The Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) of the European Union came into being on 1 March 2007 and represents a new institution for human rights protection in the EU. This thesis undertakes a critical analysis of the FRA from a governmentality perspective. Governmentality refers to a particular critical standpoint, inspired by the work of Michel Foucault, which is concerned with power relations as processes of government. The features of the FRA, its structure and functions, are framed using "governance talk". The particular features which this thesis is interested in analysing are: the multiplicity of actors which make up the network structure of the Agency, their classification as experts, and the collection of information and data as statistics. The thesis demonstrates that these features, conceptualised as governance in institutional discourse, are actually features of governmentality. I therefore suggest that the rights discourse of the FRA is a discourse of governmentality. Moreover, I show how governmentality necessarily involves self-government: the actors and experts in the FRA's rights discourse govern themselves. This has significant implications for rights discourse: it reveals processes of governing (through) rights. On the one hand, we witness processes of the government of rights through experts and statistics. On the other, we are alerted to government in the name of rights. The thesis therefore intervenes within the EU's rights and governance discourses: it exposes the relations of power (as governmentality) that conventional "governance talk" tries to hide. It highlights the elusive novelty of theorising, and of critique, in EU legal scholarship on rights. By presenting a new perspective on the rights discourse of the FRA using governmentality, this thesis seeks to contribute to EU legal scholarship on rights, filling a glaring and significant gap in the literature.

The competitive dialogue procedure is a new public procurement award procedure first introduced by the Directive 2004118 for the tender of particularly complex contracts, when contracting authorities consider that the use of the open or restricted procedures do not allow for the contract to be tendered. It is not intended to be adopted freely as the open or restricted procedures, but contracting authorities may use it only when the need arises and specific grounds for its use are fulfilled. The procedure was introduced with the stated objective of increasing the flexibility of procurement, which had been already identified as a shortcoming of previous existing EU procurement framework. This thesis studies how the competitive dialogue has been implemented in Portugal and Spain. It covers both the legal transposition and aspects of its practice in these countries., through the use of empirical research methods. Through his research, the author has found that the procedure was implemented very differently in Portugal and Spain with consequences on its use. This study has tried to highlight similarities and differences in the transposition, illustrate how the competitive dialogue is being used in Spain and explain why it is being used only sparingly in Portugal.

This thesis provides a comparative analysis of the rules governing the admissibility of improperly obtained evidence in Turkish and English law. The main objective is to consider how the issue in question can most appropriately be solved under the different legal circumstances of both countries and how the positive law of each country may benefit from each other on this particular problem. The first chapter, which is the introduction, deals with a brief account of the object, the reasons, the goal and the method of the study. In order to place the issue in the context of the entire criminal justice systems, general comparison of Turkish and English law is subjected to examination in the second chapter. In Chapter Three, attention is turned to the theoretical issues associated with the problem of admissibility of improperly obtained evidence. Obviously, if the nature and justification of possible solutions to the issue is understood correctly, the treatment of improperly obtained evidence may be better evaluated. It is argued that the most appropriate solution is to adopt a flexible approach, which requires a certain amount of discretion to be given to the judiciary, rather than a rigid one. The legitimacy of the verdict principle is argued to be the most appropriate principle to guide the exercise of the discretion. In Chapter Four, attention is drawn to the fact that, with regard to the admissibility of improperly obtained evidence, Turkey and England have shared similar legislative activities in recent years: the 1992 Amendment to the Code of Criminal Procedure for Turkey and the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 for England. Both legislations include two operative provisions; one is a general provision for any evidence and one a specific provision for confessions. As far as the general provisions are concerned, evidence may be excluded in England if it has an adverse effect upon the fairness of the proceedings whereas in Turkey, where evidence is secured "hukuka aykiri olarak" (unlawfully), it required to be suppressed. The amount of evidence excluded under these provisions may or may not be similar depending on how the Turkish and English judges interpret the key words. Although the exact determination of what circumstances must exist before the fairness of the proceedings is adversely affected or before the lawfulness of a procedure is breached will undoubtedly require decades of jurisprudence, it is submitted that they may be interpreted quite similarly. In Chapter Six, it is argued there is a clear consensus between Turkish and English laws as to the fact that involuntariness is the decisive criterion for the admissibility of improperly obtained confessions. In the Next Chapter, the possibility of whether the same amount of evidence will be excluded by the operation of "unlawfulness" and "unfairness" concepts has been tested in the context of evidence obtained in breach of safeguards designed to protect the suspect. In the final chapter, it is concluded that there are, to a great extent, similarities in the ways the two countries deal with the issue, despite the fact that they do not share the same legal tradition. This finding contributes to deepen the belief in the existence of a unitary sense of criminal justice.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) refers to the voluntary integration of social and environmental concerns into business practice. It is of increasing importance to utilities, with commercial pressure to be socially responsible coming from, inter alia, consumers, investors and employees. One way in which utilities can integrate CSR into their business is in their procurement. However, the potential scope for the inclusion of CSR considerations in procurement regulated by the EU is uncertain, with some policies clearly restricted but the legality of others being less clear. This thesis examines the practical impact of the EU procurement regulation on the use of CSR policies in utilities procurement, focusing specifically on the inclusion of labour concerns. The project aims to discover practitioners’ opinions of the EU law in this area and their experience in applying it, looking at positive and negative aspects of the law. In order to do so, a qualitative study was completed, with semi-structured interviews conducted with a sample of procurement practitioners based in UK utilities. The study covers the level of use of labour policies in procurement, the types of labour policy commonly included and the means by which those policies are integrated into procurement, with emphasis on the impact of the EU regulation on each issue. The thesis concludes that the impact of the EU regulation was relatively low, with most practitioners feeling that the procurement rules did not generally restrict their inclusion of labour policies. Instead, practical concerns governed the choice of labour policy and the means by which those policies were integrated into procurement. The major exception to this was in the area of policies which favoured local labour or firms, where practitioners felt that the EU regulation was very restrictive and prevented them from achieving their commercial aims.

