My PhD thesis concerns trade union responses to austerity in Belgium, Greece and Ireland (2008-2016). It explores the power resources trade unions in Europe have drawn on during these crisis years, and seeks to establish if unions are cultivating new sources of power and influence, as traditional sources wane. My research points to unions being under sustained pressure, but it also presents evidence of effective union revitalisation, including through the formation of new coalitions with civil society actors, through the use of innovative legal approaches to problem-solving, and with unions reaching out to new, often atypically-employed, groups of workers. Notably however, the national level remains the primary concern for unions, and the European Union (EU) level of action remains adjunct to what unions do.

Diese im Sommersemester 2006 eingereichte Diplomarbeit im Studiengang Verwaltungswissenschaft setzt sich mit der Frage auseinander, welche Rolle die Sozialpolitik im europäischen Integrationsprozess zwischen 1955 und 1992 spielte. Es wird analysiert, welche einzelnen Bereiche dieses Politikfeldes in welchem Umfang in den Kompetenzbereich der Europäischen Gemeinschaft übergingen und welche Gründe für diese Entwicklung zu nennen sind. Ein besonderes Augenmerk wird dabei auf das Verhältnis der Sozialpolitik zur Wirtschaftspolitik gelegt.<br><br> Die Europäische Kommission, einzelne Nationalstaaten sowie die organisierten Arbeitgeber- und Arbeitnehmerinteressen stehen dabei im Mittelpunkt des Interesses. Die Arbeit ist chronologisch aufgebaut und in drei Phasen eingeteilt. Phase eins umfasst den Gründungsprozess der Europäischen Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft bis zum Ende der 1960er Jahre. Phase zwei beinhaltet den Europäischen Sozialgipfel 1972 und endet mit der Einheitlichen Europäischen Akte. Phase drei schließlich untersucht die Diskussion um das Binnenmarktprojekt und den Vertrag von Maastricht aus einer sozialpolitischen Perspektive. / This diploma thesis, which was handed in in the summer term 2006, deals with the role of social policy in the European integration process between 1955 and 1992. The author analyses the scope of social matters transferred from the national level to the European level and the rationale for the behaviour of the actors involved. Special attention is paid to the relation between social policy and economics.<br><br> Furthermore the thesis focuses on the behaviour of the European Commission, single nation states and the organised interest groups from employers and employees. The diploma thesis is chronologically structured and subdivided into three parts. Part one encompasses the founding period of the European Economic Community until the end of the 1960s. Part two comprises the European social summit in 1972 and ends with the Single European Act. Part three finally examines the dispute on the single European market and the Treaty of Maastricht under a socio-political perspective.

Welche Vorraussetzungen sind nötig, um das europäische Einigungsprojekt auf Dauer zu tragen? Erstens bleibt die Herausbildung einer europäischen kollektiven Identität für die Überlebensfähigkeit der Union unverzichtbar. Zweitens bleibt die EU auf demokratische Institutionen angewiesen. Drittens kommt dem Vertrauen der Europäer eine zentrale Rolle im weiteren europäischen Integrationsprozess zu. / The article deals with the fundamental question: What does a European political system need in order to persist? Three claims are justified. First, the emergence of a shared sense of European community is crucial for the Union’s future character as legitimate and democratic. Second, European institutions should correspond to democratic standards in order to facilitate trust among strangers. Third, trust plays an important role for fostering further integration.

No description available.

Since the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1951, the European Union has emerged from a limited economic confederation to a supranational federal polity. There is, however, little work based in federal theory that seeks to understand the European Union as a federation nor the process by which that was achieved. Federal theory gives us two means of understanding federal government – federalism as techne and as telos. Federalism as techne informs us of the institutions and structures involved in federal governance. Federalism as telos provides the ideas, norms and values of federalism. Thus it is possible to speak of the federal idea (telos) and the institutions that embody it (techne).The process of federalisation of the European Union has seen the separation of these strands. Federal ideas do not necessarily lead to federal governance regimes; federal governance outcomes are not necessarily based on federal ideas. The European Union has adopted, over time, federal governance structures due to pragmatic concerns with institutional efficiency, bargain implementation, defection from agreement, and the equality of member states. The institutions created by the member states have themselves contributed to the federalisation process. Rarely has the federalisation process moved forward due to a belief in the value of federation itself.

