More than ten years after the largest economic crisis, which stroke the European Union in 2008 and thoroughly tested its readiness and ability to act, Europe was hit by a global pandemic of COVID-19. Because of this crisis, the European Union and its institutions faced a number of challenges, stemming from unprecedented measures imposed to tackle it. In contrast with the economic crisis, it was not only the European industrial and financial sectors but also more segments, essential to the functioning of the European Union itself, which were affected by the recent crisis. The aim of this thesis is to point out the differences of impacts of the two crisis and to find out the role played by the European Commission during the process of dealing with them.

Diplomová práca popisuje malé a stredné podniky, ich rozvoj a podporu poskytovanú európskou politikou a štrukturálnymi fondami. Použitie relevantnej literatúry a prípradových štúdií umožnuje poskytnúť kritický pohľad na danú problematiku. Na konci práce sú navhrnuté odporúčania na zlepšenie a záver.

In this thesis, different types of PVT (photovoltaic-thermal collectors) for three different farms in Europe will be studied, as part of the RES4LIVE project from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Action programme. A suitable renewable energy system will be proposed for each farm, considering the temperature range requirement and the climate conditions in each farm. In addition, three simulation tools that will be used, namely, WINSUN, Collector Energy Performance Tool (CEPT) and Scenocalc, will be evaluated and compared. The PVT systems combine the production of electrical and thermal energy. The combination of these two technologies can result in higher electrical efficiency due to the cooling effect of the fluid in the thermal part. Other technologies that form part of this study include the concentrating photovoltaic (CPV) and concentrated photovoltaic thermal (CPVT) systems. There are two types of flat PVTs, unglazed and glazed. The advantages and disadvantages of each system will be disclosed in the section on literature review. In addition, the operation of the concentrated collectors have been compared with the flat PVT collectors. Three simulation tools are being compared in this project and the most widely used tool is Scenocalc, the free tool supported by the European Commission. In the results section, the inputs for each simulation tool are explained, starting with the weather files that were taken at the same time for all the simulation tools so that the outputs could be compared. These results will be shown numerically for each farm and compared in tables and represented in graphs to decide which one is best for each location. The outcomes have shown that Scenocalc has a very different thermal result compared with the other tools in the case of the flat collectors. On the other hand, WINSUN has resulted to be a suitable simulating tool for a first approach to the production of the different technologies. In the case of CEPT, this program is best fitted for concentrated collectors since it takes into account both the thermal and electrical IAMs, whereas Scenocalc only considers the thermal IAMs.

As a global phenomenon, the outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 has impacted the socio-economic and political life like no other event of the recent past. With over 600,000 fatalities in its member-states, an unprecedented economic recession and damage to the Single Market, the European Union has been hit unexpectedly hard by COVID-19. Through the lens of Securitisation, and more precisely, Collective Securitisation, this thesis has the purpose to examine how the EU and its institutions have responded to the threat that is the spread of SARS-CoV-2, asking ‘Has SARS-CoV-2 been successfully securitised in the European Union?’. By applying a qualitative content analysis to speeches of the European Commission published between January and May 2020 as well as to a European Parliament Plenary debate following the speech of Commission President von der Leyen on April 16th, 2020, the thesis establishes that securitising moves have taken place in the examined timeframe and that they have been accepted by the European Parliament. In accordance with the Copenhagen School framework of Securitisation and Sperling and Webber’s Collective Securitisation model, the thesis concludes that COVID-19 was therefore successfully securitised.

