Initiative Of European Commission Research Articles

Transformacja sektora energetycznego Unii Europejskiej

S Such geoeconomic and geopolitical factors as Russian armed aggression against Ukraine caused the energy crisis in the European Union (EU), exposing the EU’s vulnerabilities due to its overdependence on Russian fossil fuel imports. As a consequence of gas supply disruptions, substantial rises in energy prices and heightened safety concerns, the EU's energy policies have been thoroughly reassessed. Therefore, the article aims to examine the profound ramifications of Russia's military aggression against Ukraine on European energy markets and elucidate the strategies articulated in European Commission initiatives intended to reduce reliance on Russian fossil fuels. Within this framework, the REPowerEU plan is especially beneficial for the rapid diversification and increased integration of renewable energy sources. These initiatives have the potential to result in a structural transformation of the EU's energy landscape, necessitating coordinated regulatory initiatives, infrastructure advancements, and cooperative energy diplomacy. Current research reveals the potential for economic expansion, strengthened industrial primacy and progress towards achieving climate neutrality by 2050 through the environmentally sustainable metamorphosis of Europe's energy framework. The results of this scientific research can also be used for the further implementation of the strategy of achieving sustainable development of the EU member states in the context of the development of clean energy, which will allow meeting the needs of the population of these countries in the near future without endangering future generations.

Relational network of innovation ecosystems generated by digital innovation hubs: a conceptual framework for the interaction processes of DIHs from the perspective of collaboration within and between their relationship levels

AbstractCollaboration plays a key role in the success attained to date by networks of innovation ecosystems generated around entities known as Digital Innovation Hubs (DIHs), recently created following European Commission initiatives to boost the digitisation of the European economic fabric. This article proposes a conceptual framework that brings together, defines, structures and relates the concepts involved in the collaborative interaction processes within and between these innovation ecosystems to allow comprehensive conceptualisation. The developed framework also provides an approach that helps to tangibilise collaboration as a management process. Here the goal is to ultimately move towards not only qualitative, but also quantitative modelling to bridge the research gap in the state of the art in this respect. The data-driven business-ecosystem-skills-technology (D-BEST) model, devised to configure DIHs service portfolios in a collaborative context, provides the reference basis for the interorganisational asset transfer methodology (IOATM). This is the keystone that structures the framework and constitutes its main contribution. Through the IOATM, this conceptual framework points out collaboration quantification, and serves as a lever for its modelling to deal with collaboration accounting by: turning it into a more controllable management element; guiding practitioners' efforts to improve collaborative processes efficiency with an approach that pursues objectivity and maximises synergies.

Confronting the gas crisis: Can we REPowerUE?

This paper aims to analyse the first collective responses, at European level, to the energy (and very acutely for gas) crisis that began in the second half of 2021, but particularly accentuated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Since the beginning of the conflict, discussions have been held to identify policy levers to reduce Russian gas imports, while ensuring a satisfactory level of security of supply. This type of exercise implies considering different horizons, the first of which is the winter of 2022-2023, with the concern of managing to fill gas stocks sufficiently early. Beyond this emergency, which stems from crisis management, the perspective is also to establish a horizon at which the countries of European Union could do without Russian gas altogether. These two horizons are addressed by two European Commission initiatives: ‘Save gas for a safe winter' for the shorter term (i.e. winter 2023), and ‘REPowerEU' beyond, plans whose main mechanisms will be presented here, after reminding the regulatory framework for its security of gas supply at the EU level developed in response to the tensions already ob- served over the last two decades.

Europejski Zielony Ład jako narzędzie modernizacji i legitymizacji projektu europejskiego

Covid-19 pandemic created a new environment to New Green Deal - flagship initiative of European Commission and crucial element of Ursula von der Leyen political manifesto. Author argues, that faced with the possibility of weakening or postponing ambitious environmental programme because of new challenges the commission, backed by important group pf member states decided to build a direct link between reconstruction after pandemics and greening of the economy. The result was a push forward with decarbonisation commitments - the stimuli for change should be bound together to strengthen their interdependence and build a momentum for modernization of EU in both economic and political dimensions. Conditionality of Next Generation Europe financial instrument is one of the links between these two dimensions.

