La Communauté européenne est tombée dans une situation critique. Cette situation s’explique par le fait que les États membres n’harmonisent pas leur système budgétaire, dont le rôle est de satisfaire à l’intérêt commun. Toutefois, les tentatives ne manquent pas. Dès la mise en œuvre du Traité de Rome en janvier 1958, les administrateurs fiscaux de la Commission s’efforcent d’harmoniser les systèmes de taxes sur le chiffre d’affaires entre les États membres afin de créer un véritable espace de libre-échange. La taxe commune sur la valeur ajoutée est ainsi créée en avril 1967, les États membres devant l’adopter au plus tard le 1er janvier 1970. L’application de cet impôt fait alors avancer l’intégration européenne. Le parcours menant à l’élaboration des directives permettant la création de la TVA commune n’est pas simple car les points de vue de la Commission de la Communauté européenne et des États membres autours de la question sur la souveraineté fiscale différent. La Commission veut créer un Marché Commun sans frontière tandis que les États membres, notamment la France, souhaitent mettre en place la neutralité fiscale ainsi qu’un impôt qui sert l’économie, sans pourtant supprimer les frontières. La nouvelle fiscalité, sans proposer une véritable taxe européenne appartenant au budget de la Communauté, a toutefois permis de construire une Europe compétitive. / The European Community has entered a crisis. The cause of this crisis is the fact that the Member States do not harmonise their budgetary systems which would serve the common interest. However, it doesn't mean that there were no past attempts that were made. Since the implementation of the Treaty of Rome in January 1958, the European Commission's tax administrators have tried to harmonise turnover tax systems between Member States in order to create a genuine free trade zone. The common value-added tax was created in April 1967, with the Member States having to implement it by I January 1970 at the latest. The application of this tax would thus advance European integration. The path of formulating directives for the creation of a common VAT is not straightforward. The reason is that the views of the European Commission and those of the Member States are different regarding fiscal sovereignty. The European Commission wants to create a Common Market without borders, while the Member States, notably France, want to implement tax neutrality and also a tax that serves the economy, but without eliminating borders. The new common tax system would enable building a competitive Europe.

The master's thesis focuses on the role of the European Commission in the adoption of the Public Service Law (zákon č. 234/2014 Sb., o státní službě) in the Czech Republic. Its goal is to identify particular European Commission's tools of influence and their utilisation in the analysed case. The case study puts stress not only on hard methods (such as ex ante conditionality), but also on soft forms of influence (e.g. socialisation or persuasion). The Commission's tools were sorted according to Frank Schimmelfennig and Ulrich Sedelmeier's typology: 1) External-Incentive-Model; 2) Social-Learning- Model and 3) Lesson-Drawing-Model. The thesis combines two methodological approaches - process tracing and discursive analysis of relevant Czech actors. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews and publically accessible documents.

Hlavným cieľom diplomovej práce je kriticky analyzovať politiku Európskej Únie a jej dopad na činnosť nadnárodnej spoločnosti E.ON. Keďže politika Európskej Únie má za cieľ zefektívniť spôsob podnikania vykonávaného v rámci Európskej Únie a okrem iného má predstavovať garanciu zodpovednosti jak spotrebiteľov, tak dodávateľov operujúcich na trhu, tak zámer práce bol definovaný na analýzu politického vplyvu rozhodnutí Európskej Únie a ich dopad na následné strategické rozhodnutia firmy. Analytická čas práce je preto zameraná na analýzu Európskej energetickej politiky s kladením dôrazu na profil spoločnosti E.ON, Európsku energetickú stratégiu, obnoviteľné zdroje, jadrovú energetiku, bezpečnosť energetickej dodávky a na Európsky systém obchodovania s emisiami.

The aim of the master thesis "The role of the European Council in the pre-legislative phase of the European legislative process" is to analyse position and influence of the European Council before proposing an official legislative proposal by the European Commission in the EU's legislative process. This pre-legislative phase of a designing of a European legislation is important, though informal. The aim of this master thesis it to find out how strong is the European Council in an agenda setting when it comes to a European legislation and to what extent the Commission is inspired or follows the European Council's conclusions when proposing a legislation. According to many authors who this thesis referring to and their research that this thesis follows, an importance and influence of the European Council has been growing a lot, recently. In their view, it has been happening primarily during serious political or economic crisis. The Commission's position as the only official proposer of a European legislation weakens in that moments while influence of the EU summits grows. The question is if it is true and how much we can really argue that during European crisis the EU's executive power is so weakened that it does not - without ex ante "permission" and ex ante "consultation" with the summits - allow...

