EU Nations Research Articles

Posting and agency work in British construction and hospitality: the role of regulation in differentiating the experiences of migrants

This article engages with IHRM debates on the transnational regulation of labour, exploring how migration policy and work fragmentation affect employment dynamics in multi-employer settings. It draws from two qualitative case studies on migrant workers in British hospitality and construction, focusing on regulatory outcomes of the Agency Worker Directive, the Posting of Workers Directive and the Tier System of immigration. The findings illustrate how workers’ experiences are critically shaped by the combination of their migration and employment statuses in the context of firms’ restructuring strategies and transnational labour mobility. Temporal employment constraints and exclusion from equal treatment linked to migrant status, combined with labour subcontracting across the sectors, produce intensification of work, inferior terms and conditions, greater insecurity and dependence for migrant temporary workers. The main argument is that increasing differentiation between categories of migrant workers goes beyond the simple distinction of EU and Third Country Nationals, and is produced by the exceptional regulatory spaces into which these migrants are locked. Highlighting the combined influence of migration regulation and management restructuring practices, the article proposes a re-theorisation of IHRM that includes migration perspectives into the study of management changes and labour regulation.

Emissions in a decarbonised economy? Global lessons from a carbon footprint analysis of Iceland

Decarbonisation of stationary energy supply, particularly electricity grids, is the current focus of climate change mitigation policy. However, studies have suggested that this narrow policy focus is insufficient to achieve meaningful global emissions reductions. Using Iceland as a case study, this paper demonstrates that significant emissions arise from transport and imported products, which are often not fully captured in territorial GHG inventories. This results in high greenhouse gas emissions per capita regardless of the nation's domestic energy supply. The result is a low carbon illusion in which rich economies believe they are reducing their GHG responsibility whilst global emissions continue to grow.This paper presents the first consumption-based carbon footprint (CBCF) analysis for Iceland, a nation where the stationary energy supply is 99% renewable, and could be viewed as a decarbonisation ‘future case’ for rich nations globally. The study combines Icelandic household expenditure data with the Multi-Regional Input-Output database Eora to calculate the CBCF of Icelandic households. The average annual CBCF of Icelandic households was 10.4 tCO2eq/capita, similar in magnitude to other EU nations despite Iceland's unique energy supply. GHG emissions from transport, food and goods dominated the household CBCF. The national CBCF was higher than most European nations and 55% higher than the territorial emissions inventory. Approximately 71% of household emissions were attributed to imported goods, which were mapped globally revealing that the GHG emissions burden of Icelandic consumption falls primarily on developing nations. The findings suggest that a broader GHG accounting framework and resulting policy focus is required, both in Iceland and globally, that incorporates both supply and demand-based GHG reduction strategies.

Supremacy of EU Law vs. (Constitutional) National Identity: A New Challenge for the Court of Justice from the Italian Constitutional Court

Supremacy of EU Law vs. (Constitutional) National Identity: A New Challenge for the Court of Justice from the Italian Constitutional Court

