The European Union’s external action: views from the outside

Research summary : We explore the effect of the interplay between a firm's external and internal actions on market value in the context of corporate social responsibility ( CSR ). Specifically, drawing from the neo‐institutional theory, we distinguish between external and internal CSR actions and argue that they jointly contribute to the accumulation of intangible firm resources and are therefore associated with better market value. Importantly, though, we find that, on average, firms undertake more internal than external CSR actions, and we theorize that a wider gap between external and internal actions is negatively associated with market value. We confirm our hypotheses empirically, using the market‐value equation and a sample comprising 1,492 firms in 33 countries from 2002 to 2008. Finally, we discuss implications for future research and practice . Managerial summary : Companies often accumulate intangible assets by taking internally and externally oriented CSR actions. Contrary to popular beliefs, the data show that they undertake more internal than external ones: firms do more and communicate less. How does a potential gap (i.e., a misalignment) between internal and external CSR actions affect a firm's market value? We find that although together (the sum of) internal and external actions are positively associated with market value, a wider gap has negative implications. In other words, firms do not realize the full benefits of their internal actions when such actions are not externally communicated to key stakeholders, and to the investment community in particular. This negative association with market value is particularly salient in CSR ‐intensive and the natural resources and extractives industries . Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This contribution aims to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the EU's external action in pursuing holistic environmental protection outside its borders. First the ambition of the EU's external environmental action will be illustrated, in its objective to support environmental multilateralism and contribute to shape a holistic approach in international environmental law, in light of the Treaty requirement of environmental integration (Article 11 TFEU) and the emerging international principle of mutual supportiveness. Then attention will be drawn to the complexity of the EU's external environmental action, by looking at the plethora of external relations tools used by the EU to achieve its global environmental objectives. The central part of the paper will assess the legitimacy of EU external environmental action against the international environmental principle of common but differentiated responsibility, taking recent EU initiatives on sustainable forest management and biofuels as case studies. The conclusions will point to promising approaches to ensure that EU external environmental action fully respects EU and international law.

Despite the unification of the EU legal order, the merger of external action objectives and the creation of hybrid coordination structures, the dichotomy between the CFSP and non-CFSP categories of EU external action has been maintained in the Lisbon Treaty. This article considers the legal implications of this dichotomy in the sphere of EU external security provision. It will be argued that the specificity of CFSP instruments, Member State preferences for a legal basis that provides them with veto power in decision-making procedures, the absence of judicial review from the realm of CFSP, and the two-way 'non-contamination clause' of Article 40 TEU effectively stand in the way of 'mixing' EU foreign policy measures in the field of external security action and thus hinder a comprehensive approach to conflict prevention, crisis management and peacebuilding. New inter-institutional clashes over the choice of the proper legal basis in EU external security action have already been brought before the ECJ. This article argues that, in view of the Lisbon Treaty's merger of EU foreign policy objectives and revised non-contamination clause, the objectives-based 'centre of gravity' approach developed by the Court in its jurisprudence will have to be recalibrated in order to reconcile the quest for the proper legal basis in one of the EU Treaties and the comprehensive approach to EU security provision.

In the pursuit of the objectives of the external action of the European Union the Lisbon Treaty calls for consistency between the different areas of EU external action and between these and its other policies. Following the entry into force of the Treaty and the new institutional context it created, the EU has both the increased potential and the ambition – by drawing on the full range of its instruments and resources – to make its external action more consistent, more effective and more strategic. The ideas and principles governing the comprehensive approach have yet to become, systematically, the guiding principles for EU external action across all areas, in particular in relation to conflict prevention and crisis resolution.The European institutions sets out a number of concrete steps that the EU, collectively, is taking towards an increasingly comprehensive approach in its external relations policies and action. This covers all stages of the cycle of conflict or other external crises; through early warning and preparedness, conflict prevention, crisis response and management to early recovery, stabilisation and peace-building in order to help countries getting back on track towards sustainable long-term development.

The article presents the results of the study, which is a continuation of the author’s previous research. This paper considers more complex problems in identifying nonlinear systems with periodic external actions. The article shows that the previously proposed method is applicable when the periods of external actions in the same differential equation may differ. At the same time, the ratio between the values of the periods can be both integer and fractional. The conditions under which this is possible are formulated. These conditions are based on the theorem proved in the previous work. Part of this study is devoted to the problem of identification of a chaotic system with an external non-sinusoidal action. To create such an external action, a function with three harmonic components was used. A numerical experiment confirmed the effectiveness of the algorithm in this case as well.