The translation of metaphors has been analyzed and discussed for several decades, but there are not many multilingual studies that examine how metaphors are translated. The present study takes a cognitive approach to metaphor and investigates how translators at the European Commission handle metaphorical expressions and the underlying conceptual metaphors in political discourse. The source text is the English language version of the policy document A European Agenda on Migration, and the Swedish and Spanish language versions of it are included as target texts. The study identifies the conceptual metaphors that conceptualize migration and other topics that are closely related to the European migrant and refugee crisis of 2015 and the translation procedures that are used. A total of six translation procedures were found in the target texts, and the most used procedure in the Spanish target text was to retain both the conceptual metaphor and the metaphorical expression, whereas the most used procedure in the Swedish target text was to replace the metaphorical expression with a completely different one and thereby using a different conceptual metaphor. The parallel analysis of all three language versions also revealed that non-metaphorical expressions in the source text were occasionally replaced with metaphorical expressions in the target texts, which proves that adding a conceptual metaphor is one of many translation procedures. The most frequently used source domains in the source text, i.e. water, enemy and applied force, were transferred to both target texts. Some source domains were eventually lost, but a couple of new ones, such as disease and weight, were added instead.

Integration är ett omtalat fenomen över hela Europa i och med den ökande globaliseringen som bidrar till att människor av flera olika skäl rör sig över landsgränser i större utsträckning än någonsin. Ett gemensamt krafttag krävs för att invandrare ska integreras och inkluderas fullt ut i sina värdsamhällen, vilket gynnar både invandraren i fråga och samhället i stort. I föreliggande studie analyseras Europeiska kommissionens handlingsplaner för integration med avsikt att skapa en djupare förståelse för vad kommissionen ser som de främsta verktygen för att uppnå framgångsrik integration för invandrare. EU-kommissionen har publicerat två handlingsplaner, en från 2016, strax efter flyktingkrisen, och sedan ett uppföljande plan år 2020. Syftet med studien är att identifiera vilka verktyg för integration som bör prioriteras enligt EU-kommissionen, hur detta förändrats över tid samt hur det skiljer sig alternativt överensstämmer med Diaz integrationsmodell som utgör studiens teoretiska ramverk. Diaz integrationsmodell förklarar integrationsprocessen utifrån sju dimensioner som appliceras på texterna i enlighet med textanalys med inriktning på kvalitativ innehållsanalys. Studiens resultat visar att kommissionen företrädesvis prioriterar åtgärder kopplade till den ekonomiska dimensionen vilket syftar till arbetsmarknadsåtgärder och ekonomisk självständighet. Europeiska kommissionen har i den senare handlingsplanen ett betydligt större fokus på att själva utföra åtgärder inom kommunikativ integration vilket innebär språkkunskap och tillgång till information. Utifrån detta dras slutsatsen att handlingsplanerna förändras i takt med att behovsbilden ändrats några år efter flyktingkrisen då många invandrare anlände till Europa. Vidare tycks kommissionen prioritera sådana åtgärder som gynnar samhället i stort, främst kopplade till ekonomisk välgång, medan exempelvis politisk integration är lågprioriterat trots handlingsplanernas tydliga koppling till politiska aktörer. / Integration is a well-known phenomenon all over Europe as a result of the increasing globalization that contributes to people moving across boarders more than ever. A joint effort is necessary for immigrants to integrate into their host societies which benefits not only the immigrant but the society overall. This thesis analyses the European Commission’s Action Plan on Integration in order to create a profound understanding of the main tools for integration of immigrants according to the Commission. The Commission has published two action plans, one from 2016, shortly after the refugee crisis, and one from 2020. The aim of the thesis is to identify which tools for integration are prioritized, how this changes over time and how it relates to Diaz integration model which is the theory that is used in the thesis. Diaz integration model explains the integration process in seven dimensions. The dimensions are used as a tool to interpret the texts in accordance with a qualitative content analysis. The results suggest that the Commission mainly prioritizes efforts related to the economic dimension, meaning workforce measures and economic self-sufficiency. The European Commission increases their focus on communicative integration in the latter action plan and intends to implement more measures to ensure improved language skills and better access to information. This leads to the conclusion that the action plans changes as the needs and requirements for integration tools changes a few years after the refugee crisis when many immigrants arrived to Europe. The commission seems to prioritize measures that favor the entire society, mainly referring to economic welfare, while for example political integration is low priority despite the  plans association with political actors.

