This paper applies an intuitive approach based on stock market data to a unique dataset of large concentrations during the period 1990-2002 to assess the effectiveness of European merger control. The basic idea is to relate announcement and decision abnormal returns. Under a set of four maintained assumptions, merger control might be interpreted to be effective if rents accruing due to the increased market power observed around the merger announcement are reversed by the antitrust decision, i.e. if there is a negative relation between announcement and decision abnormal returns. To clearly identify the events' competitive effects, we explicitly control for the market expectation about the outcome of the merger control procedure and run several robustness checks to assess the role of our maintained assumptions. We find that only outright prohibitions completely reverse the rents measured around a merger's announcement. On average, remedies seem to be only partially capable of reverting announcement abnormal returns. Yet they seem to be more effective when applied during the first rather than the second investigation phase and in subsamples where our assumptions are more likely to hold. Moreover, the European Commission appears to learn over time. (authors' abstract)

This thesis aims to analyze the similarities and differences in how identity is constructed by the European Commission, the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament regarding the Polish membership and the potential Turkish membership of the European Union. The construction of identity is analyzed through a social constructivist perspective where identity is constructed by distinguishing ”us” from ”them”. The research metod used is a qualitative text analysis. The arguments of identity are taken from the Commission’s and the Council’s documents, as well as from the debates of the European Parliament. The arguments of identity refer to the official accession criterias of the European Union, as well as to inofficial criterias formulated by the members of the European Parliament. Arguments used are for example that Polish and Turkish standards are not the same as the European standard, that the European norms need to be integrated into the Polish and Turkish constitutions and that Poland and Turkey are too poor to become members of the European Union. The result also shows that the construction of a European identity built on a common culture has had the greatest impact in the European Parliament and the European Commission.

Unlike environmental non-governmental organisations and other knowledge producers, the European Environment Agency (EEA) seems to attract seemingly little academic interests among scholars of international relations. With this in mind, this thesis seeks to discuss how knowledge institutions such as the EEA may be seen as active participants in IR, while simultaneously seeking to extend academic discussion considering the EEA itself. More explicitly, and in order to narrow down its focus, this thesis is driven by a research question: what is the role of the EEA in policymaking and monitoring done by the European Commission? This thesis adopts social constructivism as its theoretical framework while building on data obtained through both a quantitative content analysis and semi-structured interviews. Both of these methods are used to identify as what kind of a knowledge producer the EEA is institutionalised as a part of the policymaking-complex of the Commission. This thesis finds that the EEA is best understood as an autonomous actor in IR which’s role is to legitimise and support environmental policymaking of the Commission rather than function as an active policymaker itself.

Trafficking for sexual exploitation is a phenomenon that greatly affects the individual as well as society. The effect is grim for the victims and their families, as sex trafficking violates their basic human rights, can shatter families, and cause severe psychological trauma. Sex trafficking has also negative effects on societies, it can adversely affect the economy, public health, national security, and gender equality. Policies have been implemented in response to sex trafficking, both in Sweden and in Europe. The thesis aims to show how sex trafficking is framed by the Swedish Government and the European Commission, based on the application of framing theory integrated with Bacchi's WPR-approach. The research method used is a qualitative, descriptive, comparative, small-N case study with a qualitative content analysis of textual data. Through this method, 11 different documents provided by the Swedish Government and the European Commission were analyzed. The result of the analysis shows that the documents from the Swedish Government use a more prominent frame of human rights, while for European Commission the most significant was organized crime. When it comes to Bacchi’s WPR-approach, the underlying assumptions behind these frames can be argued to be influenced by the national versus supra-national level and how many actors are involved, as well as ideological and legislative differences. Silences were complicated to find in the European Commission, while in the Swedish Government, sovereignty was not discussed. There could also be seen a difference in trend over time, where the European Commissionshifted more towards ‘human rights’ as recently as 2020-2021, while the Swedish Government was more constant in their frame of ‘human rights’.

This thesis scrutinises the European Commission’s discourse surrounding the externalisation of migration and asylum policies and discusses what potential implications this may have on the right to asylum. The aim of this work is to increase the understanding of how migration and security are discursively connected and identify what this discourse looks like. The study is placed in the context of a scientific debate on the Securitisation of migration and the externalisation of migration management. By means of a Critical Discourse Analysis, based on the work of Norman Fairclough, speeches and press releases produced by the European Commission are analysed. The analysis departs from the theoretical framework of the Copenhagen School of Security Studies and the concept of Securitisation, which suggests that political narratives have direct effects on policies. The theory also argues that when a phenomenon is securitised, policy measures that would otherwise not be acceptable, become legitimised in dealing with a constructed threat. The thesis presents three findings. The first main finding is that the Commission legitimises the externalisation of EU borders through a humanitarian discourse, arguing that the increased restrictions and shifting of responsibilities to third countries are necessary to protect migrants from human smugglers. Second, the current EU agenda risks limiting mobility in countries outside of the EU, thus creating large camps with substandard living conditions. And finally, from a human rights perspective, there is a great risk with the continued collective expulsions and pushbacks from EU territory, given that the mandate of Frontex is only seen to increase.

