Despite considerable progress on political and economic convergence over the last decade, financial structures of individual countries within the EU remain diverse. This book considers the future prospects of the banking industry in the context of enlargement, application of the IFRS and a potential new member country, Turkey.

Social Mobility in Europe is the most comprehensive study to date of trends in intergenerational social mobility. It uses data from 11 European countries covering the last 30 years of the twentieth century to analyze differences between countries and changes through time.
The findings call into question several long-standing views about social mobility. We find a growing similarity between countries in their class structures and rates of absolute mobility: in other words, the countries of Europe are now more alike in their flows between class origins and destinations than they were thirty years ago. However, differences between countries in social fluidity (that is, the relative chances, between people of different class origins, of being found in given class destinations) show no reduction and so there is no evidence supporting theories of modernization which predict such convergence. Our results also contradict the long-standing Featherman Jones Hauser hypothesis of a basic similarity in social fluidity in all industrial societies 'with a market economy and a nuclear family system'. There are considerable differences between countries like Israel and Sweden, where societal openness is very marked, and Italy, France, and Germany, where social fluidity rates are low. Similarly, there is a substantial difference between, for example, the Netherlands in the 1970s (which was quite closed) and in the 1990s, when it ranks among the most open societies.
Mobility tables reflect many underlying processes and this makes it difficult to explain mobility and fluidity or to provide policy prescriptions. Nevertheless, those countries in which fluidity increased over the last decades of the twentieth century had not only succeeded in reducing class inequalities in educational attainment but had also restricted the degree to which, among people with the same level of education, class background affected their chances of gaining access to better class destinations.

This book examines selected pertinent topics on issues relating to current and future EU developments. In its initial sections, the book focuses on an array of wide ranging micro (agriculture, industry and competition) and macro (EMU, regional convergence and enlargement) issues. A final section is reserved for discussion on Britain's future relationship with the EU. In particular, the book posits possible alternative strategies (e.g. NAFTA membership and policy frameworks) and examines these from both a theoretical and empirical perspective.

The Application of EU Law in the New Member States - Brave New World is a unique volume, providing readers with an in-depth analysis of EU-related legal developments in the twelve new Member States of the European Union. As anticipated, the new Member States have experienced considerable challenges in the transposition and application of EU law. The first five years have also brought a series of controversial decisions of constitutional and supreme courts on the principle of the supremacy of EC law and the position of third pillar legislation in national legal systems. There is also a growing body of highly interesting decisions of lower courts, proving that EU law is slowly making its way and its effectiveness should not be at risk in the long term. Having passed the phase of shyness, domestic courts in at least a few of those countries have already started to send references for the preliminary rulings to the European Court of Justice. Despite some early disappointments, the new references are, in most cases, admissible and very interesting from the substantive point of view. A purely technocratic approach may immediately lead to a conclusion that all these efforts are not sufficient and that the newcomers are underperforming. However, if one takes into account the breadth of the reforms and changes those countries have undergone in the past two decades the conclusion may be different. The emerging picture is quite impressive when economic, political and social factors are taken into account. The countries of Central and Eastern Europe, which had managed to escape the brain draining ruthless Soviet empire, have spent the last twenty years in a deep, multidimensional transformation. Membership of the European Union is yet another challenge they are faced with. One should not think of those countries as children of a lesser God, but rather a Brave New World negotiating its way in the contemporary Europe. This book is important reading for academics, practitioners and civil servants in the EU Member States and candidate countries. Dr Adam Lazowski is Reader in Law at the School of Law, University of Westminster, London, UK.

A novel explanation of how EU member states overcome their divergent preferences to reach agreement on common foreign policies, with fourteen in-depth case studies covering diplomatic and security issues, enlargement, trade, development and environmental protection.

"Regional cooperation has become a distinctive feature of the Balkans, an area known for its turbulent politics. Exploring the origins and dynamics of this change, this book highlights the transformative power of the EU and other international actors"--Provided by publisher.

Drawing upon the disciplines of politics, anthropology, psychoanalysis, aesthetics and cinema studies, Salgo presents a new way of looking at the "art of European unification." The official visual narratives of the European Union constitute the main object of inquiry - the iconography of the new series of euro banknotes and the videos through which the supranational elite seek to generate "collective effervescence," allow for a European carnival to take place, and prompt citizens to pledge allegiance to the sacred dogma of the "ever closer union," thereby strengthening the mythical sources of the organization's legitimacy. The author seeks to illustrate how and why the federalist utopia turned into a political soteriology after the outbreak of the 2008 crisis.

