This research focuses on contributions – oral and written – on the topic of linguistic diversity made by Members of the European Parliament during the plenary sessions from 2000 to 2003 inclusive and analyses the attitudes expressed by Members towards the concept of linguistic diversity, particularly as it applies to the national languages and the regional autochthonous languages of Member States. The analysis is set within a framework consisting of contemporary academic work and the classic work by Johann Gottfried von Herder and the German Philosophen. The European Year of Languages 2001 was widely supported by the European Commission; but an important question seemed to be what significance, if any, did maintaining linguistic diversity have for Members of the European Parliament in the years immediately following 2001. This research set out to discover to what extent issues related to linguistic diversity were given expression to in the plenary debates from 2000 to 2003, the years corresponding essentially to the fifth parliamentary term. Was only lip service paid to linguistic diversity in the years 2000 – 2003? Or did the European Year of Languages focus the attention of parliamentarians from all political groups in an ongoing way on issues of language use and preservation in the European Union, especially since the Union was to be significantly enlarged by the addition of ten Member States on January 1, 2004? Did the MEPs recognise that there were social and economic benefits accruing from pursuing policies of linguistic diversity? How important was linguistic diversity to the essence of the European Union in the eyes of its Members of Parliament? To what extent did MEPs espouse the use of just one language as a preferred method of communication in and around the Parliament? How much respect was there for the regional and minority indigenous languages of the European Union? Did MEPs regard linguistic diversity as an important consideration in determining the suitability of other countries seeking accession? The research reviews the response from the Commission in subsequent years to the views articulated by the MEPs. Finally, are there lessons in any of this for New Zealand?

The relationship between the European Union (EU) and New Zealand has expanded considerably since the protracted trade negotiations of the 1970s and now includes dialogue and cooperation on a range of policy issues. In recent years, environment has become an increasingly high priority matter and is increasingly referenced as playing an important part in EU-New Zealand relations. At the same time, the EU has been praised for its leadership role in climate change negotiations, and some scholars have described it as a “green” normative power with the ability to influence other actors internationally on environmental policy. Taking the EU-New Zealand relationship on environment as its case study, this thesis attempts to address a gap in the academic literature concerning relations between New Zealand and the EU on environmental issues. It compares and contrasts the concept of EU normative power with that of policy transfer, arguing that both address the spread of ideas, but finding that what might appear to be normative power and the diffusion of norms, can in fact be best explained as policy transfer and the diffusion of policy or knowledge.

This doctoral research is a multi-disciplinary study which draws from discourse theory, linguistics and European Union studies. It aims to explore the meaning, and linguistic representations of the European Union (EU) in the context of its relations with the Pacific Region, while taking into account contributing ideological and political factors. This study contributes to several academic fields, and specifically to the practice of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and to the continuum of study on the linguistics-politics interface. CDA research observes the structure and function of signifiers. Discourse analysis provides means to critically observe elements of social and political power, identities and issues through both contextual and linguistic features of discourse. It offers a unique approach to analysing international relations with the application of tools that can decipher meaning and ideologies in discursive structures. This approach stems for the post-structural outlook that linguistic features reflect ideologies and power relations that condition interpretation of political and social issues. Through a critical observation, the role and influence of the EU in the Pacific region is examined and evaluated. A wider grouping of African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries is relevant to the discussion of the EU’s development action and French territories are also taken into account as they are located in the Pacific region and have aspirations to become more integrated to the Pacific community. This study reveals how the EU is defined and how the EU influences the developing world. It also reveals how the Pacific countries are responding to the EU’s interests and values such as regional integration and trade liberalisation. The discourse formation of EU-Pacific relations articulates and reinforces ideologies of identity and power behind the entirety of EU-Pacific relations. The nature of EU identity and role in relation to an ‘Other’ is thus explored in this thesis.

This thesis aims to undertake an evaluation of the potential for renewable energy to be used as a mechanism for the development of the Pacific region. Further to this, it examines whether NZ and the EU are well placed to contribute to any renewable energy transition in these countries by analysing their internal energy policy documents, policy ties to the Pacific region and previous actions in the renewable energy arena. The Tonga Energy Road Map, a progressive plan for renewable energy implementation, is then investigated in depth to determine its effectiveness thus far and its potential as a model for other Pacific island nations.