This thesis addresses the legal challenges arising in the context of the ‘fragmentation or unity of public international law’. The question of the so-called fragmentation of public international law mainly refers to the phenomenon of diversification and expansion of public international law. In recent years, the proliferation of international bodies entrusted with the task of monitoring States’ compliance with their international obligations has increased the possibility of conflicting interpretations of similar or identical rules of international law. In this context, it is claimed that international courts with limited ratione materiae and personae jurisdiction fragment international law and threaten its unity. This thesis examines the question of the fragmentation of public international law from the perspective of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). In the view of the present author, the European Court has developed the autonomous interpretative principle of taking cognisance of public international law norms when interpreting the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The ECtHR employs this interpretative principle in a fashion that is distinct from other seminal interpretative principles, namely the so-called comparative interpretation, the dynamic interpretation and the principle of effectiveness. Furthermore, this thesis provides in depth analysis of the ECtHR’s legal reasoning. It reaches conclusions on the type of public international law norms that the ECtHR takes into account and the conditions a norm must satisfy to qualify as ‘relevant’ and ‘applicable in the relations between the parties’. This thesis also provides an overall assessment of the different uses of public international law norms in the ECtHR’s reasoning, when expanding or restricting the scope of the rights and freedoms of the ECHR. It stresses the importance of the ECtHR’s practice of relying upon public international law norms in order to (re-)interpret the ECHR and overrule its previous case-law. Finally, this thesis explores the boundaries that should be set to restrict the impact of other relevant public international law norms on the construction of the ECHR. The study concludes that, in principle, the ECtHR does not threaten the unity of international law, but reads the ECHR harmoniously to public international law. The findings of this thesis also furnish evidence that the ECtHR has competence to pronounce on questions relating to international law and that, on certain occasions, it develops and enriches the scope and content of international law.

The aim of this dissertation is to explore the dynamics of political change in minority language politics and policy in Europe. For this purpose, the study focuses on the Hungarian minorities in Romania and Slovakia, the Russian speakers in Ukraine, and the Carinthian Slovenes in Austria. One major finding is that the political strategies of minority elites that are sensitive to compromise and politically deemphasised solutions predict positive change in the political relations between language groups and in policy. Further, the political behaviour of minority elites is argued to be best explained by ideational as opposed to structural and institutional causes. While the latter certainly have some explanatory power, they nonetheless leave crucial variation in the behaviour of minority elites dependent on ideas which they carry in their heads and upon which they rely in order to analyse the surrounding structural conditions. The empirical analysis of the thesis exploits data from 30,000 press releases collected at Factiva and Lexis-Nexis Academic databases over the course of two years, 112 interviews conducted by the author over the course of one year in all the countries under study (including with 4 state leaders, 14 ministers, and 45 members of parliament), and extensive primary and secondary material in several foreign languages.

