The thesis aims to estimate the future migration flows from Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova to the EU. Based on the experience of previous EU enlargements and econometric modelling using the method of Ordinary Least Squares with Fixed Effects, multiple forecasts are created. The forecasts capture the likely development of migration flows in the event of collapse of labour market restrictions as well as the case of no labour market liberalization. The results show that migration flows are expected to be moderate, posing no threats to the stability of the labour markets of EU member states. The increase of migration due to the accession to the EU is likely to be short-term, without substantial impacts in the long-run. Ukraine has the biggest migration potential and is likely to supply the highest amount of labour migration.

The thesis aims at identifying the reasons behind the heterogeneous inflation performance of countries across Central and Eastern Europe. The impact of a large number of variables is being assessed in a dynamic panel data model covering 20 countries over the period 2003-2013. The empirical results suggest that cross-country differences in inflation are attributed to the structure of the economy, to the capital deepening effects and openness. Along with the structural factors, cyclical positions also prove to be of particular importance in explaining inflation across the region, since during the last decade most of the Central and Eastern European countries have experienced fast GDP growth, a credit boom and increased domestic demand that in turn fueled inflation.

This work analyzes the contagion effects between energy and CEE financial markets during the two crisis periods (global financial crisis 2008-2009 and energy market crisis 2014), using a sample of daily data from 2004 till 2015. We detect contagion by observing the degree and structure of two dummy variables for specified crisis periods included into the quantile regression models on the basis of a dependence measure called "coexceedances". Our results show that there are significant contagion effects present between the gasoil and CEE stock markets during the 2008-2009 period and mixed evidence of contagion between crude oil market and CEE stock markets. CEE stock markets do not appear to exhibit significant contagion effects with energy markets during the recent energy market crisis. These results substantially differ from those found in the developed European markets. In particular, our results indicate that energy markets and stock markets in developed Europe seem to display significant contagion effects during the 2014-2015 period. Keywords: Central and Eastern Europe, contagion, energy market, quantile regression

Als "Mitteilungen" dokumentieren die einzelnen Hefte die Zusammenarbeit von Musikwissenschaftlern aus den betroffenen Gebieten seit 1997.

Als "Mitteilungen" dokumentieren die einzelnen Hefte die Zusammenarbeit von Musikwissenschaftlern aus den betroffenen Gebieten seit 1997.

Als "Mitteilungen" dokumentieren die einzelnen Hefte die Zusammenarbeit von Musikwissenschaftlern aus den betroffenen Gebieten seit 1997.

Die Konferenz mit dem Thema "Die Oper als Institution in Mittel- und Osteuropa" fand vom 29. bis 31. Mai 1997 in Chemnitz statt. Sie wird in diesem Heft der "Mitteilungen" dokumentiert, war allerdings so umfangreich, daß einige Beiträge in die Hefte 2 und 4 verschoben werden mußten.

L'effondrement du communisme et la chute du mur de Berlin ont remis au centre des consciences européennes les anciens pays d'Europe de l'Est. Ce travail de recherche géocritique se veut d'étudier le regard porté sur cette partie du continent européen à partir de quelques écrivains-voyageurs qui, comme Rory MacLean avec Stalin's Nose (1992), Jason Goodwin avec On Foot to the Golden Horn (1993), François Maspero avec Balkans-Transit (1997), Wolfgang Büscher avec Berlin-Moskau. Eine Reise zu Fuß (2004), Andrzej Stasiuk avec Sur la route de Babadag (2004), Marco Belpoliti avec La prova (2007) et Paolo Rumiz avec Trans Europa Express (2012) ont traversé d'une manière ou d'une autre cette partie du continent après la chute du mur de Berlin. Autrefois espace strictement associé aux images de guerre froide et au communisme, il apparaît aujourd'hui comme un espace flou, ambigu, voire indéterminé : un espace partagé entre post-communisme et ultra-libéralisme, entre post-moderne et pré-moderne, entre connu et inconnu : des éléments qui font de l’Europe de l'Est un espace exotique de frontières. / The end of communism and the fall of the Berlin wall have drawn attention to the ancient countries of Eastern Europe. This geo-critical research aims at studying and understanding perceptions of this part of European continent from few travelling writers. These ones, as Rory MacLean with Stalin’s Nose (1992), Jason Goodwin with On Foot to the Golden Horn (1993), François Maspero with Balkans-Transit (1997), Wolfgang Büscher with Berlin-Moskau. Eine Reise zu Fuß (2004), Andrzej Stasiuk with Sur la route de Babadag (2004), Marco Belpoliti with La prova (2007) and Paolo Rumiz with Trans Europa Express (2012) did, have crossed this part of Europe, in one way or another, after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In a traditional view, this space was used to be associated with the cold war and communism. Today, it seems to be vague, unclear, ambiguous and uncertain; a space shared between post-communism and ultra-liberalism, between early and post-modernism, between the known and the unknown. In other words, Eastern Europe has become an exotic borders’ space.

