Climate change is described as the greatest security challenge of our time. Climate-related events do not only run the risk of damaging the environment we depend on, but also risk undermining our political, economic and social systems.The European Union is an influential player and key actor in the fight against climate change and has in recent years adopted a number of ambitious initiatives. In December 2019, the European Union launched The European Green Deal, with the objective of making Europe a carbon-neutral continent by 2050. In June 2021, the first European Climate Law came into force, which incorporates the goal of a carbon-neutral continent by 2050 into European legislation. This thesis aims to examine to what extent the EU’s new climate policy is based on Green Growth Theory and what consequences this can have for security policy. The core of Green Growth Theory is the belief that economic growth is, or can be made, compatible with the ecology of our planet. However, the Green Growth Theory has been criticized by several researchers for lacking empirical evidence. This thesis finds that the EU’s climate policy is to a large part based on Green Growth Theory. Paradoxically, this causes both security and insecurity for the European Union. Economic and geopolitical security is sustained by continued economic growth creating competitiveness in the global arena. Nevertheless, environmental insecurity is triggered as the new climate policy is based on a theory that lacks empirical evidence, prioritizes economic growth and measures success in measures that disregard a sizeable part of the total emissions.

Ever since its inception, the EU’s main goal has always been to spread its values of democracy and freedom. The EU’s success in spreading these values has been great until recently when some of the member states have gone through an autocratization. The clearest case of this is Hungary, which can no longer be seen as a democracy, due to its autocratization. Seeing as the EU has certain demands in democracy for countries that want to join the EU, it is strange that they let Hungary continue to be a part of the EU.  This paper will examine what the EU has done to hinder Hungary’s autocratization through its normative power. The results show that the EU has penalised Hungary in terms of sanctions and an article-7 procedure. Though, the EU is far away from throwing Hungary out of the EU, mostly because it is near impossible for the EU to exclude Hungary from the EU. The only way that Hungary can leave the EU is by their own choice.

A major objective of policy makers is to achive targeted economic growth. Given the role of financial institutions and banks in today´s economy several researchers studied the relationship between economic growth and profitability of banks. This tackles an important policy question, in order to understand the financial markets to prevent a crisis it is relevant for policy makers to understand the contribution of banks´profits in the economic growth. Can proftibale banks contribute to higher economic growth? This thesis aims to test the relationship between the profitability of banks and economic growth for countries within the European Union. To test this relationship this study uses panel data over 25 countries in the EU during the time interval 2010-2020. The used method is an econometric analysis where two regressions will be executed, an Ordinary Least Square regression and a regression that applies the use of a Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimator. The results that the study demostreates are consistent with earlier literature, it presents evidence of a positive and statistically significant relationship between the profitability of banks (ROA) and economic growth. However, the results shows an uncertainty of the lagged value of the profitability of banks as insignificant results were obtained in both regressions.

Inom samhällskunskapen i svensk skola ställer sig EU-undervisningen till synes vid sidolinjen. De studier som har gjorts på området visar på att det är ett ämne som få elever eller lärare är särskilt entusiastiska kring. Vidare tyder forskningen på att den undervisning som bedrivs om ämnet sällan är särskilt djupgående. Istället ligger fokus på att ge en mer övergripande och elementär undervisningen om unionen, avgränsat från kunskaper om demokrati och medborgarskap. Syftet med denna litteraturstudie är att undersöka hur upplevelsebaserat lärande kan användas inom EU-undervisning. Den primära frågan uppsatsen ämnar besvara är hur simuleringars potentiella inkludering i EU-undervisning kan se ut och vilka för- och nackdelar denna form av undervisning kan associeras med. Genom analys av tidigare forskning om EU-undervisning och simuleringar har en rad slutsatser kunnat dras. Litteraturstudien visar bland annat att simuleringar kan lämpa sig i undervisningen men att det beror på vad undervisningen ska ha för lärandemål. Simuleringar har bland annat önskvärda effekter såsom ökad motivation och engagemang hos eleverna och en ökad förståelse för det politiska systemet. Simuleringar konkretiserar och förenklar även studieobjektet till en hanterbar nivå vilket tillåter eleverna att enklare hantera ett annars komplext politiskt system.