Europejski Zielony Ład jako narzędzie modernizacji i legitymizacji projektu europejskiego

Covid-19 pandemic created a new environment to New Green Deal - flagship initiative of European Commission and crucial element of Ursula von der Leyen political manifesto. Author argues, that faced with the possibility of weakening or postponing ambitious environmental programme because of new challenges the commission, backed by important group pf member states decided to build a direct link between reconstruction after pandemics and greening of the economy. The result was a push forward with decarbonisation commitments - the stimuli for change should be bound together to strengthen their interdependence and build a momentum for modernization of EU in both economic and political dimensions. Conditionality of Next Generation Europe financial instrument is one of the links between these two dimensions.

The ‘Ethification’ of ICT Governance. Artificial Intelligence and Data Protection in the European Union

Several European Commission's initiatives have been resorting to ethics in policy discourses as a way to govern and regulate Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). The proliferation of invocations of ‘ethics’, especially concerning the recent debate on (the regulation of) Artificial Intelligence (AI), can be referred to as the ‘ethification’ phenomenon. This article aims to elucidate the benefits and drawbacks of the ethification of ICT governance , and its effects on the articulations of law, technology and politics in democratic constitutional states. First, the article will provide a mapping to locate where the ethics work is being produced in the EU. Second, the authors will distinguish different types of ethics based on the mapping. Third, the ethification phenomenon will be analyzed through the concepts of boundary and convergence work, where we will both see that it plays the role of ‘normative glue’ between interests of different practices to reach a common goal, but also tracing or obfuscating boundaries to claim autonomy from the law and exclude forms of non-genuine ethics. Fourth, we inquire into the nature of ethics as a practice and the consequences of ethification for the law.

Blockchain and Smart Contracts: A Look at the Future of Transfer Pricing Control

This article aims to outline the path towards the future of transfer pricing (TP) control by exploring the new possibilities of blockchain and smart contracts and their potential impact on the international and European policy debate. After the introduction of some preliminary concepts, the first outcome is the identification of a uniform methodology for coding advance pricing agreements (APAs) into smart contracts in which conventional elements properly match with computer language components. Despite the challenges of the coding process and the issue of legal prose, the research also approaches the dynamics and the different stages of a new smart system for TP control. Furthermore, the analysis covers the policy perspective and explores how the new technology could improve the outcomes of the recent OECD and European Commission initiatives in the area of TP. Ultimately, the study suggests the adoption of uniform rules for coding APAs into smart contracts and the establishment of an international consortium blockchain. However, other factors will also be crucial for the implementation of the new system including the collection of sufficient supply chain data and the adoption of an interdisciplinary approach that is open to software engineering and data science. Transfer pricing, advance pricing agreements, blockchain, smart contracts, real-time monitoring, artificial intelligence, data analytics, digital economy, OECD Transfer Pricing Guidelines, convention on mutual administrative assistance in tax matters.

Industry Modernization Based on the Principles of Smart Specialization. Part I. Using the Key Enabling Technologies as a Priority of the EU Industrial Policy

The concept of smart specialization is investigated with emphasis on key components of its successful implementation. Its relation with the concepts of technology, innovation and industrialization is shown through their common goal: to increase the productivity and ensure the sustainable economic growth. An analytical review of the official European documents elaborating the mechanisms for industry modernization and the principles for the new strategy of building the smart, innovative and sustainable industry, to promote competitiveness, creation of hybrid jobs and economic growth, is made. The critical role of key enabling technologies, especially advanced industrial technologies, in modernizing industry and implementing the smart specialization strategy is highlighted. The European Commission initiatives are analyzed, aimed at implementing the programs on competitiveness enhancement in the small and medium business sector, their implementation measures, including ones on constructing statistical tools for monitoring and analysis of generation and use of advanced technologies in the context of technological innovations in the private sector. The methodological approaches to building a new set of statistical indicators are supposed to ensure approvals of political decisions on enhancing competitiveness in the EU industry through launching three specific and related actions: (i) support to the development of cross-regional investment projects in the framework of S3P-Industrial Modernization; (ii) support to the development of European strategic cluster partnerships for cooperating in thematic fields and enhancing the industry’s role; (iii)) support to companies in the manufacturing industry in using advanced industrial technologies, in order to enhance their innovation capacities. It is noted that the program “Government Support to Technological Innovations for Industry Development” has not been launched in Ukraine, in spite of 300,000 UAH appropriated in the Budget – 2018 and the procedure for use of budget funds, created and coordinated with the central executive power bodies, by which the funds had to be allocated in implementing industrial innovation technologies in the private sector, for two purposes: (i) co-funding of project implementation; (ii) partial compensation for interest rates on loans received by manufactures for project implementation. The need to form the Strategy for Smart, Innovative and Sustainable Industry in Ukraine with consideration to directives and best practices of EU and the Ukrainian realities is emphasized.