Although civil societies in Central and Eastern Europe are often portrayed as similar, united by a shared communist past, they have developed along increasingly divergent trajectories over the past three decades. This article investigates the current state of civil society in the region and the role the institutional context plays in it. Drawing on historical institutionalism and the process of European integration, we classify the 14 countries under investigation into three distinct groups and analyze data from a survey of more than 350 local civil society experts. We find that, together with domestic governments, international donors and the EU are perceived as the most influential institutional actors for civil society organizations. Their respective influences, however, depend largely on a country's stage in the EU accession process. Overall, the study provides a differentiated mapping of civil society in this region and a better understanding of how the institutional context relates to a Country's civil society.

This thesis examines party-based Euroscepticism across four different national contexts in the period 2011-3 by bringing into focus right-wing populist parties. Understanding Europeanization as a label for the impact of engagement with the EU and its practical and normative influences on statecraft, policy-making, and the wider society, the thesis looks into the Europeanization of narratives of national identity, minority rights issues, immigration and citizenship. It discusses the way in which the impact of engagement with the EU is perceived as well as the nature of the arguments made against the EU’s involvement in associated policy processes. There has been a recent upsurge in Euroscepticism due to a combination of economic and political factors, on both the popular and party level in EU countries, as well as the increased blurring of the boundaries between mainstream and fringe Eurosceptics. Hence, it is important to analyze the precise reasons behind this phenomenon. The discussion focuses on “soft Euroscepticism” – the thesis is generally not interested in pondering the generic arguments against a country’s membership in supranational entities or shedding light on those parties who oppose the underlying values on which the EU project rests. The thesis therefore probes the attitudes of parties that – with the recent and partial exception of the PVV in the Netherlands – tend to emphasize relatively specific issue-areas as sources of concerns. This work is primarily based on qualitative methods - 32 elite interviews with nationalist-populist politicians including key figures such as party leaders (Rolf Schlierer, Gheorghe Funar), European Parliament representatives (Barry Madlener) and members of the National Parliament as well as of the general party councils (Ventsislav Lakov) in addition to detailed analysis of policy documentation and books authored by party representatives – and highlights and deconstructs these parties’ grievances attributable to nationalistically-oriented concerns. It includes a detailed literature review that clarifies the EU’s impacts and country-specific historical and contemporary differences in the four domains affected by “Europeanization” (Chapters 1-3) and then in Chapters 4-6 uses original empirical data to compare the attitudes of the four parties – Ataka, PRM, REP, and PVV – with regard to the issues already introduced. The thesis utilizes theoretical approaches drawn from several disciplines ranging from political science to sociology, though it mostly confines itself to those pertaining to core group or minority/ethno-regionalist nationalist mobilization, ethnic vs. civic nationalisms in Eastern vs. Western Europe, as well as the different role played by EU conditionality in relation to the political landscape on the two sides of the continent. Extrapolating from this body of research, it develops hypotheses and projections regarding the expected disconnect in viewpoints between Eastern and Western parties. The study finds that attitudes towards “Europeanized” issues areas diverge greatly and do not necessarily correlate with the extent to which EU membership as a whole is opposed by the party. In line with previous research findings, the EU’s capacity to create a super-order nationalism that could challenge conventional readings of patriotism is generally not conceptualized as a significant threat. However, the interviews did reveal that pre-existing transcendent identities – like Latin identity in the case of Romania or the Slavic one in Bulgaria - – are perceived as threatened or as being tacitly degraded due to assumed cultural biases within the EU. At the same time, the reduced salience of such identities among the members of the Western populist parties does not make them more sympathetic to Pan-Europeanism. EU effects on immigration are predictably rated as manifestly detrimental by the West European parties, because they distrust the professionalism of EU agencies and networks, dislike the Eastern Europeans’ increasing involvement in making higher-level decisions and perceive the EU as more liberally inclined than the national government in this realm (with the latter two points especially applicable to the PVV). However, it was interesting that the East Europeans also expressed some disquiet due to the EU’s supposed culpability in encouraging emigration of their own citizens and the presumed unwillingness of the EU organs to offer them the necessary financial means for combating immigration into Bulgaria across the Turkish border. However, contrary to theoretical expectations, the study suggests that there are no hard and fast rules when it comes to the populist party’s proclivity to regard the EU as an ally of “minority lobbies”, with the PVV (the most Eurosceptic party) assessing the relevancy of this aspect as minor, while it is gauged to be of fundamental importance by Ataka (less Eurosceptic than the PVV). Among CEE populists, the thesis shows how “privileged minorities” like Hungarians and Turks are viewed with alarm due to supposedly making use of the EU level in order to advance their secessionist ambitions (Hungarians in Romania) or improve their socio-economic prospects at the expense of the majority (Turks in ethnically mixed regions of Bulgaria). In short, the thesis establishes that there is still a strong dividing line between Eastern and Western populist parties in relation to the assessments made with regard to the impact of the EU on European identity, migration issues and majority-minority dynamics.