Offline: Medicines leadership—Britain's loss, Europe's gain

The shadow of Brexit continues to darken. One consequence is the loss of the European Medicines Agency (EMA) from London to continental Europe. The EMA, together with the European Banking Authority (EBA), is one of the prized institutions of the European Union. It is responsible for evaluating medicines use across 28 member states. It provides a single route for the authorisation of new medicines, avoiding the duplication of separate member-state approvals. Since its inception in 1995, the EMA has authorised over 1000 products. It employs 900 staff, and attracts 36 000 experts each year, including 4000 non-EU visitors. It holds more than 500 meetings annually. The concentration of medicines expertise in the UK brings many additional benefits. The EMA enhances Britain's reputation as a scientific centre for drug discovery. It expands the nation's capacity in medicines research—from the epidemiology of drug safety to randomised trials to assess the efficacy of new medicines. And it strengthens the country's global leadership role in medicines regulation. All that will now be lost to Britain. The deadline for applications to host the EMA is July 31, 2017. An early leader was Milan. Italy has a distinguished reputation in basic science (consider, for example, the international standing of the Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research). It has built formidable clinical trial networks (eg, the GISSI studies into survival after myocardial infarction). And Italy has produced some of the most creative life scientists of modern times, from Rita Levi-Montalcini (who discovered nerve growth factor; Nobel laureate, 1986) to Mario Capecchi (who pioneered the use of knockout mice; Nobel laureate, 2007). Italian clinical scientists have made important contributions to medicines regulation. Silvio Garattini, who co-founded the Mario Negri Institute, was one of the most radically engaged members of the EMA's Committee for Proprietary Medicinal Products. But the prospect of attracting such a jewel in the European crown has inevitably led to a rush of competitors. 16 countries have declared an interest in hosting the EMA. The slew of cities in the running is a compendium of European urban chic—Amsterdam, Barcelona, Copenhagen, Dublin, Lille, Lisbon, and Stockholm. But there is a contender that could beat all of these candidates: Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia. In February, Slovakia's Minister of Foreign and European Affairs indicated that his country had “ambitions to host the EMA”. In April, Prime Minister Fico wrote to the Presidents of the European Council (Donald Tusk) and European Commission (Jean-Claude Juncker) to notify them formally of Bratislava's application. Slovakia is the only country from central Europe not to host a European institution. But how will this decision be made? The new EMA has to be up and running by April 1, 2019. On June 22, the EU published its “Procedure leading up to a decision on the relocation of the European Medicines Agency and the European Banking Authority.” It set out six criteria. First, “The assurance that the agency can be set up on site and take up its functions at the date of the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the Union”. Second, “The accessibility of the location”. Third, “The existence of adequate education facilities for the children of agency staff”. Fourth, “Appropriate access to the labour market, social security, and medical care for both children and spouses”. Fifth, “Business continuity”. And finally, “Geographical spread”. The European Commission will publish an analysis of candidate cities in September. A debate will follow in October, with a vote in November. But the decision will not be technical. It will be political. There is already strong suspicion that a deal has been struck. Could it be true, for example, that Angela Merkel has agreed to support Bratislava in return for the EBA being housed in Frankfurt? There is, perhaps, one further consideration. Italy has been on the front-line of humanitarian efforts to help the tens of thousands of refugees flowing into Europe. It has done so with compassion and commitment, while many EU nations have refused to offer comparable assistance. Prime Minister Fico has said that, “Islam has no place in Slovakia”. The Slovakian Government has taken legal action to block the EU's refugee quotas for the country. It would be scandalous for the EU to reward Slovakia with the EMA given its racist immigration policies. Italy deserves more serious consideration, on moral as well as medical grounds.

Growing careers

Growing careers

We have made history, but what about our future?

We have made history, but what about our future?

Anxiety and cosmopolitan futures: Brexit and Scotland

Two themes, temporality and cosmopolitanism, repeatedly arose during conversations in Scotland with people who favored remaining in the European Union. The 2016 referendum's result in favor of leaving the European Union has affected how they think about their temporal trajectories and what they might do to maintain their cosmopolitan ideals, which are now deeply shaken. Both Scots and non-UK EU nationals living in Scotland must confront the uncertainty of what impact Brexit will have on the freedom of trade and movement. This uncertainty provokes a new set of anxieties, expectations, and speculations as they contemplate how these changes might affect them personally. They feel especially uncomfortable that cosmopolitanism has become entwined with the nationalist projects of both Edinburgh and London.

Comparative study of linkage between environmental policy instruments and technological innovation: Case study on end-of-life vehicles technologies in Japan and EU

A growing population and urbanization is a challenge for finite natural resources. Without strict regulation to recycle, recover and reuse resources, waste is discarded with no value. Every year throughout the world, more than twenty-five million vehicles turn into end-of-life vehicles (ELV) and most of their valuable resources end up in landfill sites. This research analyses the effect of regulation on ELV innovation for additional recovery of resources in Japan and EU nations using patent data as a proxy. The analysis determines the statistical difference in patent activity before and after regulations were enacted in the case studies. The relevant data on ELV technologies was gathered for the period 1985–2013. The study suggests that in general environmental regulation in Japan drove innovation and reveals that environmental policy in Japan was more effective in enabling innovation compared to EU nations. Specifically, the results from these developed countries can be used by the rapidly growing developing countries in automobile manufacturing like China for amendment of their ELV regulation accordingly.

Pensions and Sovereign Default

This paper studies the effect of public pension obligations on a sovereign government’s commitment to repaying debt. In the model, the government can renege on its pension promises but suffers a cost from losing the trust of households about future pensions. Large pension promises act as a commitment device for debt because they require the government to have regular access to credit markets. The government's decision to default is driven by its total obligations, not just its debt. Thus, there is a range of pension obligations large enough to act as a commitment device without raising total obligations to the point of default. This otherwise deterministic economy has an endogenous cycle in which periods of high spending and increasing debt are followed by periods of pension reform and debt reduction. The model successfully produces high debt in excess of 100% GDP without default and back-loaded pension cuts that match salient features of recent reforms in six EU nations.