European Week of Sport: innovative initiative of European Commission that inspires children to be active.

Estimates indicate that more than one third of European adults are inactive, despite the known benefits of physical activity. In 2015 the European Commission launched the European Week of Sport (EWoS), to encourage people to engage in sport and physical activity. The aim of this study was to evaluate if participation in the EWoS could motivate children to participate in physical activity in future. A total of 10,892 children (aged 6-14), from 6 EU cities (Palermo, Italy; Ankara, Turkey; Lousada, Portugal; Gardabaer, Iceland; Rijeka, Croatia; Albacete, Spain), were enrolled in sport activities (running sport event, extra hours of physical activity, seminars on physical activity, and a family sport festival during the weekend) during the EWoS 2016. A questionnaire was set up and distributed amongst participants to identify the physical activity habits of schoolchildren and whether the activities conducted during the project were able to establish the desire to participate in physical activity. Data has shown that 15% of the individuals (respondents from the 6 countries) did not practice sport, although large variability among participating countries exists. The majority (15%) of these children showed an interest in practicing sport in ensuing months following EWoS. The results suggest that the participation in sport activities during the EWoS encouraged inactive European children to practice physical activity in the months that followed. Future researchers should however investigate whether the motivation to participate in sport observed in this study became reality.

Використання семантичних технологій для встановлення діалогу між суб'єктами ринку праці

The paper analyzes publications related to the development trends of national qualifications systems, which should link the market of educational services to the labor market. Such an analysis suggests that an effective tool for solving this problem is ESCO – the Multilingual Classification of European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Professionals. ESCO defines and classifies skills (both "soft" and "hard"), competences, qualifications and occupations that are relevant to the European labor market, education and training. ESCO classifier proposes the basis for creating a "passport of acquired competencies". It is used in several European Commission initiatives in the field of skills and qualifications aimed at increasing the transparency of the labor market and educational systems. The development of tools that allow the effective use of ESCO and ensure the transition from a qualification model to full competency models, is seen as an up-to-date and timely scientific task. Subjects of the labor market can describe their proposals or requirements through non-formalized characteristics that are often non-material (such as team spirit, social skills, leadership skills) and use different terms to describe such characteristics, therefore the problem of comparing the semantics of such descriptions is occursed. Semantic technologies aimed at the information processing at the knowledge level (oriented on formalizing, analyzing and processing the semantics of information resources) can solve such a problem. In this regard, the publication presents the theoretical substantiation of UkrESCO designed to create a passport of acquired competencies, to search for vacancies and to compare competencies with job requirements based on the ESCO model using Semantic Web technologies and information resources of the Web open information environment. UkrESCO can be considered as an intelligent superstructure over existing systems that compares and evaluates competencies, matches qualifications with vacancies and form a passport of acquired competencies. Practical implementation of UkrESCO becomes an effective tool for the formation in Ukrainian society of understanding of the value of throughout life education in the personal and professional self-development of person. Problems in programming 2018; 2-3: 226-235

Assessment of the European Commission Initiatives on Creating Transnational Media Networks

The paper examines two European Commission initiatives on creating transnational media networks on European affairs, the Euronews television and the Euranet Plus radio network, and their roles in the European public sphere. An overview of Euronews and Euranet Plus is based on the author's research, first-hand contacts with representatives of the European Commission, media in Belgium and France, and field work at the editorial office of Euronews in Lyon-Ecully and at the editorial offices of Euranet Plus in Paris and Brussels.