Global food production, supply chains, and food quality are coming under increasing scrutiny by consumers, environmentalists and governments. Particularly in developed countries, there is growing awareness among consumers about food origins and environmental practices. There are increasing concerns over animal welfare and protection and due to food scares in the late 1990’s, and more recently contamination issues from additives within supply chains and food borne illness outbreaks in Europe. It is no surprise then that food safety and traceability matters have become an issue of public and governmental concern. There is much debate currently about globalisation of the international trade of food commodities. There is also a growing awareness about and changing attitudes towards the provenance of consumers’ food sources. This dichotomy provides the background argument to this thesis. Europe has long been considered the home of finely crafted cheeses and this thesis aims to examine how the use of Geographical Indications (GI’s) by the European Union (EU) can influence New Zealand made speciality cheeses. The EU system of GI’s and the protection of specialised food and agricultural products has enabled companies to build strong reputations in the global marketplace and also within the internal market in order to charge premium prices for these protected products. The vast majority of the world’s GI foods are located in Europe. This thesis aims to argue that while there is not an official system for the control of labels of origin for the names of speciality cheeses in New Zealand, they are used nonetheless. These labels of location are used to denote certain qualities, production methods or guarantee and differ from standardised, commoditised cheeses. This thesis discusses the use of GI’s in the cheese industry as a way for New Zealand cheese producers to create product differentiation and as a means of communicating product quality through provenance branding. This thesis uses qualitative research methods to gauge industry opinion regarding the nature of the speciality cheese industry in New Zealand in order to better understand the reasons for naming speciality cheese products and how European cheeses have influenced them. Findings indicate that naming and influences for these products are varied and complex, but have been ultimately influenced by European cheeses. For New Zealand cheese companies GI’s are used as a means to differentiate products from competitors.

The Dublin Regulation determines the Member State responsible for accepting and making a decision on asylum claims lodged in the European Union (‘EU’), Norway and Iceland. It aims to ensure that each asylum claim is examined by one and only one Member State, to put an end to the practice of ‘asylum shopping’ and to prevent repeated applications, both of which have been costly for the receiving Member States and caused severe inefficiencies in the determination processes in the EU in the past. With the first Member State of entry being the major determinant for the allocation of asylum responsibility under the Dublin Regulation, there has been growing discontent among Member States at the external borders of the EU, particularly the southern Member States in the Mediterranean, over what they see as a system that has unjustly placed disproportionate burdens on them regarding the admission of seaborne asylum seekers and the costs associated with it. As a result of changes in migration rules and consequent adjustments in the entry strategy employed by irregular migrants and people smugglers, the Member States at the EU’s ‘southern frontline’ have unwillingly played the role of reluctant hosts to boatloads of unwelcome asylum seekers. This thesis aims to examine how the EU has attempted to tackle the challenging situation of the unauthorised migration of asylum seekers into its territory by sea, and in particular, how it has responded to demands from affected Member States for a more equitable system of asylum responsibility allocation in spite of and outside the Dublin framework. It would argue that the ‘small’ EU Member States in the Mediterranean themselves have, over the last five years at least, become the unexpected drivers of the EU’s declared commitment to the principles of ‘solidarity’, ‘fair sharing of responsibility’ and ‘effective multilateralism’. ‘ Small’ as they may be in terms of resources, size or influence vis-à-vis the larger Member States, the former have been able to create their own mark in a global regime that has traditionally been resistant to the idea of burden-sharing. The measures taken by the EU’s ‘southern frontline’ have collectively changed the landscape of a global protection regime where not only is asylum ‘burden sharing’ highly elusive – its terms and conditions are also dictated by the more powerful sovereign states. While the theoretical point of departure in this study is the influence wielded by the ‘small’ EU Member States in the burden-sharing debate, the degree or level of ‘influence’ small Mediterranean Member States can exercise in pushing for cooperative arrangements is itself determined by a system that is biased towards large states, increasingly securitised, and is therefore limited in both nature and scope. Nevertheless, the experience of ‘burden-sharing’ in the EU between 2005 and 2010 demonstrates that the Member States at the periphery have proactively taken the responsibility for the operationalisation of the founding values and principles of the EU, and through active norm advocacy and related strategies, have been able to achieve what has eluded the global protection regime so far – a refugee burden sharing scheme.