The European Commission has presented a new seed directive that better matches the EU's sustainability goals, The Green Deal. However, the EU's common agricultural policy is based on an idea which means that it is mainly large-scale agriculture that benefits from the technological development that the proposal entails. In the periphery there are small-scale farmers whose opinions are rarely considered. The purpose of the study is to investigate the effects that a change in the EU's current seed directive could potentially have on the farmer's ecological health and, in connection with this, the future of smallholder farmers. Finally, the study shows that the EU's proposal for a new seed directive can be understood in accordance with Dryzek's description of the two currently dominant environmental discourses, "sustainability" and "ecological modernization", which are also linked to both small farmers' economic and ecological future. • How does the new Seeds Directive want to increase the EU's agricultural sustainability? What are its concrete proposals? • What ecological effects can come from the new seed directive? • What effects will the different alternatives in the bill have on large and small farmers, respectively? • Which of Dryzek's discourses “ecological modernization” and “sustainability” is most in line with the various alternatives, and what are the implications for the long-term sustainability of agriculture?The study was carried out through a content analysis on the European Commission's proposal and on the report of the consulting firm Inner City Fund (ICF) on which the Commission based its decision. Subsequently, a problematizing dimension, a type of discourse analysis, was applied to examine which discourse is most dominant in the EU proposal and what this dominance means for both the farmer's ecological health and the small farmer's interests and needs.The results indicate that the proposal will to a large extent benefit large-scale agriculture and that there are few interests in meeting the needs of small farmers. The results also indicate that ecological modernization is the most dominant discourse in the proposal, which opens the proposal to the criticism that has also been delivered against ecological modernization as a sustainability discourse. / Europeiska kommissionen har presenterat ett nytt frödirektiv som bättre matchar EU:s hållbarhetsmål, The Green Deal. EU:s gemensamma jordbrukspolitik bygger dock på en idé som gör att det främst är storskaliga jordbruk som gynnas av den tekniska utveckling som förslaget innebär. I periferin finns småskaliga jordbrukare vars åsikter sällan beaktas. Syftet med studien är att undersöka vilka effekter en förändring av EU:s nuvarande frödirektiv potentiellt kan ha på jordbrukarens ekologiska hälsa och, i samband med detta, framtiden för småjordbrukare. Studien visar till slut att EU:s förslag till nytt frödirektiv kan förstås i enlighet med Dryzeks beskrivning av de två just nu dominanta miljödiskurserna, ”hållbarhet” och ”ekologisk modernisering”, vilka också både sammankopplas till småjordbrukares ekonomiska och ekologiska framtid.  · Hur vill det nya frödirektivet öka EU:s jordbrukshållbarhet? Vilka är dess konkreta förslag?· Vilka ekologiska effekter kan komma av det nya frödirektivet? · Vilka effekter kommer de olika alternativen i lagförslaget ge för stora respektive småjordbrukare? · Vilken av Dryzeks diskurser ”ekologisk modernisering” och ”hållbarhet” stämmer bäst överens med de olika alternativen, och vad har detta för konsekvenser för jordbrukets långsiktiga hållbarhet?  Undersökningen gjordes genom en innehållsanalys på Europeiska kommissionens förslag samt på den rapport av konsultföretaget Inner City Fund (ICF) som kommissionen grundade sitt beslut på. Därefter applicerades en problematiserande dimension, en typ av diskursanalys, för att undersöka vilken diskurs som är mest dominant i EU:s förslag och vad denna dominans innebär både för jordbrukarens ekologiska hälsa samt småjordbrukarens intressen och behov.   Resultatet tyder på att förslaget i stor utsträckning kommer gynna storskaliga jordbruk och att det finns få intressen för att möta småjordbrukares behov. Resultatet tyder även på att ekologisk modernisering är den mest dominanta diskursen i förslaget, vilket öppnar förslaget för den kritik som också levererats mot ekologisk modernisering som hållbarhetsdiskurs.

Digitalization is hitting the energy industry by empowering energy producers and retailers, butmore importantly it’s empowering the end customers and the energy producers and retailers areno longer in possession of all power. Due to digitalization, energy networks are beingmodernized and new emerging technologies called smart grids and smart meters have beenintroduced. Smart grids can automatically monitor energy flows and adjust to changes in energysupply and demand. Smart meters on the other hand empowers the consumers to adapt theirenergy usage in both time and volume to different energy prices throughout the day by costcuttingtheir energy.With empowered and conscious end-customers, electricity retailers will have to compete in newways or risk losing their business. There is a risk that the majority of the over 100 electricityretailers in Sweden will be wiped out with time if data and information is not leveraged to theend-customers. This is potentially also threatening the business of TSU as well as othercompanies providing IT solutions to the energy market.For long Tieto Smart Utility (TSU) has offered IT services for both electricity retailers anddistributors across the Nordics. In relation to recently developed solutions as well as theopportunities and challenges created by digitalization and disruptive technologies such as smartmeters, the Nordic countries are in the forefront. Hence, TSU sees a potential in increasing itspresence in Western Europe to provide services to the retailers and distributors. However, inorder to expand to Western European countries TSU seeks to have a greater marketunderstanding of the different markets, in terms of for example market size, market structure,regulations. The problem is to have a structured and comprehensive way to increase marketunderstanding when assessing new West European energy markets due to the major differencesin each country.This thesis therefore aims to develop a framework which enables IT solution providers toconduct a market opportunity analysis in order to increase market awareness and assess theopportunities and potential in Western European markets, influenced by the smart-meter roll outand thus facilitate strategic decisions.A framework has been developed on the foundation on existing frameworks and applied onTSU by conducting a case study on a market opportunity assessment tool for energy IT solutionproviders. The framework consists of three levels of analysis; European-, Country- andCustomer Level which intends to identify market opportunities and potential.This thesis provides a framework for companies who wants to assess market opportunities andfacilitates strategic decisions regarding the potential of entering the markets. The findings of thisthesis has shown that the market opportunities for TSU are the greatest in Germany especiallydue to the market magnitude as well as the status for the smart meter roll-out. Furthermore,since IT solution providers usually offers many different services and solutions, the findings canbe used in a larger extent in order to asses the potential depending on type service and solution.

