No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No / This chapter will discuss key issues and challenges facing contemporary European environmental health law and policy. It will identify relevant legal and policy regimes as well as key drivers for promotion and protection of environmental health in Europe. It will examine the strengths and limits of evolving European legal and policy responses to the promotion and protection of environmental health. It explores prospects for optimizing health protection in Europe. In this connection, the chapter will propose regulatory options to re-invigorate the current legal and policy regimes governing environmental health at the European and domestic levels. The chapter will conclude by proposing pathways to mapping the future of environmental health law in Europe.

In this thesis, I examine the politics of European Union (EU) and Russian energy relations. The main analysis is focused on the Russian energy policy towards the European Union and whether or not Moscow’s attempts at deepening reliance on Russian’s natural gas are a part of a Russian broad strategy or to gain political leverage vis-à-vis European countries. More specifically, this thesis focuses on the state-owned natural gas company Gazprom as a tool of Russia’s energy policy and the extent to which Russian authorities use this company to shape the politics of EU – Russian energy relations. This study investigates whether Gazprom has become an extension of the Russian government, and whether the company has been used as leverage tool to affect relations between the EU and Russia. Finally, this study also traces the tremendous growth of the EU – Russia energy partnership by examining several ongoing projects. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2013.

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of Government and Public Administration

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of Government and Public Administration

No abstract available / Political Sciences / M. A. (International Politics)

No abstract available / Political Sciences / M. A. (International Politics)

The focus of this thesis is on the vertical Europeanisation of the online public debate and more specifically on the EU's online public communication strategy, i.e. the top-down process of the unmediated, direct, online communication between the EU and the general public. The empirical data has been collected in four stages, namely public communication policy-making; public communication policy implementation online; online public communication policy impact on key Internet audiences; and interviews with key senior Commission officials. The review of the EU public communication documents has shown that the Commission has unambiguously committed to facilitate direct communication with the EU public as part of the process of building the EU citizens' trust towards its institutions and in addressing the issues of transparency and democratic legitimation of the EU's decision-making process, while the Internet is seen as a key tool in facilitating direct communication. However, after monitoring three of the EU's official websites for a year and analyzing the views of 221 Internet users on the EU's Information and Communication strategy online, it has become evident that the Commission has not yet fulfilled these commitments. The interviews with key Commission officials have revealed that behind this gap between policy and online implementation lie: a) an institutional culture which conflicts with the aims of the Commission's public communication strategy; and b) constant institutional restructuring in the last six years. Very recently the Commission has begun to address some of the shortfalls in the online implementation of its public communication strategy, yet there is no indication that the results of the online debate regarding the EU's future will be incorporated in the decision-making process, while further study is required in the future in order to assess any change in the institutional culture in relation to its public communication strategy.