Achievements Of Europe Research Articles

Different together: 25 years of European success

Ulrike Beilenhoff reflects on the ongoing achievements of Europe's professional organisation for nurses working in gastrointestinal endoscopy and related fields

Çevrenin Gözünden Bir Sultanın Portresi; Yıldırım Bayezid

The Portrait of a Sultan in the Eyes of the Periphery; Yildirim Bayezid Abstract: Sultan Bayezid I (Yildirim Bayezid) was one of the most influential sultans, who shaped the state administration in every respect. His practises and decisions mapped out the route for the ways in which state would be governed. His reign was a period of many firsts in terms of militaristic and political developments. Despite his great achievements in Europe and Anatolia, and his decisions, which strengthened the state structure, the way the sources mentioned him is mind blowing. He, his wife and the people around him were all harshly criticized. No other Ottoman Sultan was criticized like him. As the first sultan of the transition process from beylik to statehood, how was Sultan Bayezid I seen in the eyes of nomadic Turks (‘Konar-gocer’) and neighboring Turkish beys? Was he someone who paid a heavy price for founding a state, or was he a bad ruler who deserved everything happened to him? This study is especially based on the unofficial records about him. Through these sources, it will be possible to see how the bodies constituted the periphery viewed the Sultan Bayezid I and their reasons.

Charlemagne's summit canal: an early medieval hydro-engineering project for passing the Central European Watershed.

The Central European Watershed divides the Rhine-Main catchment and the Danube catchment. In the Early Medieval period, when ships were important means of transportation, Charlemagne decided to link both catchments by the construction of a canal connecting the Schwabian Rezat and the Altmühl rivers. The artificial waterway would provide a continuous inland navigation route from the North Sea to the Black Sea. The shortcut is known as Fossa Carolina and represents one of the most important Early Medieval engineering achievements in Europe. Despite the important geostrategic relevance of the construction it is not clarified whether the canal was actually used as a navigation waterway. We present new geophysical data and in situ findings from the trench fills that prove for the first time a total length of the constructed Carolingian canal of at least 2300 metres. We have evidence for a conceptual width of the artificial water course between 5 and 6 metres and a water depth of at least 60 to 80 cm. This allows a crossing way passage of Carolingian cargo scows with a payload of several tons. There is strong evidence for clayey to silty layers in the trench fills which reveal suspension load limited stillwater deposition and, therefore, the evidence of former Carolingian and post-Carolingian ponds. These findings are strongly supported by numerous sapropel layers within the trench fills. Our results presented in this study indicate an extraordinarily advanced construction level of the known course of the canal. Here, the excavated levels of Carolingian trench bottoms were generally sufficient for the efficient construction of stepped ponds and prove a final concept for a summit canal. We have evidence for the artificial Carolingian dislocation of the watershed and assume a sophisticated Early Medieval hydrological engineering concept for supplying the summit of the canal with adequate water.

The Bologna Process and Its Achievements in Europe 1999–2007

This article deals with the Bologna Process (BP), which since its creation in 1999 has deeply influenced European higher education: What is it? How did it come into being? How far has it come? The BP is both a political phenomenon and a reform taking place in European higher education. As a political phenomenon it consists of a series of multilateral conferences in which nearly all European countries participate, both European Union (EU) and non-EU members. The BP has produced a governance structure of its own, in which the EU is also engaged through the membership of the European Commission. As a transformation (harmonization) of European higher education systems, the pan-European BP moves towards a common, more or less Anglo-Saxon, model based on, for instance, the introduction of a two-cycle structure (Bachelor and Master), a system of comparable credits, cooperation in quality assurance, and the promotion of student and staff mobility. The BP can be analyzed from an International Relations perspective, which regards it as an international policy process with, on the one hand, decision making resulting in common positions and, on the other hand, an implementation mode based on adaptation of national regulations and practices. This mode includes national reports that, through a feedback process, inform the BP about its performance. In 2005 and 2007 the BP's stocktaking procedure resulted in two assessments of national progress. Although the BP is not yet an intergovernmental organization, it is expected to become one.

Serbian music criticism in the first half of the twentieth century: Its canon, its method and its educational role

Serbian music criticism became a subject of professional music critics at the beginning of the twentieth century, after being developed by music amateurs throughout the whole previous century. The Serbian Literary Magazine (1901- 1914, 1920-1941), the forum of the Serbian modernist writers in the early 1900s, had a crucial role in shaping the Serbian music criticism and essayistics of the modern era. The Serbian elite musicians wrote for the SLM and therefore it reflects the most important issues of the early twentieth century Serbian music. The SLM undertook the mission of educating its readers. The music culture of the Serbian public was only recently developed. The public needed an introduction into the most important features of the European music, as well as developing its own taste in music. This paper deals with two aspects of the music criticism in the SLM, in view of its educational role: the problem of virtuosity and the method used by music critics in this magazine. The aesthetic canon of the SLM was marked by decisively negative attitude towards the virtuosity. Mainly concerned by educating the Serbian music public in the spirit of the highest music achievements in Europe, the music writers of the SLM criticized both domestic and foreign performers who favoured virtuosity over the 'essence' of music. Therefore, Niccol? Paganini, Franz Liszt, and even Peter Tchaikowsky with his Violin concerto became the subject of the magazine's criticism. However their attitude towards the interpreters with both musicality and virtuoso technique was always positive. That was evident in the writings on Jan Kubel?k. This educational mission also had its effect on the structure of critique writings in the SLM. In their wish to inform the Serbian public on the European music (which they did very professionally), the critics gave much more information on biographies, bibliographies and style of the European composers, than they valued the interpretation itself. That was by far the weakest aspect of music criticism in the SLM. Although the music criticism in the SLM was professional and analytic one, it often used the literary style and sometimes even profane expressions in describing the artistic value and performance, more than it was necessary for the genre of music criticism. The music critics of the SLM set high aesthetic standards before the Serbian music public, and therefore the virtuosity was rejected by them. At the same time, these highly professional critics did not possess a certain level of introspection that would allow them to abstain from using sometimes empty and unconvincing phrases instead of exact formulations suitable for the professional music criticism. In that respect, music critics in the SLM did not match the standards they themselves set before both the performers and the public in Serbia.