Estimating the probability of exceeding the maximum residue limit for Japanese tea using a crop residue model.

Maximum residue limits (MRLs) for pesticides in export countries from Japan often become a trade barrier for Japanese tea. The purpose of this study is to develop a probabilistic risk estimation method for pesticide residues in green tea. First, we developed a model to estimate the pesticide residue level in green tea. Second, we introduced a regression model for pesticide half-lives on plants, one of the most critical parameters in the model. Finally, we estimated the time-course change of the distribution of the residue level by setting the probability distribution to the half-lives on tea leaves. Applying the model to three pesticides, acetamiprid, dinotefuran, and thiamethoxam, we suggested that the pre-harvest interval of thiamethoxam should be increased by three weeks for export to Taiwan. For EU nations, the MRL excess probabilities of acetamiprid and dinotefuran were measured as 99.6% and 99.5%, respectively, even 28 days after spraying.

ФОРМИРОВАНИЕ НОВОГО ИММИГРАЦИОННОГО РЕЖИМА В ЕВРОПЕ

In this paper, the author examines an immigration policy-making between the EU Member States and EU institutions during the European migrant crisis. A significant dilemma in terms of culture clash consists in often conflicting values that immigrants from traditional Third World countries bring to Europe, a really downright hatred they often display towards liberal values and what is perceived as the decadence of the Western civilization. The EU has considerable experience in immigration, refugee policy and selection of suitable settlers. The implementation of Schengen Agreements and the Dublin Convention most visibly indicates that the European integration process is a difficult problem. The Visegrad Four states (Hungary, Slovakia, Poland and the Czech Republic) have been resisting mass immigration policies in the face of stern criticism from leading EU nations such as Germany and France. Such a situation raises new challenges to liberal states which should find a balance between policies limited in actions according to liberal values and governmental obligations to guarantee public safety. Far-right parties pursue a policy based on a strongly anti-immigration and Eurosceptic platform, rejecting multiculturalism. Fears about the migrant crisis have boosted the far-right still further. Terrorism was seen as essentially related to immigration policy until the terror attacks in Europe of 2015–2016 revealed that the bombers were locally-born. And regardless the fact that the all recent terror attacks in Europe were linked to migrants and radical Islamists, the EU immigration policy was not altered in response to these findings, so the intake of Muslims remained unlimited. The further aggravation of the refugee crisis will lead to the shift of a political decision-making process from immigration institutions of the European Union to the national level. The achievement of control over the situation with migrants is only possible through changes in migration regime connected with change of the present left-liberal set of values. This article identifies political and legal changes in the European immigration regime connected with increase in significance of state discretionary powers as a states’ counteraction to the threat of terrorism.

A literature-based economic evaluation of healthcare preventable adverse events in Europe.

To establish from the literature, cost of preventable adverse events (PAEs) to member states of the Joint Action European Union Network for Patient Safety and Quality of Care. We searched MEDLINE, EMBASE and CINAHL for studies in Europe estimating cost of adverse events (AEs) and PAEs (2000-March 2016). Using data from the literature, we estimated PAE costs based on national 2013 total health expenditure (THE) data reported by World Health Organization and converted to 2015 Euros. Information on type, frequency and incremental cost per episode or estimated cost of AEs was extracted. Total annual disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) resulting from PAEs in 30 EU nations were calculated using an estimate from a published study and adjusted for the percentage of AEs considered preventable. Published estimates of costs of AEs and PAEs vary based on the care setting, methodology, population and year conducted. Only one study was from primary care, the majority were conducted in acute care. Nine studies estimated percentage of THE caused by AEs, 13 studies calculated attributable length of stay. We estimated the annual cost of PAEs to the 30 nations in 2015 to be in the range of 17-38 billion Euros, total DALYs lost from AEs as 3.5 million, of which 1.5 million DALYs were likely due to PAEs. The economic burden of AEs and PAEs is substantial. However, whether patient safety interventions will be 'cost saving' depends on the effectiveness and costs of the interventions.

The Humanistic Burden of Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus in Europe: Examining Health Outcomes and the Role of Complications.

