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The air transport sector is one that is particularly conducive to market dominance, and therefore to potential abuse thereof. Characterised, for several decades, by the omnipresence of barriers attributable to the preferential treatment enjoyed by undertakings under the sponsorship of their respective governments, European civil air transport has undergone progressive liberalisation over the years, under the auspices of the European institutions. / The object of the present thesis is to assess how the provisions of Article 82 of the E.C. Treaty have applied to the air transport sector prior and subsequent to deregulation, and how they remain indispensable, in the wake of emerging new factors that tend to keep the market of scheduled air services oligopolistic.

In this thesis, the author investigates the link between the process of economic and political integration within the European Union and the phenomenon of nationalist assertion. By examining the cases of Flanders and Scotland, it is argued that increased nationalism is a normal and predictable outcome of the process of integration in general, and of the EU more specifically. By analysing four factors--economic incorporation, system-wide policies, systems of transfer payments, and political isolation--the author finds two trends within the nationalist movements. The first is that the nationalist groups seek to acquire several of the powers currently held by the states of which they are currently part, Belgium and the United Kingdom respectively. The second is that these sub-state groups see themselves as part of a new order in which states are losing their significance. Neither of the theories associated with these observations on their own, however, satisfactorily explains the link between integration and increased nationalist assertion in the nationalist movements studied. The conclusion is that the nationalist groups accept the concept of an authority above the level of the state, nation, or region, but emphasise the necessity of a large degree of regional autonomy and a real voice for these regions in the decision-making process of this authority. Since the European Union is and always has been an exclusive club of member states, nationalist groups consider, within the framework of current institutional arrangements, that full statehood may be the only way to achieve their goals.

Although the evolution of a unified Europe has been unsteady, the immigration policies of member states have nonetheless become increasingly harmonized in recent years. This harmonization has not been without its controversies, however, and is characterized by two inter-linked political disputes that have shaped the progress achieved thus far. The first dispute area is the exclusion of Europe's legally-resident third country nationals (TCNs) from the privileges of intra-EU free movement, contrary to the inclusionist arguments of the European Commission and Parliament. The second dispute area is the political struggle between advocates of intergovernmental decision-making structures, which are not subject to EU law or institutional control, and the advocates of full (supranational) EU competence over policy. Two hypotheses are contrasted to examine these disputes: (1) the "Fortress Europe" hypothesis, which foresees the continuation of exclusionism and intergovernmentalism; and (2) the "spillover" hypothesis, which predicts the inclusion of TCNs through the EU's central institutions eventually winning full competence over policy. It is concluded that although exclusionism continues to hold the upper hand, recent victories for supranationalism have confirmed the optimism of the spillover hypothesis.

Under the Treaty Establishing the European Community, corporations are entitled to free establishment. Recently, the European Court of Justice's Inspire Art decision has clarified its scope and has in principle introduced place of incorporation doctrine as choice-of-law rule, thus granting corporations free choice of the Member State of incorporation. In the US, free choice has caused the "Delaware Effect". This paper analyzes if Inspire Art will cause a similar development in the EU. The EU and US contexts will be compared. Germany will serve as an example. As different circumstances exist in the EU, free choice is more limited and fraught with uncertainties. The thesis of this paper is that regulatory competition in the EU is unlikely and not desirable because of cultural differences. Therefore, minimum harmonization is preferable.

The 'Open Skies' policy launched by the United States in 1992 gave birth to new bilateral agreements between them and most Member States of the European Union, as the latter were adopting a single aviation market. Nevertheless, the nationality clause the agreements included conflicted with the Community principle of freedom of establishment. / On November 5, 2002, the European Court of Justice therefore ruled there was indeed violation. However, the true question raised by the agreements focused less on such violation, which was anterior to those agreements, than on their fragmentation and the inequality they created in the Europe/United States aviation relations. / Indeed, the issue to be stressed in the judgments is linked to the building of the external competence of the Union with regards to aviation. While the Court refused to grant total competence to the Community, it made that of the Member States impracticable, leading to a global mandate for the Commission. / Although the orientations of the agreements to be concluded are foreseeable, the role the European Union will play in a potential multilateral negotiation remains to be defined.

Thesis (M. A.)--University of Canterbury, 2007. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 152-180). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Thesis (M.S.)--Missouri State University, 2008. / "May 2008." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 93-103). Also available online.