This thesis assesses institutional-learning by the European Union (EU) in Afghanistan. The assessment is carried out by delineating the developments and changes in relevant EU policies through the years 1993-2010 using process tracing. The analysis is based on an extensive review of EU documents, regulations, statements, publications and interviews together with third party evaluations and a survey of the relevant academic literature. The research question which the thesis addresses is to assess whether a policy change in EU state-building efforts is discernible and whether this change can be attributed to institutional-learning or to other causes. It also provides evidence that the state-building efforts by the EU form part of an institutional process of development by the EU to establish itself as a global actor. The assessment therefore focusses around four components: the EU, institutional-learning, state-building and Afghanistan. The aim of the thesis is to analyse the nexus between the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and EU-led state-building in fragile and/or post-conflict countries outside of the Union's enlargement sphere while taking into account the change in actorness on the part of the EU. This analysis is grounded on two interlocking frameworks. By using data and developments in the Afghanistan country study, elements of the state-building Framework are scrutinised for evidence of the different categories of institutional-learning and adaptation derived from the institutional-learning Framework. By pinpointing the learning processes within the EU as an organisation and in its state-building policies, and by analysing the limitations of its approach to these, the thesis concludes with a recommendation of how to make EU-led post-conflict state-building in forthcoming cases of fragile states more effective.

This dissertation explores the European Union’s (EU) European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) as a technology of insecurity governance in order to better understand insecurity management practices of the EU bureaucracies and policy elites. The central argument of the project is that security communities are insecurity communities. Rather than trying to maintain a state of non-war, insecurity communities establish and further develop a constant productive field of insecurity management that aims to identify and govern threats and unease. The projects core contributions rest with the security community theory and the literature on the EU’s external governance literatures. Empirically, the dissertation focuses on the human mobility and transportation insecurity management practices of the EU in relation to the uses of e-Passports and intermodal containers.

In this work trough the analysis of development and conception of the sovereignty it is brought to life, that sovereignty belongs to the stretched nation. It is visible, that such provision is provided in all Constitutions of the EU Member States while circumscription is thinkable only of competencies of the States. All Union Members realize sovereignty in similar manner: as supreme authority in determinate territory. It is certainly, that such definition wasn’t established at one dash. At first it was formulated by J. Bodin and all latter thinkers just sophisticated it. According to the EU Member States Constitutions it is shown, that “aged” and “new” Community Countries are lean to delegate, transfer or concede their sovereign powers for the EU only considering the profit for the country. Almost all ���new” Members are also declined to render their prerogatives if appropriate changes in constitutions is not to be done. Exception is Lithuania and Estonia, where were enacted just Constitutional Acts. Comparing the EU and USA sovereignty conceptions we can see that USA is the only state in the world, which can exercise their external sovereignty almost without any restrictions whereas the EU is seeking to consolidate de iure conception of sovereignty, where all states are of equal value. Analyzing the Constitutional Treaty of the EU we can see, that community isn’t granted with sovereignty. That are states, which determines competence of Union and at any time it could be... [to full text]

During the 1980s and 1990s, the world witnessed a radical change in which globalization diminished the power of the nation-state and shifted that impetus to a certain number of “Global Cities.” London, New York and Tokyo appeared to be the first of these cities and they acted as the heart of the new commercial and financial geography. In order to further strengthen their status, these cities organized transnational cultural events such as fairs, festivals and biennials.  Those events have been assumed as a driving force behind other political, economic and financial activities in the era of globalization. Since the 1980s, Istanbul has emerged as a candidate for a new global city at the eastern frontier of Europe. Thus, with the encouragement of the government, the private sector has begun to organize several large-scale cultural events in order to reshape the city as a global city and re-present the nation with a more European outlook. This is in keeping with the desire to facilitate Turkey’s EU accession process and attract global commercial activities. The Istanbul Biennial is one of the most important of these cultural initiatives. Thus, this research will scrutinize the Istanbul Biennial within this framework. The main premise will be: “The organization of the Istanbul Biennial aims to attract global financial activities, enable the political aspirations of the city and therefore transform the city into a global one.”