No description available.

The fall of the Santer Commission in 199~ against a background of allegations of fraud, maladministration and chronic mismanagement had the effect of firmly placing accountability on the political agenda of the European Union (EU) institutions and also marks the start of my personal interest in the area. In addition, the main problems occurred during the process of ratification of the Maastricht Treaty in conjunction with the non-ratification of the Constitutional Treaty boosted my interest in the area of accountability in the EU. With these considerations in mind, I aim with this thesis to explore further the concept of accountability. Therefore, in the first chapter I put together the various contributions that have been made in the legal literature regarding accountability's meaning. The purpose of this exercise is to understand the umbrella concept of accountability and to identify the origins and the meaning of accountability. The desirable aim is to provide a common understanding and or definition by reviewing the relevant literature and thus try to cover what accountability means. This exercise in definition is not as straightforward as it seems and is in fact more problematical than might at first be supposed. Hence, an explanation is given in order to understand what is, and what is not, meant by the concept of accountability while attempting to build an appropriate foundation which will be used as the essential tool for the analysis in the following chapters.

No description available.

On the wake of the failed referenda of the European Union Constitution in France and the Netherlands in 2005, EU and European national leaders proclaimed the existence of a 'communications gap', by which the incomplete and scarce coverage of EU issues by the news media, along with the denial of national leaders to acknowledge the European dimension of political life, were behind Europeans' seeming rejection of further European integration and the lower participation levels in European Parliament elections. This thesis challenges this mediation theory to explain the lack of popular political engagement with European politics and suggests instead a cultural and structural explanation that would account for the distant and apolitical nature of EU affairs. Using in-depth interviews with a hundred EU political actors from two European regions in which the popular support for the EU is clearly divergent (Yorkshire in the UK, Eurosceptic, and Galicia in Spain, pro- EU), and drawing from evidence of a comparative content analysis of EU news in those regions' benchmark newspapers, I· argue the 'domesticisation' and 'politicisation' deficits of the EU are better explained by the elitist and anti-popular pattern of European integration, the neo-corporatist and diplomatic way of governing the EU, and the inexistence or incompleteness of a European political people (a demos). The EU political regime is found to be close to the 'managerial state' that Jurgen Habermas saw in post-World War II Germany. Even in those regions like Galicia where the EU is positively regarded, European affairs are an administrative (non political) matter, making the EU the sort of technocratic government that Carl Schmitt feared liberalism would lead to. The reasons why the EU is remote and difficult to politicise on a left versus right axis are, therefore, structural and cultural rather than communicational.

No description available.

The fifth enlargement of the EU to include Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs) has led to the creation of new policy instruments, which will become a common feature in future enlargement rounds of the Community. Drawing on policy transfer literature and new forms of governance, this thesis explores the role of the EU and its administrative conditionality in shaping the public administration reforms in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). It analyses the introduction of the "twinning exercise" within the context of the 1997 reforms of the enlargement strategy. This is followed by a discussion of the procedural changes which had to be introduced in order to facilitate the secondment of member states' civil servants to administrations in CEE. While emphasizing a new tendency in EU policymaking, the use of the semi-voluntary forms of coordination among its member states and the applicants, it is argued that the substantive policies of the enlargement process allow for the transfer of institutional models and implementation structures from current member states to the applicants. As a result, the EU's conditionality on administrative capacities at sectoral level has gained momentum from the engagement of member states' civil servants in the accession process, although resistance in many of the applicants' ministries has partially prevented full compliance with the acquis communautaire. The thesis regards the introduction of the twinning exercise as mainly driven by lesson-drawing. It argues that, in the long run, the policy outcome of twinning projects is convergence in form of hybridisation rather than compliance on the basis of 'full transfer'.

