European Commission

... The research is based on an analysis of a European Commission dataset from a benchmarking survey of 77 incubators as well as 52 interviews in 25 large technology-driven corporations in Europe and the United States. ... The size of the incubators, as measured by ...

This article, which introduces a Special Issue of the JCES on the challenges of EU enlargement policy towards the Western Balkans, critically examines the geopolitical turn of the EU’s institutional thinking on enlargement since 2017. After several high-ranked EU officials and leaders of member states more or less explicitly voiced their concerns about the declining influence of the EU in the Western Balkans, the European Commission – which has traditionally been responsible for carrying out administrative-technical aspects of the accession process – adopted a more geopolitical approach to enlargement policy in February 2018, and has since sought to advance Western Balkan accession more decisively. However, this geopolitical turn to the EU’s institutional thinking on enlargement has so far failed to translate discourse into concrete results. The article argues that the main reasons for this failure can be found in a lack of support by EU members, which either do not share the Commission’s sense of urgency, or are eager to use enlargement policy and the accession process to advance their national interests. The article concludes with a brief presentation of the structure of the special issue and introduces the contributing articles.

In this article for Just Security, the authors explain how the EU institutions (European Commission and External Action Service) and the US are pressing forward with a package assembled by Enlargement Commissioner Oliver Varhelyi, which not only continues their pursuit of electoral law and constitutional changes which would reinforce the power and unaccountability of Bosnia and Herzegovina's political elites, but also put huge swathes of BiH land up for natural asset stripping. In addition, genocide denial and war crimes glorification criminal sanctions imposed by High Representative Valentin Inzko would be on the chopping block. These moves reward allied politicians Milorad Dodik and Dragan Covic, who have jointly driven the ongoing crisis in BiH.

TreKker is an intervention model designed for students which aims to develop the individual as an integrated whole. This model was created to be used as a framework for individual skills development in an academic environment. As a result of the implementation of the Bologna Process, Higher Education Institutions in Europe are required to be more focused on skills and

Extensive areas of methane-derived authigenic carbonate (MDAC) have been mapped in the Irish Sea. In the Irish Sector, 23 seabed mounds associated with the Codling Fault Zone were identified by multi-beam echo sounder mapping. Inspection by ROV-mounted video showed that these mounds are rocky features rising 5–10 m above the normal seabed; sampling showed that they are comprised of quartz grains bound together by carbonate cement, probably MDAC. Two separate locations have been mapped in the UK Sector. At Texel 11, seabed mounds and a 6–8 m high cliff were mapped geophysically (MBES, SSS and seismic profiler surveys). Video surveys showed that both the mounds and the cliff are rocky reefs colonised by a prolific fauna. Samples proved to be carbonate-cemented sediments, and carbon isotope analysis (δ13C −41 to −46% PDB) showed that the cement was MDAC. Similar surveys of the Holden’s Reefs area proved the presence of similar rocky reefs which are also cemented by MDAC. The total area covered by these two MDAC occurrences is estimated to be >500,000 m2. These MDAC occurrences are comparable in nature and formation to the ‘bubbling reefs’ of the Kattegat. As the bubbling reefs are “seabed features formed by leaking gas”, one of the marine habitats identified by the European Commission’s Habitats Directive as being sensitive and worthy of protection, it is suggested that the Irish Sea carbonate reefs should also be considered as special habitats.

Over the last decades Nanotechnology has promised to advance science and technology in many areas. Within medicine, Nanomedicine promises to deliver new methods for diagnosis, prognosis and therapy. As the amount of available information is rapidly growing, new Biomedical Informatics approaches have to be developed to satisfy the increasing demand on data and knowledge management. In 2007, a new sub-discipline, already named "Nanoinformatics", was created with support from the US National Science Foundation. In Europe, a project named ACTION-Grid was launched in 2008 with support from the European Commission to analyze the challenges and agenda for developing Nanoinformatics as a discipline related to Nanotechnology, Biomedicine and Informatics. For MIE 2009, members of this consortium proposed a workshop to discuss the scientific and strategic issues associated with this topic. Nanoinformatics aims to create a bridge between Nanomedicine and Information Technology applyin...