Such demographic factors in Europe as low fertility rates, high life expectancy, and the restricted immigration policy have caused European societies to age rapidly and the population of Europe will dramatically decline over the next thirty years. In comparison to Europe, the trend of aging in developing counties, for example in the Middle East and Northern Africa, presents a stark contrast. Taking into account demographic trends like aging, global distribution of the population, and migration, Europe faces increasing geopolitical challenges in the future, based on the cleavages "north versus south," "rich versus poor," and "old versus young." From a domestic point of view of Continental Europe, the demographic factors are responsible not only for a declining workforce but also for increasing retirement rates. The consequences are a decreasing GDP and increasing social welfare costs. So, further development of European armed forces in an uncertain world has to take place in this tense financial situation. Taking the goals of the European Security Strategy into account and considering the necessity that the military capabilities have to be adapted to meet a new threat scenario, this thesis tries to illustrate why Europe has to intensify its efforts of European military integration, mindful of the limitation of demography and politics.

The construction of Southeastern Europe in Western imagination is the result of assertions of imperial power from some of the first recorded histories onward to modern time. Instead of providing alternative narratives gaping differences in time period, literary genres and geographical origins ballast stereotypical racist tropes and derogatory images of the countries of Southeastern Europe. For example, Roman histories, secondary historical works, twentieth century travel literature, and Central Intelligence Agency estimates all exhibit the same perception. The narrative created by these accounts is limited, remarkably racist and counterfactual. While there has been an abundance of new scholarship aimed at debunking the myths surrounding the area, much of the revisionist histories focus on placing blame, proving ethnogenesis, and serving political purposes. Understanding how the sources continue to influence perception is a pivotal step to understanding Southeastern Europe.

The question of whether Nazi law was valid law has been at the background of jurisprudential discourse since the Hart-Fuller debate in the 1950s. The enduring focus of that discourse on the validity question – the conditions of validity for law – and the separability question – the nature of the relationship between law and morality – has consigned the Third Reich to a specific jurisprudential role as a limit case for positivism and natural law. This dissertation elucidates and interrogates that role, using recent empirical and theoretical historical research to challenge its basis and assert the substantive relevance of the Nazi past for present legal theoretical concerns. It argues that the jurisprudential representation of Nazi Germany is flawed. It relies on a hypothetical, superficial, evil straw man version of the Third Reich that bears little resemblance to its actual history. It also treats Nazi law as the paradigmatic, archetypal wicked legal system. This is informed by an underlying narrative of rupture between Nazi Germany, including its legal system, and the contemporary concept of law. The positivism/natural law dichotomy around which the discourse is structured is consequently incapable of adequately explaining and incorporating Nazi law. This dissertation draws on the legal theoretical writing of David Fraser to examine how it might be reimagined to achieve this. The narrative of rupture that informs jurisprudence was constructed at Nuremberg and proliferated into historical understanding, public consciousness and, via the Hart-Fuller debate, jurisprudential discourse. Over recent decades it has been revised within historiography but its successor narratives have not made their way into jurisprudential discourse, which remains largely isolated from the historical discipline. This dissertation shows how the actual, historical case of Nazi law is not – but ought to be – part of the jurisprudential concept of law.

Thesis advisor: Peter Skerry / The post-communist political shift to liberal democracies in Eastern Europe has given new hope to Romani communities scattered across the region. However, plagued by a history entangled with episodes of slavery, persecution, and extermination, many Roma remain wary about this transition, lacking faith that it truly extends beyond a nominal domain. This paper first offers a critical exploration into unpacking Roma culture – specifically their material disadvantage and discrimination – from both an abstract and realist perspective. By properly understanding the relationship between their experience with poverty and desires for cultural autonomy, forming a rational, multi-level plan to intervene becomes more accessible. Ultimately, this leads to a series of policy interventions, particularly in the realm of primary and secondary education. Looking closely at this one area of the Roma experience with non-Roma institutions could provide key insights into their interaction with other overlapping exchanges, help to break down the centuries-old legacy of distrust and antagonism between the two sides, and promote a healthier environment for cooperation. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2016. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Scholar of the College. / Discipline: International Studies.