REFLECTIONS ON GENDER MAINSTREAMING: AN EXAMPLE OF FEMINIST ECONOMICS IN ACTION?

This article reviews the experience of gender mainstreaming within the European Employment Strategy – an experience that merits evaluation not only for what it has and has not done for fostering equal opportunities in Europe, but also for the implicit lessons it provides in applying feminist economics in practice. The experience has been mixed: though the argument that increasing women's employment is critical to the achievement of Europe's aspirations for a higher employment rate has been widely accepted, there is a much weaker and more fragile commitment to improving the quality of work available to women. In part, this limited impact reflects the continuing gender blindness of most employment policy analysis and development; there is a clear need for continued parallel development of feminist theory and analysis and more practical experiments in integrating a gender perspective into policy programs.

Conference Report - Europe's Constitutionalization as an Inspiration for Global Governance? Some Viennese Conference Impressions

“New Foundations for European and Global Governance? The Achievements of Europe's Constitutionalization.” This was the title of the two-day conference organized by the European Community Studies Association (ECSA) of Austria and the Europainstitut of the University of Economics and Business Administration. The meeting was set in the beautiful atmosphere of the Banqueting Hall of the Bank of Austria building in the centre of Vienna on 29 and 30 November 2004.

European Scientific Cooperation and Research Infrastructures: Past Tendencies and Future Prospects

Since the 1960s, Europe has developed adiversified network of agencies and institutesin parallel with the political dynamics of theTreaty of Rome (1957). Recently, the EuropeanCommission has launched a debate about thefuture of European R&D policy. This has, inturn, highlighted the importance of researchinfrastructures in European science. Thispaper discusses the achievements of Europe'smultilateral approach in this domain, andsuggests guidelines for future policy.

Borders and borderlands as linchpins for regional integration in Africa: Lessons of the European experience

The purpose of this article is to draw attention to an international economic integration strategy which, while still being ignored by policy makers and planners in Africa, has in recent decades gained in importance and achievements in Europe and is currently being actively recommended for the adoption of governments in North America. Rather than keeping rigidly to the approach whereby development is initiated from the top, usually through the operation of sovereignty-preconditioned mutinational intergovernmental organizations, the new strategy is the effective utilization of micro- or grassroots- level initiatives and their policy potentials; it operates within the framework of the more limited inter-governmental organizations in which local or provincial authorities along international boundaries play key roles as agents of international cooperation. In this new context, the unit of action is not whole continents or their main subregions, as in the case of the more familiar-type multilateral intergovernmental organizations, it is, instead, the border regions or borderlands defined characteristically as the sub-national areas whose economic and social life is directly and significantly affected by proximity to an international boundary (Hansen 1981:19).

Invisible Barriers

take invisible barriers very seriously, but unlike many others, I do I not think that the Japanese government is responsible for most of them. What keeps American companies from doing better in Japan is a broad and complex issue. It requires that we examine the Japanese marketplace and ask what it takes for foreign firms to succeed. For the past twenty or thirty years Japan has been one of the most dynamic nations, if not the most dynamic, in the world. Growth rates have been high over a very long stretch, consistently stronger than comparable countries in Europe or North America. The future looks equally bright even though growth has moderated. The oil-exporting countries have also enjoyed a very impressive statistical profile in terms of growth and apparent dynamics, but whereas they essentially have been selling their current assets, the Japanese have been building value into their system. As a marketplace Japan grew as rapidly as its economy, but only resources, food, and advanced technology products have been imported at equivalent rates. If we take away the high-tech, the U.S. exports to Japan look very much like those of a classic colonial nation to its industrial ruler. The record is quite dismal when we look at the American performance in the Japanese marketplace. Compared to American business achievements in Europe or South America, we have gained neither

Henry James and “An International Episode”

In their introduction to A bibliography of Henry James Leon Edel and Dan H. Laurence rightly single out the year 1878 as an example of James's astonishing literary productivity. In that year were published French Poets and Novelists, the revised Watch and Ward, Theodolinde (later to be called Rose-Agathe), Daisy Miller, The Europeans, “Longstaff's Marriage” and an International Episode, together with thirty-one articles, reviews and notes, the majority of which were published in the Nation, although James did not become their regular London correspondent until September, 1878. Throughout the seventies James, consciously or unconsciously, had been increasingly preoccupied in his fiction with the “international subject”, and his letter to America also testified to his growing enchantment with Europe. The decision that he made for Europe in 1881 had in one sense been made several years earlier; in his novels, short stories and articles James may be seen constantly weighing two civilizations in the scales of his own artistic purposes, setting off the achievement of Europe against the promise of America. In writing his biography of Hawthorne in 1879 James must have realised that his own problems were in many ways similar to those which had confronted Hawthorne in America.