The short brief analyses the new dynamics in the new EU legislature on EU enlargement to the Western Balkans, its impact on the EU’s perspective to North Macedonia, and the role of the Assembly of North Macedonia in pushing for the country’s European perspective.

The fact that people are increasingly locked into their smartphones, tablets and other technological tools which put work, games and music at their fingertips has an impact not only on everyday life but also on competition issues. Indeed, in recent years, several courts and competition authorities have
observed that patent holders may acquire a dominant position as their IP rights happen to be essential to implement a specific industry standard.

National cultures often reflect a preference for one of the ideal-types hierarchical, network or market governance. A comparison of four similar policy cases in the UK, the Netherlands, Germany and the European Commission reveals that successful public managers under certain conditions are able to construct and design productive mixtures of the three styles. They applied metagovernance, a process of designing and managing situationally optimal combinations of the three competing, and to an extent mutually undermining, governance styles. Their national cultures and politico-administrative traditions co-determined the governance mixture which would work in a given situation. The research reinforces the case already made by others, that governance doctrines cannot be transferred as ‘best practices’ from one nation to another without adaptation. The article suggests that the future does not lie in inventing new management and governance doctrines, but in investing in post-dogmatic public management.

The determination of extractable trace metals in sediments using sequential extraction procedures has been performed in many laboratories within the last ten years in order to study environmental pathways (e.g. mobility of metals, bounding states). However, the results obtained by different laboratories could hardly be compared due to lack of harmonized schemes. Owing to the need for standardization and subsequent validation of extraction schemes for sediment analysis, the Measurements and Testing Programme (formerly BCR Programme) of the European Commission has organized a project to adopt a sequential extraction procedure that could be used as a mean of comparison of data of extractable trace metals in sediments. A scheme was designed after a series of investigations on existing schemes and tested in interlaboratory studies. This paper presents the results of two round-robin exercises on extractable trace metals using this sequential extraction protocol and describes the final version of the extraction procedure amended according to the most recent improvements.

This article describes the user-centred development of play scenarios for robot assisted play, as part of the multidisciplinary IROMEC11The work described in this article is conducted within the EU project IROMEC (Interactive Robotic Social Mediators as Companions) and was co-funded by the European Commission in the 6th Framework Program under contract IST-FP6-045356. project that develops a novel robotic toy for

The fading credibility of Turkey's European Union (EU) membership perspective has undermined the conditionality strategy of the EU. However, outside of the formal setting of the accession talks, twinning projects are considered as a tool to keep Europeanization processes on track. Based on the principle of partnership, these projects aim to induce domestic change via social learning. However, this case study of a twinning project concerning the training of the Turkish National Police reveals interaction characterized by strategic rather than social learning. This was due to the dominance of personal/organizational interests and the negative effects of Turkey's uncertain accession prospects. This suggests that, in the absence of a credible membership perspective, the aim of using twinning as a tool for fostering change via persuasion and socialization may be overambitious.

In recent weeks the US has stepped up its campaign against the Nord Stream 2 project. Washington is putting pressure on Berlin to withdraw its support for the project, and is threatening to use increasingly powerful measures, including sanctions on European companies involved in the gas pipeline's implementation. The growing dispute between the US and Germany over Nord Stream 2 has become an element of the broader controversy surrounding the project in the EU and is leading to deeper divisions between the member states. It has brought to the fore the differences in approaches to gas cooperation with Russia as well as approaches to the development of Russia's strategic gas pipeline projects. While Germany, but also Austria, the Netherlands and a number of other countries, limit their approach to commercial issues, Poland, the Baltic States, Denmark and the US also see it as having security implications which do not only relate to energy. The conflict over Nord Stream 2 is also part of the game concerning the future shape of the gas market in Europe, and the roles played by individual external suppliers (mainly Russia, but also to an increasing extent the US) and companies such as Gaz-prom and its European partners. The Nord Stream 2 case has become a major challenge of the EU's cohesion and its relations with the US and Russia. Gameplay on Nord Stream 2 brings short term political benefits to Russia. The project has not only caused a rift between the EU member states, it has also become a source of increased friction in transatlantic relations. The actions taken by Washington and Berlin with regard to Nord Stream 2 will have the greatest impact on its future. Although Berlin has changed its rhetoric and Chancellor Merkel has acknowledged that project has a political dimension in addition to the commercial one, Germany is unwavering in its support for NS2, trying to limit its negative consequences to problems regarding Ukrainian transit. Thus Berlin does not refer to the strategic concerns of the Central European and Scandinavian countries, the European Commission (EC) and the US which are not related directly to Ukraine.

