, while employment probability fell by 1.0% for every half day of school/day care a sick child missed. By correcting for endogeneity we addressed a potential empirical bias. Analyses by subgroups showed that Hispanic mothers were less likely to work in the labor market with high caregiving burden. We also found that the effects of time burden on labor market outcomes were magnified for black mothers.     

The Decision to Divorce

The decision to terminate an unhappy marriage through obtaining a divorce is almost never an easy decision for either spouse. It is usually reached only after other options and alternatives have been considered and then rejected as non-viable solutions to the problems that have developed between the spouses. As Bernard (1970: 3) has noted, despite the increasing frequency of its occurence, "It is not likely that divorce will ever become matterof- fact, nor that it will ever become painless or casual or nonchalant . . . It will probably always be an extremely painful experience for most people, as breaking close ties always is, even outside marriage." From this perspective, our coming to terms with divorce means only that we recognize its inevitability in many cases and try to mitigate some of the worst of its consequences. In this paper we review the process through which a sample of 500 respondents reached the decision to obtain a divorce. Specifically, major problems that existed in their relationship that prompted them to finally seek a legal termination of their union will be considered. In addition, we will examine barriers that had to be overcome before that decision was finally reached as well as major sources of social support that encouraged the decision. We will begin with a brief theoretical review of the major orientations that have been developed in the literature to account for the process through which the individual ultimately decides to seek a divorce.     

The new EU industrial policy: authoritarian neoliberal structural adjustment and the case for alternatives

ABSTRACT

In 2017, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker declared the re-industrialization of the European Union (EU) a top priority. The new EU industrial policy seeks to boost industrial competitiveness and leverage investments into manufacturing, thereby increasing industry’s share of EU Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to 20% by 2020. What may appear to be a Keynesian industrial policy and thus a move away from the EU’s previous neoliberal agenda, however, seeks to calibrate a further neoliberal structural adjustment in a highly authoritarian fashion. Internal devaluation through devaluing labour, intensifying competition and reducing corporate taxes takes centre-stage. As an auxiliary to the European Semester, national productivity boards have been established to monitor wage developments alongside labour productivity and to suggest policy adjustments when cost competitiveness lags behind the Eurozone average and that of the main trading partners. Not only have formal democratic institutions and organized labour been circumvented in the decision-making process regarding such boards, they will have little voice in the future, and this an area that hitherto fell largely within the scope of member states: wage bargaining. Hence, the new EU industrial policy needs to be discredited, de-legitimized and thus, politicized. A political counter-project, rooted in an alternative industrial policy geared towards fostering horizontal and democratic solidarity economy initiatives which have proliferated since 2008, is discussed in the article’s closing pages.     

Feeling Europe: political emotion,knowledge, and support for the European Union

Theories of political emotion suggest that feelings towards an issue or candidate are often better predictors for support than attitudes or preferences. We investigate whether this conjecture also holds for more abstract political entities, such as the European Union (EU), and test whether EU citizens’ feelings toward the EU are significant predictors of their EU support. We first review existing research and provide theory-driven propositions of how positive and negative emotion may influence EU-related attitudes. Second, using multilevel regression models fitted to Eurobarometer data, we estimate how feelings toward the EU are associated with support for the EU. In line with our hypotheses, analyses show that positive emotions are positively associated with EU-support, while negative affect is negatively associated with it. Contrary to some theoretical predictions, however, these effects are not mediated by individuals’ use of EU-related information.     

Long-term Growth Perspectives and Economic Convergence of CEE and SEE Countries

The paper first investigates the main drivers of economic growth and real convergence in CEE and SEE Countries. In the theoretical framework provided by the growth-accounting approach, both are shown to be driven by capital accumulation and total factor productivity changes, with the latter making however a major contribution. The nominal convergence path towards the Eurozone is then analysed. Despite considerable results obtained in the last decade, most EU new members are still found to face severe challenges in the process of converging towards Maastricht criteria. The need to reconcile exchange rate stability with inflation convergence is in particular seen to be at the heart of their de facto decision to delay the EMU entry date until a higher degree of real convergence will have been achieved.

EU Enlargement: Economic-Cultural Perspective and Cross-Country Comparison

Globalization is constantly changing the appearance of the modern world. The most intense processes of integration are taking place in Europe in the framework of the European Union (EU) enlargement. Though the formal process is more or less concluded, the subtle and informal ones still have a long way to go. Social structures (institutions, organizations, norms, etc.) and actions depend on the cultural environment in the narrowest sense of the word: human perceptions and values. This poses the basic question whether the economic-cultural orientations of the new EU member states are compatible with imported social structures. We have done an empirical research using Hofstede's cultural dimensions and European Values Study database for 26 European countries (23 EU member states, 2 candidate countries, and Northern Ireland as a separate entity). We have also compared the differences and similarities by applying the Ward method (cluster analysis) on our 10 constructed variables.     

The 800-Year-Old Westernization Dream of the East-Mediterranean Turks: Thinking the EU Membership of Turkey

I discuss the process of Turkey’s efforts to apply for EU accession, providing ingenuous thoughts and historical references going back to the Ottoman Empire, and the conceptual significance of the “West”. The processes of democratization and reforms in Turkey, initiated by Atatürk are seen as a merit in itself, and not only as a obligation undertaken because of prospective EU integration. Following the reformist ideas has not been always easy and supported by all the political parties and the population in general. But Turkey nowadays is the only secular Islamic country which managed to introduce important reforms in areas such as freedom of thought, freedom of speaking mother language (minority languages), abolition of death penalty. Many topics that were taboo until recently, such as the transparency and accountability of the government, are now discussed openly by broad society. EU could be a catalyst of the reforms and is supported by the general public, which believes that EU could create a better future for their children, but also will benefit from Turkey’s membership, to create a world where people can live together with all their differences in peace and democracy.     

“We will Manage It” – Did Chancellor Merkel's Dictum Increase or Even Cause the Refugee Movement in 2015?

In public and scientific debates about the dynamics of the so-called refugee crisis of 2015, there are highly controversial positions concerning the statement on August 2015 by Chancellor Merkel: “We will manage it” Did this dictum actually increase or even unleash the refugee migration towards Europe in 2015? Was Germany's governmental policy against the legal European and national frame? Based on an analysis of legal documents and public statements, the article first reconstructs the development of refugee immigration into the EU, especially to Germany, in 2015 and reviews whether the German government violated law and opened one-sided borders. Based on survey data of 4,500 refugees in 2016, it then analyses whether the Merkel dictum significantly changed the volume and the reasons why refugees decided to flee to Germany. Finally, some conclusions are drawn.