Au tournant des années 2000, on observe une augmentation des litiges mettant en jeu un conflit potentiel entre le droit de l'UE et les droits constitutionnels nationaux. Face à cette situation de tensions constitutionnelles, réelles et plus seulement théoriques, la CJUE et les juridictions suprêmes nationales se retrouvent dans une situation d'impasse ontologique au sens où, d'une part, le statu quo est intenable, car le surgissement d'un conflit constitutionnel ouvert mettrait en danger tout l'édifice européen et, d'autre part, toute solution juridique de sortie du statu quo est impensable car hors de ce que permet le paradigme de la hiérarchie des normes. Contrairement aux prédictions de la théorie néofonctionnaliste, notre étude, qui développe une approche constructiviste, montre que les acteurs juridictionnels ne vont pas approfondir l'intégration juridique en reconnaissant la primauté absolue du droit de l'UE, mais vont passer d'un mode de régulation juridique du risque de conflit constitutionnel à un mode de régulation extra-judidique, la gouvernance constitutionnelle des juges, basé sur des mécanismes informels de convergence cognitive et de socialisation. L'identité devient une variable dépendante. Plus que cela, ils instituent un espace de dialogue informel régi par la rationalité communicationnelle, au sens habermassien. La culture du dialogue des juges change également en ce que les acteurs juridictionnels développent une sémantique de l'appartenance commune, ainsi qu'une axiologie de co-responsabilité, et tendent à former une communauté de sécurité juridictionnelle fondée sur la certitude d'une règlement pacifique des différends constitutionnels. / From the 2000s, one can observe an increase of litigations putting at stake a potential conflict between EU law and national constitutional laws. Facing this situation of real – and no longer only theoretical – constitutional tensions, the ECJ and the national high courts find themselves in an ontological stalemate. On one side, status quo is not bearable, because the happening of an open constitutional conflict could endangered the whole EU. On the other side, the paradigm of the hierarchy of norms doesn't allow any legal solution to escape from this status quo. Contrary to neofunctionalist predictions, our study, which develops a constructivist approach, shows that judicial actors don't deepen the legal integration by recognizing an absolute EU law's supremacy, but shift from a legal mode of regulation of constitutional conflict risks to an extra-legal mode, that we call the constitutional governance of judges, based on informal mechanisms of cognitive convergence and socializations. Identity becomes a dependent variable. Moreover, they institute informal spaces for dialogue governed by communicative rationality, according to the Habermassian meaning. The culture of judicial dialogue changes as well: judicial actors develop a semantic of the common belonging and a moral of shared responsibility, and tend to form a judicial security community based on the certainty that constitutional conflict would always be peacefully solved.

The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the causal relationship between the intensive farmers-government interaction in agricultural policy and the perverse and suboptimal outcomes in the view of taxpayers and consumers. This analysis focused on the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the EU. Created with the signature of the Treaty of Rome in 1957 by the six founding countries (Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands and the Federal Republic of Germany), the CAP represented for many years the only common policy fully administered at the European level and the largest item in the EU budget. It is strongly rooted in the European integration project and it represents the cornerstone of EU agriculture. Although a model of policy integration at the supranational level, it has also been the source of much criticism about its cost and its perverse effects. Nevertheless, the latest reform of the CAP, approved in 2013, demonstrates that agricultural policy remains of utmost importance at the EU level. This research is based on two major assumptions: First, it was possible to maintain political support for the Common Agricultural Policy because it fulfilled social and economic purposes that justified its existence. Second, interest group activity is often perceived negatively and there is not much information on its positive role in the policy process. This thesis draws from the literature on European governance in order to analyze the role of interest groups in the policy process and their impact on policy outcomes. / Graduate / 0615 / 0503 / 0335 / elodie_texier@hotmail.com