A systematic revision of the notion of facilitating practices is put forward in this paper, with the purpose of relaxing the long-debated tension between economic and legal perspectives on oligopoly. Whereas the law knows of just one collusive illegal conduct, namely agreements, in economic theory the focus on internal enforcement makes the distinction between agreements and other behaviour resulting in

Until the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) was born (January 1, 1995) the rules of the trading system pertained to trade in goods, not services. Where as tariffs are the principal barriers to trade in goods, domestic laws and regulations are the barriers to trade in services.

The scope of GATS in breathtaking. It applies to any measure (e.g., law, regulation) take by government at any level, from central to-local, which affects specified services. At present, the GATS is one of the several agreements being negotiated in the current (2000 to 2005) round of World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations.

The GATS expands the rights and protections of corporate investors. By expanding the reach of global institutions with legally binding authority over national policy decisions, transnational corporations seek to replace the complex role of the state with a single goal: pursuit of profit. The European Commission acknowledged that GATS is "first and foremost an instrument for the benefits of business, and not only for business in general, but for individual service companies wishing to export services or to invest and operate abroad."

WTO member governments must be persuaded to take -- "carve out" -- essential services from the negotiations. State or provincial and local governments should be clearly exempted from the jurisdiction of the GATS. Governments should insist on safeguards that enable them to measure negative social impacts from liberalization, specify a "trigger level" for applying safeguards, and respond with regulatory and subsidy actions that may not be WTO-consistent.

Lake Varese is a relatively small lake, belonging to the drainage basin of lake Maggiore (northern Italy). It has had a long his- tory (since 1960s) of water quality deterioration as the result of cultural eutrophication. In 1967 a restoration project was designed, including a sewerage network, an O-ring sewage diversion system, and a centralised wastewater treatment plant with phosphorus

Nowadays, Road Safety Inspections (RSI) are recognized as an effective tool for identifying safety deficiencies of road infrastructures. They represent a low cost process for the evaluation of the network safety performance. Its applicability in rural local roads, where accident data generally do not give enough information for the safety analysis, make the procedure very attractive. However, due to the subjective nature of the process RSI may give rise to disagreements which limit their effectiveness. The paper describes the RSI procedures defined by the IASP research program. The IASP project is funded by European Commission (DG TREN) and Province of Catania (Italy) with the scientific support and collaboration of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of University of Catania. The project is aimed at defining a methodological approach for the safety analysis and the restoration of rural highways specially suited for local rural roads. Various countries adopted RSI ...

Abstract:  Last year the European Commission published its Action Plan on European contract law. That plan forms an important step towards a European Civil Code. In its Plan, the Commission tries to depoliticise the codification process by asking a group of academic experts to prepare what it calls a ‘common frame of reference’. This paper argues that drafting a European Civil Code involves making many choices that are essentially political. It further argues that the technocratic approach which the Commission has adopted in the Action Plan effectively excludes most stakeholders from having their say during the stage when the real choices are made. Therefore, before the drafting of the CFR/ECC starts, the Commission should submit a list of policy questions regarding the main issues of European private law to the European Parliament and the other stakeholders. Such an alternative procedure would repoliticise the process. It would increase the democratic basis for a European Civil Code and thus its legitimacy.

Enterprise restructuring can no longer be understood as a temporal crisis. Current developments show that for many organizations and even regions or sectors restructuring became a recurrent and continuous process. But often restructuring processes fail to produce the intended effects of secured or increased organizational profitability. On the contrary restructuring puts the physical and psycho-social health of all organizational members at risk. Besides the uncovering of pre-existing health problems, also the chronification of these illnesses had to be documented both for laid-off workers and survivors of the restructuring. But not only increased rates of sick leave and presenteeism of sick employees deteriorate the organizational performance. Some of the irritations that restructuring can cause also directly impede inner-organizational interactions. Therefore, restructuring should be understood as an individual as well as an organizational stressor. To limit the risks of enterpris...