PurposeCompanies' voices on social justice issues, such as racial justice, gender equality and LGBTQ rights, have become increasingly prevalent. To contribute to current knowledge around corporate communication on social justice, this study aims to understand the differential effects of three types of corporate social justice statements – symbolic statements, substantive statements on external actions and substantive statements on internal actions.Design/methodology/approachA between-subjects experiment was conducted (N = 502), with different types of statements as the independent variable and corporate reputation and perceived corporate relationship-building efforts as outcomes. The three dimensions of perceived authenticity (i.e. perceived benevolence, transparency and commitment) were included as parallel mediators.FindingsThis study found that compared to symbolic statements, substantive statements on external or internal actions generated higher perceived authenticity on at least one of the three dimensions, which in turn, led to a more positive corporate reputation and perceived relationship-building efforts. Substantive statements on external actions and on internal actions also had differential indirect effects on the outcomes through different dimensions of perceived authenticity. Partisanship did not have a moderating effect on the mediating effects of perceived authenticity.Practical implicationsThis study highlights the importance of authenticity in corporate social justice communication and reveals practical implications about how businesses should communicate with publics when engaging in social justice issues.Originality/valueThis study is among the earliest efforts to examine the effects of different corporate social justice statements. It contributes to the existing literature by demonstrating the impacts of perceived authenticity on publics' evaluation of companies and opens up an avenue for future research to further examine various authenticity dimensions.

In contrast to direct investigations and the study of nucleation and growth of stress-corrosion flaws under different external actions, statistical analysis allows one to reveal the state of a gas main and the dependence of the stress-corrosion process on different external actions. The advantage of this approach is the ability to study the actual defects of a pipeline under operating conditions; the objectiveness of the results is determined by the representativeness of a sample of the database, which rests upon a broad spectrum of external and internal actions that are revealed by intrapipe nondestructive testing (IPNT) and the possibility of accomplishing the comparative assessment of the significance of the influence factors.

Functioning of hydro-impulse systems, usually involves the existence of some periodic external action, that determines the type of model. In this case they use, as a mathematical model, non-autonomous system of ordinary differential equations. Sometimes external action information is incomplete or absent. This may complicate the modeling task. For example, in the operation of hydro-pulse systems, not only their constant parameters but also the type of external action may be unknown. This study is devoted to the identification of a model of a hydro-impulse system in the form of a non-autonomous system of ordinary differential equations. The general form of the equations and one of the observed variables of the system are known, while the constant coefficients of the equations are unknown. We consider the identification problem when we know almost nothing about external action. Namely, we suppose that only its periodic character is known, and its form, period, and phase shift are unknown. Such a problem is obviously more complicated than a typical one, when the external action and the output are completely known, and only the constant coefficients of the equations of the system are to be found. As it is known, for some parameter sets and periodic external action, the observed variable may not be periodic, which makes it impossible to determine the period and other parameters of external oscillations in a simple way. Therefore, identification of the external action is also part of the formulated task. To solve this problem we use algorithm that allows to determine the model parameters with utilizing a known observed variable and incomplete information on the external action. Moreover, the observed variable can be either regular or chaotic.

In this paper we advocate a new initial allocation mechanism for a tradable pollution permit market. We outline a Permit Allocation Contest (PAC) that distributes permits to firms based on their rank relative to other firms. This ranking is achieved by ordering firms based on an observable 'external action' where the external action is an activity or characteristic of the firm that is independent of their choice of emissions in the tradeable permit market. We show that this mechanism efficiently allocates permits and, as a result, the tradeable permit market is cost-effective. We determine the symmetric equilibrium strategy of each firm in choosing their external action and find the choice is influenced by the firm's cost structure and the regulator's choice of permit allocation schedule (distribution of permits to the market). Furthermore, we investigate the factors that determine the regulator's choice of optimal permit allocation schedules.