Several organisations and regulators around the globe are recognising warming as a systematic financial risk and investors have increasingly focused on assessing climate-change threats to their assets. In 2018, Morningstar launched a new designation for funds that take global warming into consideration, also called low-carbon funds. This thesis aims to provide relevant insight about the differences in performance and net capital inflow between low-carbon funds and traditional funds on the European market. Furthermore, with the help of statistical regression it was investigated whether low-carbon funds are less sensitive to price changes in different energy and environmental products, such as fossil fuels, electricity and carbon emission allowances, compared to traditional funds. The results suggest that low-carbon funds have been receiving greater compounded annual returns compared to traditional funds during 2018-2020. Furthermore, the annual returns were compared for each fund before- and after becoming a low-carbon fund. The results indicate that it has been more likely for funds to receive greater returns as they became accounted as low-carbon funds. In contrast, any significant difference in net capital inflows between low-carbon funds and traditional funds could not be verified. Finally, it was concluded that the price changes of the included energy and environmental products had no significant impact on the funds' returns. / Organisationer och tillsynsmyndigheter världen över ser den globala uppvärmningen som en systematisk finansiell risk och investerare har i allt högre grad fokuserat på att analysera dessa klimathot i sina tillgångar. År 2018 lanserade Morningstar en ny beteckning för fonder som tar hänsyn till den globala uppvärmningen, så kallade klimatsmarta fonder. Detta examensarbete har som mål att ge relevant information om de skillnader som råder i avkastning och kapitalinflöde mellan klimatsmarta fonder och traditionella fonder på den Europeiska marknaden. Med hjälp av statistisk regression undersöktes huruvida de klimatsmarta fonderna är mindre känsliga för prisförändringar hos olika energi- och miljöprodukter, såsom fossila bränslen, elektricitet och utsläppsrätter, jämfört med traditionella fonder. Resultaten tyder på att klimatsmarta fonder har haft en högre årlig avkastning jämfört med traditionella fonder under 2018-2020. Dessutom jämfördes den årliga avkastningen för varje fond före och efter det att den ansågs vara klimatsmart. Resultaten indikerar att det har varit mer sannolikt för fonder att få en högre avkastning när de klassifceras som klimatsmarta fonder. Inga signifikanta skillnader mellan klimatsmarta fonder och traditionella fonder kunde påvisas hos kapitalinflödet. Avslutningsvis drogs slutsatsen att prisförändringarna på de inkluderade energi- och miljöprodukterna inte hade någon betydande inverkan på fondernas avkastning.

The increased interest in sustainability issues in recent years due to climate change has led to an increased interest among capital investors to invest more sustainably. In addition, there has been an increased interest among stakeholders, regulators and citizens to know more about the positive impact of sustainability reporting on business results. Sustainable investments are often followed by high costs, which makes it interesting from an investor perspective to investigate whether this investment can have a positive impact on a firm's financial result. Among the sectors that play a major role in sustainability investment is the real estate sector, as buildings currently account for 36 percent of CO2 emissions and 40 percent of energy consumption in the EU. Therefore, it is interesting to investigate how sustainability performance affects real estate firm performance. In this study, sustainability performance is measured using ESG scores while company performance is represented by ROA, ROE and Tobin's Q. Several regression analyses have been conducted using data from Eikon on real estate companies from 15 European countries. In addition to the overall ESG scores, the various ESG pillars were examined separately. The data analysis provides evidence of a positive significant impact of the overall ESG result on all three performance measures. Furthermore, we find that environmental disclosure has a positive impact on ROE and Tobin's Q, social disclosure has a positive effect on ROA and ROE and Governance disclosure has a positive effect on Tobin's Q. By applying these results to the shareholder- and the stakeholder theory, we can conclude that our study provides limited support for the stakeholder theory as most of our hypotheses are supported. This implies that the positive impact of sustainability investments on firm performance can lead to value creation for all stakeholders, not just the shareholders. / De senaste åren har vi sett ett ökat intresse för hållbarhetsfrågor vilket kan kopplas till klimatförändringarna. Detta har i sin tur drivit på intresset bland kapitalplacerare att investera mer hållbart. Parallellt med detta har intressenter, tillsynsmyndigheter och medborgare ökat sitt intresse för kopplingen mellan hållbarhet och finansiella resultat. Investeringar i hållbarhet medför ofta högre kostnader vilket gör det intressant ur ett investerarperspektiv att undersöka om det kan ha en positiv inverkan på ett det ekonomiska resultatet. Fastighetssektorn innehar en nyckelroll i omställningen till ett mer hållbart samhälle då byggnader ansvarar för 36 procent av CO2-utsläppen och 40 procent av energiförbrukningen inom EU. Givet denna nyckelroll och det kostsamma arbete som ligger framför fastighetssektorn är det således intressant att undersöka hur hållbarhetsarbete påverkar fastighetsbolagens finansiella resultat. I denna studie mäts fastighetsbolagens prestationer inom hållbarhet med hjälp av ESG-poängmedan det finansiella resultatet representeras av ROA, ROE och Tobins Q. Flertalet regressionsanalyser har utförts på data hämtad från databasen Eikon. Urvalet består av 111 fastighetsbolag från 15 olika länder inom Europa. Utöver den övergripande ESG-poängen undersöktes även de olika ESG-pelarna separat. Dataanalysen visar på en positiv signifikant inverkan av det övergripande ESG-resultatet på alla tre prestationsmätningar ROA, ROE och Tobin’s Q. Vidare finner vi att miljöpelaren (E) har en positiv inverkan på ROE och Tobins Q, den sociala pelaren (S) har en positiv effekt på ROA och ROE och ägarstyrning (G) har en positiv effekt på Tobins Q. Genom att analysera dessa resultat med hjälp av aktieägar- och intressentteorin kan vi dra slutsatsen att vår studie ger begränsat stöd för intressentteorin då en majoritet av våra hypoteser stöds. Detta betyder att investeringar i hållbarhet kan resultera i värdeskapande för fler intressenter än enbart aktieägarna.

