The thesis aims to unravel the relationship between the EU's enlargement strategies and democratization in the Western Balkan countries by looking on the impact of the strategies on changing democracy levels in two empirical cases: the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Serbia. Over more than a decade, the effect of the conditionality tool on democratization has been curbed by an insufficient emphasis placed on pro-democratic reforms and by the role of security concerns which were often prioritized over aims directly linked to democracy promotion. Grounded in the conflicting objectives theory, the thesis demonstrates that the recently employed strategy appropriately sequencing goals while prioritizing democratic transition over security concerns is more effective in inflicting domestic democratic change. Subsequently, the following necessary and sufficient conditions for a successful sequencing strategy were defined: strong emphasis on democracy-related goals combined with clearly outlined temporal perspective, and corresponding action of international actors.

The thesis is focused on currently widely discussed topic of the Russian hybrid warfare. It examines how the discourse surrounding this topic in the Czech Republic unfolded and how certain actors, primarily the think-tank European Values, have securitized the issue of the Russian hybrid warfare. The thesis is grounded in the securitization theory developed by the Copenhagen School. The international context is also discussed, since the discourses about the Russian hybrid warfare against the West are interconnected and the interest in this subject have risen after the annexation of Crimea and especially after the Russian interference into the U.S. presidential election in 2016. The case study of the documents related to the Russian hybrid warfare published by the think-tank European Values is central to this project. Institutional mistrust is a crucial underlying cause driving the success of disinformation campaigns and creates an opportunity for the hybrid efforts. However, this thesis attempts to explain, how securitization of the Russian hybrid warfare can be unhelpful or even detrimental to the goal of facilitating a greater trust in institutions.

This diploma thesis deals with strategies of promoting Czechs as ambassadors of the EU (HoD) since the launch of the European External Action Service to the present. The main research goal of this thesis is to find out whether the Czech Republic promotes its candidates to the HoD positions in the countries of its priority interests. So far, a Czech citizen has become an HoD in six cases. These cases are confronted with a categorization of priority countries of the Czech Republic which has been elaborated by the author. Then, the Czech activities in promoting citizens are analysed based on interviews with relevant employees of the Czech state organs. These actions are consequently put into categorization of lobbying methods of the smaller states in the EU. Based on the categorization of the Czech territorial priorities, it can be claimed that the Czechs have not been sent as HoDs to the countries of the Czech interests so far. Even their other applications have not been meant to place them to the countries of the Czech interests. On the other hand, there is a bulk of activities embraced by the Czech Republic to reverse this trend. First, the Czech administration exacerbates networking and informal meetings among the Czechs based in Brussels. Second, the Czech state officials have developed formal...

The aim of this PhD thesis is to analyse the current status of European insolvency law and with the help of both national and European judicial decisions put together an overview of practical obstacles that insolvency courts, debtors, creditors and insolvency trustees across Europe are facing when dealing with cross-border insolvencies. At the very core of this topic stands the European Insolvency Regulation ("EIR") which was adopted in 2015 and is effective within the member states as of June 2017. Since this regulation was put together as a recast of its predecessor, i.e. the original insolvency regulation adopted in 2000 and effective as of 2002, naturally this research is oriented at comparing the two legislative acts and mainly assessing whether or not the recast EIR managed to overcome some of the inconsistencies in the wording of the original EIR, often resulting in conflicting interpretations and a great deal of preliminary rulings filed with the Court of Justice of the EU. Apart from looking into good old instruments of private international law such as the scope, the jurisdiction, the choice of law and the recognition and enforcement rules governed by the EIR, this thesis also focuses on topics that are very bankruptcy-specific and dissimilar to anything we know from other fields of law....

This thesis is focused on the description and assessment of the relationships between human, institutional and social capital and the assessment of the effects of capital types on economic performance. After the operationalization of capital types and economic performance that was based on literature research, the relationships were analysed using the example of European regions (specifically NUTS 2). The analysis is focused on the regional differentiation of capital types and economic maturity. It also monitors the relationships between capital types and economic performance. This thesis is based on the latest statistical data from offices and surveys that deal with the quality of the institutional environment or the characteristics of social capital. The characteristics of capital types are shown in maps. For the statistical data analysis, we used factor, correlation and regressive analysis. Keywords: human, social and institutional capital, economic performance, GDP per capita, regional differentiation, European regions NUTS 2