In this contribution to the history of theory, the author reconsiders the impact of the Latin American dependency paradigm on Europe. The analysis does not deal with the reception of the Latin American dependency school itself, the focus lies on elements of this school as they were used to explain the European situation in the 1970s and 1980s. For that purpose, it delineates research networks and their analyses of core-periphery relations in Europe. All these networks had a critical attitude towards the old development paradigm. Some called it development "from above" or "to the outside". A new paradigm was to include strategic elements of a "selective spatial closure" and "self-reliance". For many, the European integration process played an important role in their estimates of future developments. Much of this analysis still seems relevant and topical today. The author considers it fruitful to take up the research agenda of the "European dependency school", to re-define it and adapt it to altered contemporary circumstances.

The thesis is dealing with the relations between EFTA and EU from the year 1960 up to present. Its goal is not only to describe them but also identify their key moments and circumstances which led to them and based on that to predict the future development. First chapter is devoted to the history of the relations between EFTA and EU from the year 1960 till mid 1990's. The second chapter focuses on EEA, its essence, tools and objectives. The third chapter then describes the development of the relations between EFTA and EU from mid 1990's up to present.

This master’s thesis offers a descriptive investigation of how public Euroscepticism has changed during the economic crisis. By regarding Eurosceptic opinions as positions on a scale as well as differentiating between opposition towards policy (concrete decisions and measures) and polity (the EU as a political system), the results show that overall, European citizens have not only become negative towards how the EU handled the crisis in terms of policy output. Policy opposition also tends to spill over into the polity area, entailing increasing preferences for reducing EU competences and for leaving the union all together. The policy-polity distinction is a perspective on Euroscepticism as opposition, that has largely been set aside in previous research. Furthermore, the paper describes how support for the EU polity and its policies has changed in different member states through a cross country analysis. The results show that there is great and unexpected variation between countries that would be assumed to display a similar development in the light of previous research. In addition, there are similarities between countries that were expected to develop differently. This indicates a limited understanding in this research field of how national factors influence public attitudes towards the European Union. A topic that needs to be investigated further.

The creation of the European Union and later the European economic and monetary union started as a peace project and later on to make the European countries stronger and unified through economic integration The purpose of this study is to analyse the effect that EU(EZ) membership has on the economic growth of its member states. This is done by using an augmented Solow model including the GDP per capita growth rate which represents the economic growth while the EU(EZ) membership is represented by dummy variables. Other variables in the model have been included as control variables but also that are relevant for economic growth. The existing literature regarding the growth impact of the European integration is divided and is still inconclusive as seen from the different results from different studies and that could be due to the heterogeneity of the member countries, the time period studied but as well due to the methodological difficulties. Some economists have found a positive impact on economic growth, while others have not been able to find any impact at all. Thus, it could be said the growth effect from the EU(EZ) membership is a controversial subject. By using data for the OECD countries, including both EU and non-EU countries, eurozone and non-eurozone members over the time period 1990 to 2018, the results have suggested the following; EU and eurozone memberships have not contributed to economic growth of their members, while EU membership has affected negatively the growth rate of the EU countries compared to the non-EU OECD countries when the financial crisis was controlled for.

The First British Application to the EEC and it's Reflection in the British Press: Contribution to History of Great Britain in 20th Century: Summary In July 1961 applied British government lead by conservative Prime Minister Harold Macmillan for membership in the European Economic Community. The following two years of the Brussels negotiations aroused in British public opinion a growing amount of debates and discussions which dealt not only with the attitudes of the British to Europe and European integration but also with the development of Britain's policies, society and identity. Analysis of this public debates, which peaked at the time of de Gaulle's veto of the British application in January 1963, stands as the main topic in this diploma paper. First two chapters deal with response of the British public to the announcement of the application and examine the resulting debates in context of British internal development and home policies of Conservative, Labor and Liberal Party. The third bloc concentrates on the matter of the British membership in the Common Market with respect to the public perception of the development of the British defense policies and British military relations with France. Further on, the diploma paper focuses also on the main issues of the public debate on the European question in...