Climate change not only corresponds to scientifically proven future implications, but also poses a politically relevant study of climate security analysis, affecting the study and practice of (international) politics in different ways. In the same vein, the EU as an international organization have been getting more involved in discussions of climate-related security risks, in which the European Commission (which represents the Union’s common interests) have been publishing a set of consecutive policy documents addressing the climate change since the early 2000’s. Accordingly, this thesis studies five big policy documents produced by the Commission addressing the climate change between 2007 and 2021 by conducting a Qualitative Content Analysis upon the discourses and conceptualizations used to inform how the issue is to be understood, while basing on the theoretical model developed by von Lucke  et al.’s (2014) that distinguishes levels of referent objects and risk-security approaches. In doing so, it finds that the Commission often draws indirect connections between the climate change and its social, political and economic implications to the EU at the territorial (and individual) level, while heavily employing risk-based approaches and promoting rather business-as-usual solutions.

The Baltic Sea is a brackish body of water in the heart of Europe, and within it lives a small whale: the Baltic Sea harbor porpoise. However, this animal is becoming increasingly more endangered. Due to various man-made threats, less than 500 animals remain in the sea. This thesis aims to provide a comprehensive overview of this issue with a political approach through discussing how the state of this animal reflects on the European Union. Furthermore, it investigates the European Commission's role and takes a closer look at EU Biodiversity Strategy 2030 to detect potential greenwashing. Through the case study of the harbor porpoise, the central conflict between the European Union and the conservationists aiming to save the animal gets illuminated from different perspectives. The analysis makes use of European integration theory as well as a deconstructive approach, through which the study is able to detect that the issue largely stems from the respective member states. Moreover, it finds that the approaches of the European Commission and the conservationist align at the core principles. With the help of an interview conducted with a field expert, these points can be emphasized. Reflecting on the findings it can be concluded that essential regulations are finally being put into place, but there is still a long way to go to save the Baltic Sea harbor porpoise.

Disability Mainstreaming zielt (analog zu Gender Mainstreaming) darauf, Anliegen und Bedürfnisse der Personengruppe "Menschen mit Behinderung" nicht allein in den für diese Gruppe offensichtlich wichtigen Bereichen anzusprechen, sondern sie in allen gesellschaftspolitischen Handlungsebenen mitzudenken und dementsprechende Forderungen umzusetzen. Dabei wird ‚Behinderung‘ vorrangig als soziale Konstruktion interpretiert, die mit der Erfahrung von Diskriminierung und Exklusion einhergeht.

European Commission's Reform Proposal Concerning The Investment Dispute Settlement Mechanism: Comparative Analysis In November 2015, during negotiations with the USA about the investment chapter of TTIP, the European Commission presented US delegates with a text which significantly differs from the traditional model of ISDS. Commission's reform proposal is a reaction to the current criticism directed towards the legitimacy of investment arbitration and to the demands for its thorough reform or even removal from the TTIP draft text. The Commission introduced the proposal after the public consultation opened in connection with the criticism of ISDS attracted significant public interest. This thesis aims to analyze the Commission's proposal and determine whether the Commission has introduced a sound proposal which would be capable of replacing the traditional concept of ISDS. The thesis further examines whether there are smaller or larger differences between the Commission's proposal and traditional ISDS and whether the Commission could have taken a different approach to some issues. After the first chapter dedicated to the criticism of investment arbitration and the results of the public consultation, the thesis analyses the Commission's proposal. Most attention is given to its procedural aspects,...