Regional political parties and the European Union: Case study of Spain Abstract The diploma thesis "Regional political parties and the European Union: Case study of Spain" focuses on the area of the regional parties on the stage of the European Parliament, a subject which has not been analysed thoroughly in the past. Special emphasis is placed on the analysis of this phenomenon on the case of the Spanish historical regions (Catalonia, Basque Country, Galicia) which are a recognizable proof of the remarkable institutional strengthening in the framework of a regionalized unitary state. The methodology of triangulation was used for the analysis of this issue as the data of the diverse type (i.e. electoral results, party's material etc.) have been put together through different methods (as a qualitative and quantitative content analysis, deductive and comparative approaches) with the aim to reveal the complete character of the issue and to reach the objective results as possible. The study focuses on the analysis of the regional parties on the European level through their cooperation in the European federations of the political parties as well as the framework of the political groups in the European Parliament. The emphasis is also placed on the analysis of the own work of the members of the European Parliament...

My diploma thesis was focused on evaluation of degree of success of project "Education of Humanities at BUT" within a scope of Operational Programme Human Resources Development 2004 - 2006 implementation. I presupposed from formulation of the paradigms using theoretical concepts of public policy, education and management to practical analyses Project phases. I put the cardinal emphasis on the implementation phase, which I remeted to research. I evaluated the Project implementation as extraordinary successful on the base of outputs of expert interwiews, focus group and questionnaire within a scope of the research. I tried to compare this Project with another one, similar project settled in any other Member Strate of the European Union. I reached that similar projects in other Member States have not been realized, the only comparable one was Portugese Project in the programming period 1994 - 1999 focused on increasing competitivness of students of high schools. This finding led to conclusion that the Project realized at BUT was unique and its successful realization could be considered as a leading case in the area of Structural Funds of the European Union in the Czech Republic.

Bibliografický záznam VLACH, Michael. Evropské ekonomické vládnutí - možnost nebo nutnost? Praha, 2011. 95 s. Diplomová práce (Mgr.) Univerzita Karlova, Fakulta sociálních věd, Institut mezinárodních studií. Katedra západoevropských studií. Vedoucí diplomové práce Prof. Ing. Luděk Urban, CSC., Jean Monnet Professor Abstract Diploma Thesis "European Economic Governance - an option or the necessity?" deals with the current debate on the reform of European economic governance (EEG). It focuses on the genesis of the pre-crisis European economic governance, primarily on the Economic and Monetary Union, and on the performance of the EMU and the features of EEG before and during the crisis. It investigates the issues and challenges that arisen largely from the aftermath of the crisis such as imbalances on the Internal Market due to serious competitiveness issues between the Member States, lack of crisis management, financial supervision etc. The common cause of these problems, the insufficient economic governance is identified having source largely in the original design of EMU which was adopted largely for economic reasons but contemporary political limits restrained the Economic union and macroeconomic coordination provisions thus enabling the current situation. In the final part the proposed and implemented...

Sustainable development research makes use of various indicators for environmental monitoring without really focusing on quality and comparability of these indicators. This paper tries to lay down method of assessment of one of these indicators - the relevance. My method will be used for evaluating the indicators of ECI set - European Common Indicators, ten indicators of the Sustainable Urban Development, established by European Commission in cooperation with European cities. My method of evaluating the indicators is based on searching the keywords. One set of the keywords was specified for each indicator of ECI set and several sets of the keywords were specified for every indicator's theme. I collected data to establish three types of relevance - public, scientific and political relevance. Data for the public relevance were searched on World Wide Web by search engine Google, data for the scientific relevance were searched in the Google Scholar database and data for Political Relevance were searched in several official documents related to sustainable development. Public and scientific relevance were determined as a proportion of number of present keywords for the indicators and for their topics together and number of present keywords for the topics alone. Political relevance was determined as a...

Diploma thesis "Civil Society Organizations supporting employment of parents in Prague and Central Bohemian Region (2010 - 2012)" deals with the mapping of supply of civil society organizations in the area of Prague and Central Bohemia in the years 2010 - 2012, which aim to promote employment of parents. In the empirical research are included programs of personal and professional development of clients, help with their orientation in the labour market, advice on a finding new work (including setting up own business) and programs that are focused on working with employers and reconciling family and working life. In view of the fact that these organizations offers, of course, to some extent dependent on the characteristics of the Czech Republic, family and employment policies of the state and the European Union, the thesis contains also a summary of key facts that are related to this area. In conclusion, this thesis contains not only an analysis of research outputs, but as well as a draft recommendations, which could lead to improvement of the situation.