AimsDiagnoses of Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus (T1DM) in Europe appear to be on the rise. Therefore it is imperative that researchers understand the potential impact that increases in prevalence could have on the affected individuals as well as on society as a whole. Accordingly this study examined the humanistic and economic burden of T1DM in patients relative to those without the condition across a number of health outcomes including health status, work productivity loss, activity impairment, and healthcare resource use.MethodsSurvey data from a large, representative sample of EU adults (The EU National Health and Wellness Survey) were examined.ResultsResults suggest that overall burden is higher for those diagnosed with T1DM than respondents without diabetes and that burden increases as complications associated with T1DM increase.ConclusionsTaken together, these results suggest that treatment strategies for T1DM should balance clinical, humanistic, and economic burden and patients should be educated on the role of complications in disease outcomes.

Assessing potential impacts of the EVFTA on Vietnam's pharmaceutical imports from the EU: an application of SMART analysis.

This paper by adopting the Software on Market Analysis and Restrictions on Trade assessed the ex-ante impact of tariff elimination under the European—Vietnam free trade agreement (EVFTA) on Vietnam’s pharmaceutical imports from the EU based on two scenarios. The results showed that although Vietnam’s tariff removal for the EU’s medicines would not result in a significant increase in Vietnam’s imports from the EU, Vietnam’s deeper integration with ASEAN + 3 and TPP (the Trans-Pacific Partnership) nations would affect quite slightly on its imports from the EU. Therefore, the EU would be still the most important and biggest source of pharmaceuticals for Vietnam in the near future. In addition, there might be an uneven distribution in Vietnam’s import increases by the EU nation, pharmaceutical group and product. The simulation results also pointed out that the EVFTA’s trade creation effect would be higher than trade diversion effect and therefore the agreement would improve welfare of Vietnam. When Vietnam extends its coverage of tariff elimination to also TPP and ASEAN + 3, Vietnam’s welfare would potentially increase more but Vietnam would face with the relatively high increases of pharmaceutical imports from not only the EU but also the US, Australia, South Korea, Thailand and China. Bases on these results, the paper argued that both the Vietnamese government and pharmaceutical enterprises should not neglect the EVFTA and its impacts on the pharmaceutical sector, and perceive clearly the uneven distribution of Vietnam’s import changes from the EU by nation and by product to design appropriate business and investment strategy. In addition, Vietnam should take measures to diversify its European import markets to be less dependent on the traditional ones in the current context of the EU. Finally, Vietnam should promote the integration in the pharmaceutical sector with all three groups of nations, especially ASEAN and ASEAN’s key partners, to reduce trade diversion effect and raise the welfare of Vietnam, given that Vietnam should consider carefully the point of time to remove tariff for each group to avoid the sudden increase in its pharmaceutical imports.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s40064-016-3200-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Islets Protect Sensitive IoT Information: Verifiably Ending Use of Sensitive IoT Information for (Foreign) Mass Surveillance and Thereby Fostering (International) Commerce

Islets is a system for users to coordinate with IoT devices and other users. They serve two important functions 1) protect sensitive citizen information and 2) foster international commerce.IoT poses extreme challenges for sensitive personal information, including psychological, sexual, social, financial, legal, and medical. Enormous amounts of sensitive information is being stored in datacenters controlled by foreign-domiciled companies and extensively sold on the market by data brokers.Consumer health and medical IoT are becoming ever more intimate. Many people have pacemakers and even more have insulin pumps. Soon mixed reality glasses are likely to become as common as cell phones because they offer heads-up, hands-free, transparent operation. DARPA is developing an implantable neural interface able to provide unprecedented signal resolution and data-transfer bandwidth between the human brain and the digital world. Before long, many workers and military personnel may not be competitive unless they have brain implants.IoT will soon be in almost all manufactured devices thereby threatening the economic survival of tans-national manufacturers as well as Internet companies because of their current Internet business model of storing information in their datacenters. EU, China, and other nations are absolutely determined to verifiably end mass surveillance of the their citizens by foreign intelligence agencies using datacenters of foreign-domiciled companies. However, information stored in the datacenters of foreign domiciled corporations will inevitably become accessible to the government in which the company is domiciled. Consequently corporations that store sensitive information in their datacenters must be domestically incorporated to ensure that foreign intelligence agencies do not have bulk access to the information. Islets provide a means for trans-national companies to escape this trap by storing sensitive information of users IoT in Islets and only storing non-sensitive information in their datacenters.