Many of the central issues faced by EU Foreign Policy - such as state fragility, illegal migration and environmental degradation - are challenges of global development. For European policymakers the increasing importance of development as an external relations priority will demand the refinement of existing instruments and the testing of new approaches. This book addresses debates on how the EU manages various modes of governance in development policymaking, its engagement with other global actors and the effectiveness of its policy formulation and implementation. Given the restrictions of policymaking in an environment characterised by uncertainty, difficulty and complexity, the contributions to this volume explore decision-making and implementation across a wide range of issue-areas with the objective of highlighting choices that could improve the coherence, and thus the effectiveness, of European policy for global development.

Decisive rejection by French and Dutch voters in 2005 forced the EU to abandon the Constitutional Treaty agreed the previous year. Yet by the end of the 2007, contrary to all expectations and after an intergovernmental conference essentially devoid of substantive negotiation, EU leaders had agreed and signed the Treaty of Lisbon containing the bulk of the Constitutional Treaty's substantive reforms. How did this latest treaty come about? Why did events move so quickly in 2007? Who were the key actors and what methods did they use to enable a treaty to be drawn up and agreed in such a short period of time? This book explores the unique process that saw EU leaders hastily agree a lengthy and detailed mandate for the intergovernmental conference. In doings so, it highlights the pivotal roles played by the German Council Presidency and key institutional actors in paving the way for and securing agreement among EU leaders on the new treaty.

It was logical to expect that the European Economic and Monetary Union would lead ineluctably to an autonomous European defense; the very size of the European Union seems to demand it. The EU eventually will reach the point where its economic and demographic weight will far exceed that of the United States. Can it not be expected too that the EU will seek to make this weight felt internationally? Cogan tracks the halting creation of an independent European military structure, a third way between national armies and ATO, since the Iron Curtain's fall.

With the Cold War's end and subsequent western engagements in Central and Eastern Europe, it is no longer a question of whether NATO and the EU compare; they now must relate. They have to coordinate their planning and force postures so as to avoid duplication of resources and efforts. Although NATO's integrated command structure theoretically was an anomaly with the end of the Cold War, it nevertheless turned out to be the case in Bosnia, and later Kosovo, that nothing was possible until the Americans intervened. The virtue of integrated command -- American participation and know-how -- was once again seen as crucially important, despite the increasingly anachronistic deficit of sovereignty for Western Europe in defense matters. In the long run, Europe's economic power must be balanced by its military and diplomatic might.

The future of European Monetary Union (EMU) stands as one of the most important economic issues of the era. The author argues that in the event of macroeconomic shocks, rather than acting as a cohesive force, EMU could give rise to disunity. As EMU is not an optimal currency area, asymmetric shocks affecting each country differently could be critical to its future. The success of EMU depends upon the ability of institutions in the EU to satisfy the monetary and fiscal policy demands of sufficient numbers of national constituents, interest groups, and multinational corporations. This book employs principles from public choice to analyze the EU institutions that participate in the monetary policy making process of EMU and assesses whether they have the mechanisms to cope with asymmetric macroeconomic shocks. In particular, it examines the European Council, Council of Ministers, European Commission, European Parliament and the European Central Bank. This book provides an invaluable critique of the EMU plan and will be of interest to scholars of European economics, macroeconomics and public choice.

This book provides an analysis of the European Neighbourhood Policy by focusing on the impact of norms of justice and home affairs on EU external relations. Drawing on the literature of new governance it designs a framework for analysis which clarifies the contents, tools and processes of the external dimension of EU justice and home affairs.

"Understanding Conflict between Russia and the EU" addresses the conflictual issues in EU-Russian relations and presents an innovative theory for the understanding of their emergence. Drawing on up-to-date research data, the author argues that conflicts in EU-Russian relations are generated by the clash of principles of state sovereignty and international integration, which characterize the policies of both sides.

Before the latest EU enlargement, substantial changes in the integration process were predicted as a result of the accession of 10 new Member States, with some forecasting cataclysmic consequences. This book, one of the first ex post assessments of EU enlargement, provides evidence to the contrary, while also providing examples in which the new Members have been able to influence EU policy output with their liberal attitudes on economic and social policy. This book will be of great interest to EU policymakers, including officials of European institutions whose primary concerns are 'policy adjustment' and EU external relations. It will also be of interest to academics and students specialising in EU affairs, especially European integration, organisation, governance and public policy.

In an EU increasingly worried about the security of its citizens and its territory, how should the European Parliament make policy decisions in these areas? This study investigates how the empowerment of the European Parliament has led it to abandon its defence of civil liberties in order to become a full partner in inter-institutional negotiations

A collection of essays based on an international conference in 1989. The essays examine both the historical dimension of the European idea and the problems of national and transnational identity confronting European integration in the 1990s. Chapters discuss post-modern Europe, Europe and Japan, the European identity, political parties, contemporary feminist movements, socialism, Austrian identity and an essay on Mitterand.