The introduction of the European union’s pillar of social rights has marked a new chapter in EU social policy. The social policy of the union has been seen to affect the national welfare state of its members causing convergence between member states. Given that welfare politics is a salient issue of the electorate, this thesis aims at finding out what type of welfare regime is most prevalent in EU social pillar policy in order to identify the direction the EU is pushing its member states. By using a content analysis to examine policy initiatives within the scope of the social pillar through the lens of the theoretical framework of Esping-Andersen’s three worlds of welfare regimes, this thesis identifies a considerable prevalence of a social democratic welfare regime. Especially given the sizeable occurrence of universalism and defamiliarization in the analysed material. This shows that policy convergence between the member states will entail a considerable role of the state, universal welfare services and promoting female participation in the labour market.

In the EU proposal for a regulation laying down harmonised rules on artificial intelligence (AIA), article 5.1.a forbids the use of AI systems deploying subliminal techniques. As the meaning of the term subliminal techniques lacks a definition in the proposal, the intended meaning of the phrase requires interpretation to clarify the scope of this prohibition. Using a method based on the legal reasoning of the European Court of Justice, the meaning of the expression subliminal techniques is interpreted based on arguments from a grammatical, contextual, teleological and historical standpoint. After reviewing EU documents concerning the proposal as well as the current versions of AIA, it becomes clear that the intended meaning of subliminal techniques is broader than the ordinary meaning of this phrase. Although subliminal stimuli are generally described as stimuli that are beyond human perception, the presence of a binary threshold of perception is not fully supported by brain imaging research. From the descriptions of subliminal techniques in documents regarding AIA, as well as in formulations present in different versions of the proposal, there is support for interpreting the legislators intent as adhering to this non-binary view of subliminal techniques. Instead of strictly focusing on a perceptual threshold the determination of whether an AI deployed technique is regarded as a subliminal technique focuses on whether the technique in some sense targets human perception, as well as the degree to which this technique infringes on human autonomy.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, European states have taken numerous measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Several states have introduced various forms of compulsory vaccination against COVID-19. While vaccines are one of the most effective tools for protecting people against COVID-19, it raises the question to which extent states may justifiably make vaccination schemes compulsory in the pursuit of public health. This paper, therefore, analyses the compatibility between compulsory vaccination and the right to respect for private life as set out in Article 8 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (the ECHR). As of today, the European Court of Human Rights (the ECtHR) has not decided whether vaccine mandates are compatible with the right to respect for private life.  An interference in the right to respect for private life must be in accordance with the law and fulfil one of the legitimate aims that are set out in Article 8.2 of the ECHR. An interference also needs to be necessary in a democratic society in order to achieve that legitimate aim. The protection of health as well as the protection of the rights and freedoms of others are two of the legitimate aims stipulated in Article 8 of the ECHR that are relevant in relation to the introduction of compulsory vaccination in society. In assessing whether an interference is necessary in a democratic society, the states enjoy a certain margin of appreciation. However, their assessment remains subject to review by the ECtHR. The principle of proportionality is an important part in assessing whether the interference has been necessary in a democratic society or not. The interference in question must remain proportionate to the legitimate aim pursued. In this paper, the compatibility between compulsory COVID-19 vaccination and the right to respect for private life is examined primarily by analysing prior case law of the ECtHR concerning vaccination and other medical interventions. This paper concludes that the states enjoy a wide margin of appreciation when assessing the necessity of introducing compulsory COVID-19 vaccinations, mainly because of the lack of European consensus regarding such vaccination schemes. Furthermore, it is concluded that compulsory COVID-19 vaccinations can be compatible with the right to respect for private life as set out in Article 8 of the ECHR, provided that the vaccines are considered safe and efficient by the research community, the vaccines used are monitored and the vaccine mandate is only indirectly imposed by sanctions of a protective nature. In addition, necessary precautions must be taken by prior assessment of potential contraindications and there must exist a possibility to receive compensation as a result of potential injuries caused by the vaccine.

The aim of this Thesis is to analyse Türkiye’s progress and setbacks withinits association process and quest for EU membership. By examining Chapter23 in annual reports released by the European Commission for the years2013, 2018 and 2023, the role of the EU as a democracy promoter isdiscussed and questioned. In order to do this, this Thesis basis it’s theoreticalframework around Samuel Huntington’s (1991) theory of democratisation,which is applied and questioned. This Thesis uses a qualitative methoddesign to comprehensively analyse how the European Union (Commission)perceives Türkiye’s progress, and to be able to answer if over the last tenyears even any progress is made.