Social Security Rights under Decision No 3/80 of the EEC-Turkey Association Council: Developments in the EU and in the Netherlands

This article deals with the recent developments of Decision No 3/80 of the EEC-Turkey Association Council in the EU and in the Netherlands. Decision No 3/80 established social security measures for workers of Turkish nationality moving within the Community (now Union) and members of their family living with them. Decision No 3/80 has mainly had an impact in two Member States: the Netherlands and Germany. In this article I will limit myself to the Netherlands, where the social security system has become much more territorially-based since the year 2000. The importance attached to residence in the design of the Dutch social security system showcases the revitalisation of nationstate approaches to the delivery of welfare at a time when EU rules are interfering more and more in the everyday life of EU citizens. The second part of this article analyses the discussion raised by the Akdas judgment of the EC], which gave Turkish nationals more rights than EU nationals, and the Demirci judgment, which reversed this advantage for Turkish workers with dual nationality. It also deals with the 2012 initiative of the European Union in replacing Decision No 3/80 by a new Association Council Decision and the legal and political challenges of this new initiative.

EU Migration to and from the UK After Brexit

In the 2016 referendum over the UK’s membership of the EU, the question of how Brexit would impact migration to the UK was a major point of contention. Those leading the campaign to leave the EU promised lower levels of immigration and the introduction of an “Australian type points based system” to regulate future inflows of EU nationals to the country, while at the same time maintaining access to the EU single market. At the same time, the status of EU nationals already living in the UK was not a key topic in the debate. The leaders of the campaign to leave the EU suggested that EU nationals already residing in the UK would be granted some form of residence permit and would retain most of their current rights. Likewise, there was little concern about the legal status of UK nationals in other EU countries and the argument that the “EU would be obliged to grant permanent settlement rights to Britons living in Ireland and mainland Europe”.

European Citizenship and EU Immigration: A Demoi‐cratic Bridge between the Third Country Nationals' Right to Belong and the Member States' Power to Exclude

AbstractEuropean citizenship entails, for EU nationals, a right to belong across borders. This article questions the implications of this latter right for the status of third country nationals in the EU. It contributes to address a gap between the literature on European citizenship and the literature on the admission and civic integration of third country nationals. The article begins by tracing a disconnect in the rules and narratives on admission and naturalisation of third country nationals in the EU. This is a disconnect between logics of individual rights protection, which European citizenship infiltrates, and logics of state sovereignty and governmental discretion, which otherwise dominate relevant rules and narratives. The article relies on the political science literature on mutual recognition and demoicracy to reinterpret European citizenship's norm of belonging across borders so as to reconcile the disconnect. Ultimately, the theoretical bridge that the article draws between citizenship narratives and immigration narratives offers a novel perspective on the tension between liberal values and integration discourses in Europe. It also sets out a possible frame to begin rethinking rules of engagement and cooperation in the context of the EU common immigration policy.

The right of free movement for EU nationals in Switzerland in the domain of amateur sport: CEP Cortaillod v Swiss Athletics

On the 13 June 2008, the Court of First Instance of Bern-Laupen, Switzerland, rendered a judgment concerning the right of free movement for EU nationals in Switzerland in the domain of amateur sport. This judgment is the first in Switzerland concerning solely non-professional athletes, and possibly one of the first in Europe.This paper analyzes the application by the Court of the principle of prohibition of discrimination based on nationality in light of the Bilateral Agreement between the European Union, the European Community and Switzerland, and the limits of such principle. In this respect, the Court noted that quotas imposed on foreign athletes are not automatically illegal in amateur sport, but must remain limited to their proper objective in order to be acceptable, i.e. that in a team competition the number of foreign athletes should not be more than half of the team.

Cooperative peacekeeping in Africa: exploring regime complexity

This book examines peacekeeping in Africa, exploring how the various actors are forming an African security regime complex. The changing dynamics of peacekeeping in today’s world have encouraged a more cooperative approach between international and regional actors. At the centre of this book is the analysis of how an African security regime complex could emerge in the area of cooperative peacekeeping. The African regime complex on peacekeeping includes a number of organizations at the regional and sub-regional African level, as well as global institutions such as the UN, interregional partners like the EU and individual lead nations. This book is the first in providing a systematic overview of peacekeeping doctrines, capacities and deployments of these key actors and single lead states. Theoretically, the book links up with regime complexity scholarship but connects it with dependency theory. Here inter-institutional relations are conceptualised as acts of resource exchange. The book explores how primarily international organizations are partnering by exchanging resources. Empirically, the study analyses the phenomenon of regime complexity in three prominent African crises covering Eastern Africa (Somalia), Central African (Central African Republic) and Western Africa (Mali). This book will be of much interest to students of peacekeeping, international organisations, African politics, security studies and IR in general.