This study undertakes a comparative analysis of the approaches towards merger control regime taken at the EC and the national levels, namely the Baltic countries. The emergence and further development of competition law and policy (particularly merger control rules) in the unexplored Baltic countries represent a novelty of the work, as there are no comprehensive legal writings in this area. The comparative research revealed that the EC incorporates both a negative and a positive approach vis-a-vis merger control rules; after shifting towards a more economic based approach, the EC regulatory authorities have explicitly recognised possible pro-competitive effects of mergers on competition. Whereas, the situation differs in the Baltic countries: despite committing themselves to applying the EC competition policy, these countries employ a negative approach towards merger transactions by placing focus on finding `dominance' rather than stressing emphasis on a merger's effects on competition. This negative approach may mean that the Baltic countries are reluctant to admit pro-competitive effects of merger transactions on competition, which can be seen as a sign that the merger control regimes in the Baltic countries are orientated towards dominance or market power rather than efficiency enhancing. The law used in the research is stated on the basis of materials available to the researcher on 31 May 2006.

This is an original study assessing the role of transatlantic policy networks in the formation of core Europe at the Schuman Plan conference. Based on extensive archival research in governmental records and private papers in twelve archives in five countries and informed by the innovative combination of the methodological tools of the network and cultural transfer concepts, the thesis sheds new light on how the process of European integration was triggered in 1950-51. The thesis reconceptualizes the negotiations on the treaty establishing the European Coal and Steel Community in along-term historical perspective as the outcome of the co-operation of transatlantic policy networks reflecting the interaction of American and European thought and politico-legal concepts. It therefore advances the history of early European integration and post-World War II transatlantic relations. Against the backdrop of Franco-German rapprochement and the emerging Cold War, transatlantic policy networks of a variety of academic and other experts, civil servants and state and non-state actors, assumed a vital function in determining the negotiation tactics of various stakeholders at the Schuman Plan conference. Mediating between American and European thought and politico-legal concepts, these transatlantic policy networks crucially contributed to shaping the first supranational European institutional framework and anti-trust law. The institutions that transatlantic policy networks helped to establish in 1950-51 can be regarded as the precursors of the institutions of the contemporary European Union. The anti-trust provisions, in turn, provided one important model for the competition rules of the European Economic Community, which ultimately came to playa crucial role in the European integration process and in the construction of a common market. It is demonstrated therefore that transatlantic policy networks thus helped to create important path dependencies for the process of European integration.

Recent reform agendas have emphasised a perceived need to bring the European Union (EU) institutions and the citizens of the member states and closer together, as a means of enhancing the legitimacy of EU governance. The debate on the future of the EU, the initiative which led to the signing of the constitutional treaty in October 2004, addressed the challenge of 'bringing closer' by incorporating civil society in to the treaty reform process. In this thesis I investigate the role played by transnational civil society organisations in helping to bring citizens and institutions closer together. I employ the notion of democratic linkage to describe and explain the downward-facing interactions between civil society organisations and ordinary citizens, which have sometimes been neglected, as well as their upward-facing interactions with elite decision-makers. Drawing upon data from qualitative interviews with 25 civil society organisations and six officials from various EU institutions I find serious discrepancies between the rhetoric of the EU institutions on bringing citizens closer, and the capacities and willingness of the civil society actors involved as well as the opportunities for doing so.

The objective of this thesis is to provide advice on how to establish a reliable system of financial accountability in Serbia, as a condition for EU membership. The creation of a functional financial accountability system in Serbia is important not only for further Serbian development, but also to secure efficient and effective use of the EU/Member States’ monies, which are already being used in Serbia. This thesis analyses financial accountability systems of two EU Member States: UK and France and a supranational EU system, which are then compared with the Serbian system. The legal frameworks of these systems of financial accountability are analysed against their socio-historical backgrounds, focusing on the key challenges they face in both their strategic developments and everyday work. The conclusion is that Serbia has still not met the financial accountability conditions for EU membership outlined in the acquis communitaure. The comparative socio-legal analysis has demonstrated that the application of pure, more advanced Western European models of financial accountability would not be possible in the transitional Serbian environment. However, specific elements of these systems, exemplified in the emerging European system of financial accountability, could be well applied in the Serbian context.