This Master's thesis analysed integration process of national energy markets through non- legislative and legislative EU documents. The aim was to study integration of national energy markets and aspects that had influence on the integration process through interpretative content analysis. Additionally, the definition of internal energy market was augmented. The internal energy market requires not only competitiveness, market-based approach, customer orientation and flexibility, but it is also necessary to ensure security of supplies, diversification of suppliers, sustainability, and transparency. Four aspects were analysed. It was partially proven, that several initiatives and proposals made by the European Commission were implemented by the member states in binding EU legislation (energy packages) in the period from 2000 to 2019. The initiatives presented by the European Commission were far more ambitious. However, as it was pointed out several times in Commission's publications that progress was rather slow in transposition of EU legislation into national laws by the member states which significantly prolonged integration process. Main problems were deregulation of gas prices for end users, ownership unbundling and independence of national regulatory authorities. Next, geopolitics within the EU...

This thesis is embedded in the theoretical approach of multilevel governance and presumption of the rational behaviour of actors. Using the method of process tracing it aims to uncover the legislative process in the European Union. It is a single case study and as a case was chosen the negotiation of the regulation of the citizens' initiative. Various actors were involved in the negotiations, this thesis focuses on the main one - European Commission, European Parliament, the Council, interest organisations and national parliaments. The thesis presumed, that all actors will try to push through their interests based on their rational choice. This presumption was verified, although the success rate of the players varied a lot. As the most successful should be considered the European Parliament, who defended the interests of the individuals and the Council, which apparently represented the interests of the governments of the member states (especially in the issues of lowering the bureaucratic burden). The interest organisations showed their positions clearly, however the Commission did not take their positions much into account while preparing the draft regulation. The position of the national parliaments was different then presumed. Although the thesis expected them to be directly involved in the...

The goal of this thesis is to explain the current dynamical development of the energy policy of the EU with the focus on the gas sector. Furthermore, this work examines what role in that process plays the European Commission. Lastly, it seeks to ascertain whether the EU's energy policy has a real impact on the development of the gas markets of Bulgaria, Czech Republic and Lithuania. The first two questions are answered with the aid of John W. Kingdon's Multiple stream theory. The conclusion has it that the key role in the creation of the EU's energy policy was taken up by the European Commission, which can be described as the Kingdon's policy entrepreneur. As a true entrepreneur the Commission attempted to build the way for the creation of the single EU gas market, which would be based on sufficient cross-border infrastructure and diversified gas imports. Such a conclusion is supported by the Commission's activities leading to the adoption of important energy legislation, as the third energy package, and essential funds as were European Energy Programme for Recovery and the Connecting Europe Facility. Latter, this work looks into the third research question. On the case studies of Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Lithuania it proves, that the outputs of the entrepreneur activities of the Commission...

European Union faced several external challenges in the beginning of the 21st century. Its enlargement to 24 member states led to a state of dissimilar and not well interconnected economies in need of a new model of external competitiveness. Finding the model and, more importantly, delivering it on community level, was a new task of the European Commission, especially after re-launch of the Lisbon strategy in 2005. Yet, there was another challenge for EU that was not so easy to address by the Commission: the relative weakening of EU's external economic action comparing to new increasingly assertive policies of other international players, especially BRICs. Was it possible for the Commission focus only on supporting EU competitiveness without any external action, as was expected by articles of the Treaty of Nice? As the thesis argues, indeed there was an external action of the Commission before the Lisbon treaty, through its public support of SME internationalization within the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP). A neoinstitutional analysis of the issues on two levels is carried out: Firstly on the level of European institutions (motives, relevant contexts and institutional rules), secondly, on the level of secondary actors (SMEs, NGOs, CIP executive agency EACI), where the...