The Council of Ministers is arguably the most powerful of the EC's institutions, yet its operation still awaits an authoritative analysis. To date, research into the operation of the Council has tended only to deal with aspects of its structure, rather than analysing it as a complete body. Furthermore, there has been little theoretical appreciation of its internal operation, as research has tended to rely on existing methods of analysing EC policy-making. Therefore, a new methodological approach seems to be required which will address this lacuna in EC literature. Whilst the Council of Ministers legislates, it also negotiates. It would seem appropriate then to design a new approach that draws on both policy analysis and negotiation theory. The analytical framework used material drawn from interviews, and both primary and secondary written sources, to evaluate the day-to-day workings of a number of technical councils that constitute the Council of Ministers. Although there is an information deficit on the work of the Council, the flexible design of the framework allowed valuable insights into its operation. The findings gave some indication of the dynamics of the interactions between member states, which provides a better understanding of EC policymaking. The Council of Minister's character is influenced by member states. Their attitudes seem to have a strong effect upon the operational mechanisms of the various technical councils The Council may be an EC institution, but it is also the forum in which member states negotiate, preferring the diplomatic, consensus approach to prescriptive voting methods.

This study focuses on the protection and promotion of human rights in the context of the external relations of the European Union (EU). It sets out to examine, in particular, the position of human rights within the framework of EU foreign policy. While questions of human rights sparked a wide-ranging academic debate and resulted in enhanced levels of public scrutiny over the last decade, the research presented in this dissertation attempts to fill a significant gap in scholarly attention. It does so by offering a critique of the theoretical approaches towards, and the practical manifestations of human rights promotion initiatives in the context of EU policy interaction with countries in Asia. Evidence from previous work, included as part of this dissertation, suggests that the incremental growth of human rights competencies and agendas within the EU's legal and political systems was reflected in a number of areas of concrete EU external activity, such as the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), Development Policy, relations with the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group of countries and the EU's New Asia Strategy. This dissertation attempts to demonstrate how, in the context of a Constructivist perspective within International Relations Theory in general, and EU-Asia relations in particular, the EU can be conceptualised as a value-guided, 'ethical' polity, grounded in a constitutional framework of Treaties. As a result of this, the Union introdued a more pronounced human rights dimension to its dialogue with Asia. The evidence indicates that, in respect of its Asian partners, the EU implemented human rights strategies in a number or formats and with varying degrees of success. The study scrutinises, in particular, the Commission's 'strategy papers' on Asia and the Asia-Europe Meetings (ASEM). In addition to findings analysed in previous work, this study demonstrates that the resulting debates about 'rights' and 'values' can be related to wider discourses derived from normative theory and surrounding issues of culture and identity. In the Asia-EU dialogue, arguments over human rights contain the potential to be both an enabling dynamic for, and an inhibiting agent of, a more intensive EU-Asia political and cultural dialogue. The study places a particular emphasis on EU human rights promotion policies towards the People's Republic of China, the Republic of Indonesia and Burma (The Union of Myanmar). It identifies and appraises three distinct EU policy approaches ranging from incentives based and coordinated measures to a more coercive and punitive diplomatic arsenal.

Research work about European way of Russian separated enclave Kaliningrad, written by Sergey Naumkin. Table of contents: German ownership and germanisation. Associated membership with the EU. Republic or especial region in the structure of the Russian Federation. Independent State. Baltic Sea School, Humboldt University, Germany

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University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of Government and Public Administration

Thesis (M. A.)--University of Canterbury, 2009. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 119-127). Also available via the World Wide web.

Thesis (Doctoral)--University of Stockholm, 2004. / Added t.p. with thesis statement inserted. Includes bibliographical references (p. 250-278).

Thesis (M.A. in National Security Affairs)--Naval Postgraduate School, June 2004. / Thesis advisor(s): Donald Abenheim. Includes bibliographical references (p. 67-69). Also available online.

No description available.

The assessment of joint venture appears to be one of the most difficult issues in European competition law. A rational and well-balanced treatment is long awaited. Indeed, the artificial distinction between co-operative and concentrative joint ventures was based on complex and contradictory criteria. The European Commission applied them flexibly at the expense of predictability, damaging the legal certainty that is so necessary for these transactions. The existence of two distinct regimes, one for concentrative and one for co-operative joint ventures, with more favourable treatment for the former, explains why firms wished to subject their transactions to the Merger Regulation rather than article 81 of the Treaty. The reform of the Merger Regulation, which entered into force in 1998, modifies the boundaries between the different types of joint ventures, now focusing on structural criterion. It gives birth to a new distinction between structural and behavioural joint ventures. This simplification of the qualification phase, however, raises new questions relating to the content and the relevance of the chosen criterion. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)