Important role in the integration process is played by the EU institutions. The subject of the thesis are description and analysis of the transformation of the European institutions, reforms of the founding treaties and the law of the Union. The theoretical part provides the reader with an overview of the EU institutions, their structure, competences and development. At the end, the theoretical part deals with problems of the institutions, provides solutions and indicates potential trends of the EU institutions developement. The empirical part deals with the interests and opinions of the Czech public on the EU functioning EU. The results provided that the public is aware of their electoral rights, know their representatives and watches how they vote. Although the public is not satisfied with the functioning of the EU chooses the option to remain in the Union.

The topic of this diploma thesis is the Process of institutional reforms of EU in light of its enlargement. The thesis is divided into two parts -- theoretical part and practical part. Theoretical part talks about European treaties that founded or reformed five main European institutions -- Parliament, Council, Commission, Court of Justice and Court of Auditors. In separate chapter the thesis talks about Lisbon Treaty and this chapter is followed by description of the main institutions. Practical part was based on original research in which almost two hundred respondents took part and which was focused on the knowledge of respondets of the administration of EU. The results of the research were analysed in form of commented graphs and tables. Based on the research, last chapter provides recommendations that should help increase the knowledge of Czechs of the EU administration.

The diploma thesis identifies and assesses current problems of the European Monetary Union, based on: firstly, theoretic approach which reviews the position of monetary union within the range of alternative exchange rate regimes, secondly, historic approach which explains evolutionary principle in the process of European monetary integration, and thirdly, economic approach which analyses the viability of the euro area by application of the criteria of the optimum currency area theory. Subsequently, the roots and development of today's euro area crisis are described and also future scenarios of development in Greece and entire euro area are briefly outlined. The analysis shows that the European Monetary Union by far does not meet the optimum currency area criteria and thus the euro area is considerably vulnerable to future asymmetric shocks.

The core theme of this diploma thesis is the Joint Africa-EU Strategy. This treaty was signed by the EU and the African Union in 2007 in order to transform mutual relations, establish partnership and cooperation in several thematic areas. Considering the partnerships between EU and Sub-Saharan countries embedded in the Cotonou Agreement and the partnership between EU and North-African states incorporated in the Mediterranean partnership as well as in the EU Neighbourhood policy, this paper examines the role and reasons for creation of the new partnership. Guidance is provided by the theory of partnerships, which defines the basic characteristics of the type of international relations called this name. To the main conclusions of this work belongs that the new partnership has brought before all the broadening of cooperation in the security area and that the main motivations for conclusion of the treaty was influence in Africa from the side of the EU and strengthening of legitimacy and position and deepening of development cooperation from the side of the AU.

Diploma thesis sets itself a task to evaluate the using of voting right by foreign nationals in local elections in the Czech Republic. The thesis shows the approach of other member states of European Union to the voting right of foreign nationals in local elections, the legislative framework and the legal position of foreign nationals in the Czech Republic. The centre point of the thesis lies in the real experience of the foreign nationals and mayors or workers of municipal authorities with voting right in the local elections. Information gained during the research allows to study the practice of voting right. During the research there were discovered reasons why the foreign nationals participate or not in local elections. There were explained opinions of foreign nationals about the quality of information of their possibility to participate in local elections and about the conditions of voting right declared by state. Opinions and ideas of foreign nationals are compared with the opinions and experience of mayors or workers of municipal authorities and state institutions.

Presented thesis is focusing on the dependence and relationship between Europarties and groups of the European Parliament and Europarties and national parties. The research is carried out on five Europarties: European People's Party (EPP), the Social Democratic Party (PES), the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE), the European Green Party (EGP) and the Party of the European Left (PEL) in the period 2004-2013 and it focuses on three areas: Europarties' financing, its leadership and autonomy in decision making. It presents several conclusions. Since 2004 Europarties became independent on the EP groups and more independent on the national parties in the area of financing in connection with the Regulation No. 2004/2003 regulating financing while their resources have been growing. On the other hand, all three organizational structures are still involved in the decision making as is shown on the example of nominations and subsequent elections of the so-called Spitzenkandidaten (candidates for the President of the European Commission) and the hierarchy within the European party families is similar to the hierarchy of its member parties. Presented thesis also highlights the considerable personal connections between EP groups and the top positions in the Europarties and it underlines...