Considering the persisting issue of gender inequalities, this thesis aims to examine the European Commission’s role in the development of gender equality policies in member states. Illustrating the Commission’s role by conducting a case study on the development of equality policies in Poland during the years 2004 – 2020. The Commission’s influence was analysed using the three integration mechanisms: positive, negative, and framing integration through the application of the top-down Europeanization approach. The influence was thereafter measured by examining the extent of compliance to and implementing the Polish government's EU policy. The analysis indicated the Commission’s role as the supervisor of the implementation process as an important factor in transposing a number of EU directives on gender equality in Poland. Moreover, the pressure from the Commission in the form of Reasoned Opinions contributed to the advancement of gender equality policy from 2004 through 2015. The institution’s strategies on gender equality also resulted in compliance with EU objectives and necessary institutional changes. Resulting in instances of positive integration. The strategies also resulted in some framing integration, where some of the political and social debate on gender equality policy came to comply with the discourse of the Commission. Yet, the analysis also demonstrated that the transposing varied in level of compliance with the measures stated in the directives. The implementation of the policies also varied greatly. When the Law and Justice party formed a majority government in 2015 there was a significant regression of certain areas of gender equality policy and the former institutional changes of the national equality body. This development in Poland resulted in an infringement procedure and the first instance of negative integration. Demonstrating the Commission’s capability to directly affect national legislation that contradicts EU law. The main conclusion of this thesis is therefore that the Commission has had an important role in the development of gender equality policy in Poland, but the advancements in this policy area vary in levels of compliance and implementation.

No description available.

Cybersecurity is an emerging subject in the public policy field in Sweden and the European Union. Part of public policy is the underlying ideas that create different approaches and instruments in the policy work. This study aim to answer which underlying ideas are present in writs from the Swedish executive government and the European Commission. The method in use is an comparative descriptive idea analysis. The analytical framework consists of three different dimensions that conceptualize threat, accountable actor and policy-instruments regarding cybersecurity. The studie shows that the commission and the Swedish executive government have similar ideas concerning the accountable actor which is public actors. However, concerning threat and policy-instruments the ideas differ. The idea of threats to cybersecurity is individual actors according to the European Commission while the Swedish executive government defines states as the threat. Concerning policy-instruments the European Commission appears to have a more regulative perspective.

One of the more significant regional groupings to have emerged since the collapse of the Soviet Union is the wider Black Sea. Located at the jagged confluence of the Western, Orthodox and Muslim worlds, the region was quite frequently a violent meeting place, and thus instead of a bridge between civilizations, it has been a barrier. Even more compelling is how the presence of oil and gas has thrust the Black Sea into the world's view and contributed to the rush of external interest, and how this has helped develop a unique regional entity. Today, in an interconnected global economy, the region's position as a producer and conduit for fossil fuels makes it impossible to consider in isolation. More importantly, to succinctly define this dissertation's research question, it can be asked how does energy act as a transformational agent in the emergence of a Black Sea region? / Ph. D.

In the global West, electronic devices such as smartphones and tablets have become ubiquitous tools for daily life. They facilitate communication, navigation, and commerce, among other online activities that generate unprecedented amounts of user data. This licentiate thesis examines the perspectives of scholars employing feminist approaches towards understanding and conceptualizing emergent technologies, particularly artificial intelligence, machine learning, and algorithms, which utilize data as a representation of realities and lived experiences. Grounding their perspectives in the feminist tradition of critiquing power structures and hegemonies, scholars offer valuable insights into envisioning technologically supported futurities that transcend mere inclusion and instead prioritize diversity. This text examines how scholars with feminist approaches understand the datafied present and envision futurities. This thesis also explores how potential risks and benefits of datafication, the translation of action into data, are expressed in data feminist texts.  In the first article, Feminist Data Studies and the Emergence of a New Data Feminist Knowledge Domain, a series of searches were conducted in databases and search engines, followed by citation chaining to collect relevant scholarly texts. Data collection was followed by visualization and close reading, while employing sociotechnical imaginaries as a conceptual lens. This approach facilitated an exploration of how scholars with feminist perspectives envision, interpret, and reimagine data-driven technologies. The second article, Utopian and Dystopian Sociotechnical Imaginaries of Big Data in a portion of the corpus, compared framings and perceptions of big data to those identified in the policies of the European Commission.  The summary essay underscores several key findings. Firstly, the nuanced implications of visibility and representation in the context of datafication. Particularly, the tension and the contrasting imperatives, to amplify the visibility of marginalized groups and to safeguard their privacy and mitigate potential harm. Secondly, the centrality of power dynamics and minority group vulnerability in discussions surrounding control over data flows. Finally, corrective approaches and feminist refusal were found to be the ways in which scholars are attempting to contribute to shaping more equitable and inclusive technological futures. These findings contribute to making visible the hegemonies and power imbalances in datafied systems from the perspectives of scholars with feminist approaches as well as to understanding how they are pushing back against them.