The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the causal relationship between the intensive farmers-government interaction in agricultural policy and the perverse and suboptimal outcomes in the view of taxpayers and consumers. This analysis focused on the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the EU. Created with the signature of the Treaty of Rome in 1957 by the six founding countries (Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands and the Federal Republic of Germany), the CAP represented for many years the only common policy fully administered at the European level and the largest item in the EU budget. It is strongly rooted in the European integration project and it represents the cornerstone of EU agriculture. Although a model of policy integration at the supranational level, it has also been the source of much criticism about its cost and its perverse effects. Nevertheless, the latest reform of the CAP, approved in 2013, demonstrates that agricultural policy remains of utmost importance at the EU level. This research is based on two major assumptions: First, it was possible to maintain political support for the Common Agricultural Policy because it fulfilled social and economic purposes that justified its existence. Second, interest group activity is often perceived negatively and there is not much information on its positive role in the policy process. This thesis draws from the literature on European governance in order to analyze the role of interest groups in the policy process and their impact on policy outcomes. / Graduate / 0615 / 0503 / 0335 / elodie_texier@hotmail.com

<p>In a time when a host of new and untested democracies seek membership in international organisations founded on liberal norms, the question of how to include new members without jeopardizing community values has become of growing concern, particularly as the regulation of practices in sovereign states often relies on soft moral or political commitment rather than on hard legal obligation. The Council of Europe’s (CoE) monitoring of new members after entry represents a soft method of socialising newcomers. In the case of Ukraine, this process has been unusually difficult, and full of strife and open confrontation. This experience runs contrary to the belief that soft regulation is either harmonic or impossible. The aim of the thesis is to explore how a regulated process of inclusion develops over time, and to discuss how such a process can safeguard community values.</p><p>The study shows that an interactive dynamic developed between the European and the Ukrainian levels. The political struggle in Ukraine was, through the actions of the political opposition in Ukraine and the CoE’s monitors, transformed into a contest in the CoE over how to interpret Ukraine’s membership promises. European values were protected by the evolution of a mode of governance based on responsiveness to local concerns and on public discussion. In the process, the legal and political systems of the CoE and Ukraine were intertwined in ever more complex webs of dialogue. By being grounded in both the Ukrainian and European political discourses, the process was able to sustain a critical discussion on the terms of the agreement and maintain its relevance for the actors involved. The monitoring process displays how community values and autonomy of a member state can be combined in an unexpected way without resulting in a hierarchical order. This may not fulfil the requirements of the international rule of law, but it is clearly a case of soft and responsive transnational regulation of state practices.</p>

In a time when a host of new and untested democracies seek membership in international organisations founded on liberal norms, the question of how to include new members without jeopardizing community values has become of growing concern, particularly as the regulation of practices in sovereign states often relies on soft moral or political commitment rather than on hard legal obligation. The Council of Europe’s (CoE) monitoring of new members after entry represents a soft method of socialising newcomers. In the case of Ukraine, this process has been unusually difficult, and full of strife and open confrontation. This experience runs contrary to the belief that soft regulation is either harmonic or impossible. The aim of the thesis is to explore how a regulated process of inclusion develops over time, and to discuss how such a process can safeguard community values. The study shows that an interactive dynamic developed between the European and the Ukrainian levels. The political struggle in Ukraine was, through the actions of the political opposition in Ukraine and the CoE’s monitors, transformed into a contest in the CoE over how to interpret Ukraine’s membership promises. European values were protected by the evolution of a mode of governance based on responsiveness to local concerns and on public discussion. In the process, the legal and political systems of the CoE and Ukraine were intertwined in ever more complex webs of dialogue. By being grounded in both the Ukrainian and European political discourses, the process was able to sustain a critical discussion on the terms of the agreement and maintain its relevance for the actors involved. The monitoring process displays how community values and autonomy of a member state can be combined in an unexpected way without resulting in a hierarchical order. This may not fulfil the requirements of the international rule of law, but it is clearly a case of soft and responsive transnational regulation of state practices.