The thesis deals with the organizational changes in connection with the use of subsidies from the European Union. It focuses on the changes and processes in civil society Organizations, these processes identifies and describes. It also examines which of them can lead to the successful functioning of the organization. Based on the theoretical assumption that in civil society organizations certain organizational changes occur as a result of subsidies from the EU. This assumption is based on findings from previous published studies and work. Presented theory are demonstrated on examples of good practice, using case study.

This research project seeks to gauge the autonomous power of the European Commission within the Open Method of Coordination (OMC), a new mode of governance coined at the Lisbon European Council in March 2000 and based on the principle of the voluntary cooperation of Member States. Two cases form the basis of this inquiry, namely, quality in work, a policy issue addressed under the banner of the European Employment Strategy, and child poverty and social exclusion, a key item on the agenda of the OMC for Social Inclusion. A primary impetus at the heart of this project is one of ontological pluralism. Rejecting a zero-sum interpretation of the rationalist/constructivist debate, this study constitutes a plea for a conversation across paradigms. The domain-of-application model employed here works by preserving the integrity of individual theories while specifying a particular scope condition under which constructivist and rationalist insights are likely to prevail. Selecting two cases on the basis of the critical scope condition of issue sensitivity, a central postulate informing this integrative research design is that high issue sensitivity (quality in work) invites strategic interaction among pre-constituted social actors driven by a behavioural logic of utility-maximization, while low issue sensitivity (child poverty and social exclusion) allows for a fundamentally norm-guided behaviour. Concretely, in effecting this theoretical dialogue, two sets of causal hypotheses are examined. On the one hand, rational choice institutionalism (principal-agent theory) offers a number of suppositions about the Commission’s institutional power, that is, its ability to transform the conditions of action of self-seeking national governments. On the other hand, sociological institutionalism conceptualizes the Commission’s productive power (i.e. its power to constitute the interests and identities of individual agents) through the lens of discourse analysis. Testing theoretical predictions against collected data makes plain the superior explanatory value of independent variables and causal mechanisms of rationalist lineage in capturing the essence of the Commission’s autonomous power in the case of quality in work and the congruity of sociological institutionalism’s original conjectures in the area of child poverty and social exclusion. Crucially, this strict correspondence corroborates the pertinence of the critical scope condition of issue sensitivity in delineating the explanatory ambit of both theories and attests to the co-existence of different forms of autonomous power wielded by the Commission within the framework of the OMC.

Both, the European Union legal order and the World Trade Organization law represent important examples of the supranational legal system. This thesis focuses on their mutual relationship, in concrete through the perspective of the EU law. It aims to analyse how the European law approaches the WTO rules and which effects are granted to them. Introductory chapter provides the reader with a wider perspective of the examined topic dealing with relationship of the European law and the public international law in general. It presents the historical development as well as the current status of the relationship. Attention is brought to relevant provisions of the EU law and related case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union. It also outlines a theoretical background of the issue. Chapter Two focuses in a more specific way on the position of WTO norms in the EU legal order. Firstly, it briefly defines the WTO law while reflecting the specifics in regard of the EU. Afterwards, it is examined, which effects are granted to the WTO rules in the European law, particularly through the reasoning of the CJEU. The last chapter puts the results of the analysis into a wider context and sketches the background of the topic at hand. That provides inputs for a final evaluation of the current status and an...

This submitted dissertation thesis provides a constitutional comparative analysis of the European Union and the European federations, primarily the Federal Republic of Germany, Swiss Confederation, Republic of Austria and also basic features of the United States of America. I will attempt to determine whether EU is already a federation, or how much closer it has shifted to a federative type political arrangement. In this dissertation thesis I will try to methodically analyze, which characteristics of a federal state the European Union already meets and if we can put the EU under the category of federations, confederations or international organizations. To achieve better understanding of the context of this dissertation thesis, a comparative analysis of the European Federations is studied from historical, sociological and political science perspective. However the main emphasis here is focused on the analysis of the constitutional and legal arrangements. The first part of this thesis starts from the scrutiny of the origin and development of the theory of federalism in historical perspective, followed by determining the concept of federalism and federation in constitutional terms. Subsequently provided here are definitions of various types of federations and the reasons for their creation and...