The European Union’s (EU) portfolio of external activities is expanding in important ways to include a diverse range of policy areas, which has given rise to the notion of “external action plus”. In practical terms, this assortment of policy areas may be linked and interact in ways that open opportunities for more effective, coherent and sustainable external action. Given the importance of these developments, Work Package 6 of the ENGAGE project, focusing on External Action Plus, has undertaken a targeted investigation into the ways in which external action plus policies are linked and can be coordinated to contribute to EU external engagement in crisis, but also non-crisis, situations. The analysis of six policy areas with varying legal competence – trade, development, humanitarian aid, competition, climate change and health – reveals the various internal and external factors that matter for linkages and helps to inform policy recommendations. Two central policy issues that arise from the analysis of internal and external factors are the importance of coordination and the role of crisis. When dealing with the wide array of external action plus policy areas, coordination mechanisms are required for coherence. Simultaneously, as external drivers of change, crises create windows of opportunity for linkages to develop across policy areas. To address the need for crisis coordination and non-crisis coordination across its external action plus policies, the EU should address the different legal bases for external action, consider the modalities of cross-sector coordination via the EEAS and within EU Delegations, improve how it tracks and oversees policy mainstreaming (as well as seek lessons from the experience with gender mainstreaming), and develop further the “Team Europe” approach to address both crisis and non-crisis situations.

A Permit Allocation Contest for a Tradable Pollution Permit Market

This Working Paper explores the current legal basis and governance structures of the European Union’s (EU) “external action plus”. In our understanding, the notion of “external action plus” not only includes the foreign, security and defence policy, trade, sanctions policy, development cooperation or humanitarian aid but also EU sectoral policies with an external dimension. In line with this definition, this Working Paper presents both the traditional external action areas of common commercial policy, sanctions policy and development cooperation and humanitarian aid, as well as the external dimension of some internal policy areas, including competition, health and environment. Despite several Treaty amendments, the EU’s external actions are still fragmented and competences are scattered throughout the two Treaties. The list of common objectives under Article 21(2) of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) or the dual role of the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (HR/VP) are clear attempts to overcome the “bipolarity” of EU external actions. The continued existence of different legal bases that enable the Union to act externally still represents a significant challenge for EU policymakers.

Earthquakes result from the development of a dynamic instability of the stick-slip type in a system of faults in the Earth’s crust, when the elastic energy accumulated during a long smooth motion of fragments exhibits rapid relaxation when the stresses reach a critical level. The statistics of dynamic instabilities has been studied in a model tribological system demonstrating an analogous behavior. A distribution function of the magnitude of acceleration, which arises upon slippage of a sample modeling a fragment of the Earth’s crust, covers several orders of magnitude. This is analogous to the statistics of real earthquakes obeying the Gutenberg-Richter law. The possibility of modifying the model “earthquake” statistics by means of an external vibrational action upon the system has been studied: the external action was controlled so as to decrease the probability of strong (high-acceleration) jumps at the expense of weak jumps, thus converting the displacement dynamics into a creep regime. It is established that the “earthquake” statistics in most of the tribological couples studied can be modified in a desired manner under the action of vibrations.

Optimizing the European Union’s external action requires a comprehensive approach to linking relevant EU instruments and policies to the development of interaction and practical arrangements for cooperation with third countries. An extremely important component concerns the interaction between the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) and external action, whose dynamics have undergone notable developments in recent years. The substantial progress made in the development of an integrated formula for promoting external action validates the central assumption of the present study that European cooperation in the field of defence tends to become one of the important supporting elements of external action. Starting from this assumption, another direction of in-depth analysis in the following pages concerns the ambivalent relationship between the financial support that external action receives through the new Multiannual Framework 2021-2027 and the concrete initiatives developed under the aegis of CSDP with military applicability.

This short Article draws together some conclusions based on the contributions to the Special Section “The New Frontiers of EU Administrative Law: Is there a Gap in EU External Relations?”. It concludes first that external action is a rich field in the application of EU administrative law. External policies are implemented and given effect through legal instruments and legally-prescribed procedures (including financial procedures) developed and controlled by administrative law and the Court of Justice. Second, as a result of mapping the types of administrative action in external policy fields we conclude that while the pattern of administrative action is shared with EU action more generally some distinctive types of external executive action can be identified, and external action demonstrates some distinctive qualities resulting in part from the multiplicity of actors and fora (including external) involved. Third, we conclude that despite very broad discretion in the implementation of policies the EU institutions are subject to administrative and legal constraints, including through the development of procedures in legislation, non-binding instruments and administrative practice. The Court has proved willing both to enforce procedural rules laid down in legislation and to require compliance with procedural principles such as the duty of care.