La pedagogia dell’ambiente può offrire nuove prospettive interpretative rispetto a talune rilevanti questioni ambientali. Delineando contributi progettuali sostenibili per formare ad una cittadinanza responsabile in una civiltà planetaria, essa dischiude la possibilità di elaborare una cultura della sostenibilità educativa. Significare un nuovo modello di sviluppo, secondo un pensiero pedagogico orientato alla centralità della persona in stretta congiunzione con la dottrina sociale della Chiesa, caratterizza il quadro teorico della tesi. E’ in questa cornice che si inserisce la presente ricerca, la quale, in una prospettiva pedagogica, compie un’esplorazione orientata ad approfondire il rapporto tra pedagogia e politica dell’ambiente nello scenario dell’Unione Europea. L’elaborato mira a proporre un’articolata disamina critica delle attuali politiche ambientali europee in merito a ricerca e innovazione dell’istruzione e formazione. L’interpretazione pedagogica di emblematici documenti dell’Unione Europea circa l’educazione allo sviluppo sostenibile evidenzia elementi imprescindibili per delineare una progettazione educativa sostenibile finalizzata a generare un cambiamento culturale nel segno della sostenibilità e per elaborare possibili linee di orientamento rivolte a policy makers. / Environmental pedagogy can offer new interpretational perspectives with respect to certain significant environmental issues. By outlining sustainable projects aimed at forming a responsible population in a planetary civilization, environmental pedagogy discloses the possibility to develop a culture of educational sustainability. Representing a new development model, according to a pedagogical thought oriented towards the central nature of the person, in close conjunction with the social doctrine of the Church, characterizes the theoretical picture of the thesis. It is this frame that encloses the present research, which, from a pedagogical perspective, carries out an investigation aimed at deepening the relationship between pedagogy and environmental policy in the scenario of the European Union. The paper intends to propose a well-structured and critical examination of the current European environmental policies on the subject of research and innovation in education and training. The pedagogical interpretation of emblematic documents issued by the European Union concerning education for sustainable development shows elements which are crucial for the purpose of outlining a sustainable educational plan aimed at generating a cultural change in the sign of sustainability and for developing possible guidelines aimed at policymakers.

The present work aspires to provide a comprehensive analysis of the policy developments through which European-level prescriptions regarding the liberalization of national electricity markets have been accommodated within the domestic policy contexts of two new member states of the European Union: Bulgaria and Czech Republic. Despite being subjected to uniform demands, adaptation to community regulatory provisions in the two countries has prompted divergent patterns of policy change, resulting in full compliance in the Czech Republic and a failure to meet EU objectives in Bulgaria. In order to address the observed inconsistency the envisaged research identifies a causal link between the outcomes of regulatory compliance and the influence of utility regulation as a sector-specific EU governance pattern on the dynamics of resource re-distribution at the domestic level. A major concern of the research is how contextual factors, such as incumbent power balances across actor populations in the target policy area condition the impacts of EU inputs on domestic policy decisions. In this respect the work hypothesizes that due to transition "sediments" in the new EU member states external rules may be selectively applied in order to match the existing realities and lead to outcomes that diverge from the...

The European policy focus on smart grids implies their development as an indispensable part of the future power system. However, the definition of a smart grid is broad and vague, and the actual implementation of a smart grid can differ significantly, depending on the stakeholders involved.This work aims to inform policy makers, the electricity industry and researchers about stakeholder interests and the technical complexities involved by presenting smart grids via a techno-institutional framework. This framework takes account of the technical nature of the electricity transport and supply service as well as the institutional nature of electricity markets, stakeholder perspectives and sector regulation. In addition, this work presents potential revenues resulting from flexibility management in smart grids and proposes a way forward for smart grids and flexibility management in Europe. / <p>QC 20170925</p>

This short paper considers all possible stakeholders in different stages of a sustainability transition and matches their behavioral features and diversity to policies. This will involve an assessment of potential or expected responses of stakeholders to a range of policy instruments. Following the Multi-Level Perspective framework to conceptualize sustainability transitions, we classify the various transition policies at niche, regime and landscape levels. Next, we offer a complementary classification of policies based on a distinction between social preferences and bounded rationality. The paper identifies many barriers to making a sustainability transition and how to respond to them. In addition, lessons are drawn from the case of Denmark. The detailed framework and associated literature for the analysis was discussed in Milestone 31 of the WWWforEurope project (Gazheli et al., 2012). / Series: WWWforEurope