The book analyses the changing roles of international agencies, governmental bodies, non-governmental organisations, and local communities around major road-building environmental impact assessment processes in order to examine whether the influence of the European Union has transformed environmental governance in Bosnia-Herzegovina and in Serbia.

The central concern ofThe Europeanization of National Polities? is to know and describe how far EU 'legal' citizens feel that they are actually part of a functioning European political system and how much they think of themselves as EU citizens. The authors report evidence of the levels of European identity, sense of EU representation and preferences for EU policy scope among European mass publics, which are the main dimensions of EU citizenship. The analysis uses a new comparative dataset on EU attitudes derived from a survey in 16 EU countries plus Serbia in 2007. This study shows that, despite initial expectations, levels of European identity, sense of EU representation, and preferences for EU policy scope among European mass publics did not display a strong trend in any particular direction during the period between 1975 and 2007. However, there are interesting variations in these measures of EU citizenship both across individuals and across countries that are described and explained by reference to a series of relevant hypotheses. The book pays particular attention to the inter-linkages among the three dimensions of citizenship itself. EU identity, representation and scope are all reciprocally related, but the representation dimension is key to the development of a generalised sense of a sense of citizenship at the EU level. This in turn places a significant premium on the need to address popular doubts about the EU's 'democratic deficit'.

The author explores the practice and effects of the European Union's democracy promotion efforts vis-a-vis its authoritarian neighbours in the Middle East and North Africa. She argues that the same set of factors facilitated both international cooperation of authoritarian regimes on democracy promotion and their persistence during the Arab Spring.

Shows that networks in European integration governance were not a phenomenon that developed in the 1980s out of a 'hollowing out' of the nation-states in the 1970s. Based throughout on newly accessible sources, the authors discuss various networks and show how they contributed to constitutional choices and policy decisions after World War II.

Differentiation was at first not perceived as a threat to the European project, but rather as a tool to promote further integration. Today, more EU policies than ever are marked by concentric circles of integration and a lack of uniform application. As the EU faces increasingly existential challenges, this timely book considers whether the proliferation of mechanisms of flexibility has contributed to this newly fragile state or whether, to the contrary, differentiation has been fundamental to integration despite the heterogeneity of national interests and priorities. Written by emerging and established experts in the field, the chapters examine the present and future of differentiation in EU law. Part I covers general institutional aspects, with contributors examining the nature and characteristics of the various institutional and extra-institutional forms of differentiation. Part II takes a policy-oriented perspective, focussing on areas of EU law and policy in which differentiated integration is prevalent or particularly intriguing. This includes Economic and Monetary Union, the internal market, justice and home affairs, and foreign policy. Differentiated integration is now a defining feature of the EU polity, with the potential to impact almost every facet of EU regulation. This book will be essential reading for students and academics in EU law or anyone interested in the future of EU integration. Contributors include: V. Borger, M. Dawson, M. de Visser, B. De Witte, W. Devroe, A. Durana, N. El-Enany, C. Fasone, E. Ferran, E. Herlin-Karnell, C. Herrmann, S. Kingston, P. Koutrakos, A. Ott, S. Peers, D. Thym, P. Van Cleynenbreugel, S. Van den Bogaert, A.P. van der Mei, E. Vos, M. Weimer

Mutual Recognition (MR) implies that each Member State is free to use the standards for production it prefers but cannot inhibit the import from other Member States lawfully using other standards, unless justified by emergency reasons. The home country rule then prevails on the host country. Barriers to entry diminish, competition rises in the internal market. This collection looks at a number of aspects of MR, including why its importance cannot be understood outside the general practice of free movement and how some elements of MR already emerge in the skilled labour market of professionals.

Based on interviews with some of the EU's most important leaders, this bookis designed to probe and elucidate what they think. The goal of the book is to find out whether they believe that the current period in the history of the European Union constitutes a 'crisis, ' and if so, what kind of crisis is it?

This book provides a comprehensive review of relations between China and the EU from the perspectives of politics, economy and culture in order to provide a better understanding of the development of the China-EU Strategic Partnership over the past ten years and to explore its future direction. It goes on to discuss China-EU relations against the backdrop of global governance, as well as China's relations with some of the EU member states. The final part of the report presents a comparative analysis of China-EU relations and EU-US relations. This book will help readers to better understand the status quo and to predict China-EU relations in the near future.