Assessment of the European Commission Initiatives on Creating Transnational Media Networks

The paper examines two European Commission initiatives on creating transnational media networks on European affairs, the Euronews television and the Euranet Plus radio network, and their roles in the European public sphere. An overview of Euronews and Euranet Plus is based on the author's research, first-hand contacts with representatives of the European Commission, media in Belgium and France, and field work at the editorial office of Euronews in Lyon-Ecully and at the editorial offices of Euranet Plus in Paris and Brussels.
 
 Full text available at: https://doi.org/10.22215/rera.v10i1.265

Corporate Governance in Europe: A Critical Review of the European Commission's Initiatives on Corporate Law and Corporate Governance

European corporate law and corporate governance are moving ahead beyond expectation. Some British voices called this “a renaissance in the past decade”. In December 2012, the European Commission came forward with an Action Plan that combines both corporate law and corporate governance rules and contains sixteen disparate initiatives partly to be implemented through Directives, partly through non-legal measures. Meanwhile a fight on the Draft Shareholder Rights Directive is going on in the European Council and the Parliament, with major compromises pending in 2015. Further corporate law harmonization measures are under way, in particular the proposal of Single-Member Private Limited Companies. The European Court of Justice’s case law has a far-reaching impact on the free movement of corporations in the European Union, but is not able to singlehandedly create European corporate law with decisions based on the freedoms of the Treaty. On this background the article analyzes seven critical areas of European Corporate Law and Governance as of 2015: Empowering shareholders and institutional investors; controlling shareholders, groups of companies and related party transactions; new European corporate forms; corporate and bank governance; free transfer of seat without new incorporation; corporate finance and capital maintenance and European takeover law reform. The article ends with looking into the goals, methods and scope of European corporate law-making. Free mobility and minimum protection have to be balanced. Transparency as a method of regulation strengthens private autonomy and supports market forces. Harmonization must be limited to the core areas of corporate law, and national and European corporate law will need to complement one another. It remains to be seen whether the codification plans of the Commission and the private model law initiatives will produce convincing results. In sum any step to more European law in the before-mentioned core areas should not only be left to the forces or deadlocks of political compromise, but in order to be really useful will need to be addressed in a careful, ongoing, policy-oriented, economic and comparative law discussion.

Editorial: initiating cultural heritage research to increase Europe's competitiveness

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to present and discuss the contribution of European Commission (EC) initiatives to stimulate cultural heritage research over the last 20 years and the contribution of the research results to cultural heritage management and sustainable development.Design/methodology/approachFrom a brief introduction to the EC initiatives related to cultural heritage, the paper continues with an overview of the research projects so far funded by EC Framework Programmes. It includes the main conclusions and recommendations reached during the NET‐HERITAGE conference last March, in support to the debate on the existing gaps, and to suggest ways forward, which can be useful to research institutes as well as other funding organizations.FindingsAlthough the EC should be commended for its substantial contribution to the field of cultural heritage research over the last 20 years, it is the first, however, to acknowledge that this is just the beginning and that much more needs to be done in order to help ensure sustainability and the consequent transmission of the European cultural legacy to future generations, at both regional and national levels.Originality/valueIn providing an overview of EC‐funded cultural heritage research, the paper is useful to the readers of the journal, who might consider obtaining EC funding and so stimulate their participation in future funding schemes and related projects. It highlights some potential areas for research and continues to scientifically underpin that cultural heritage research can help increasing competitiveness in Europe and beyond.

Access to scientific information: European Commission initiatives

Access to scientific information: European Commission initiatives

Safety and security of energy infrastructures in Europe: the EC DG JRC's energy risks monitor project

After mapping of current European Union (EU) regulations on the management of accidental risks related to natural hazards and different industrial activities, this paper discusses insights from past European Commission (EC) initiatives on harmonisation of assessment and management of safety risks. Next, for the specific case of the energy sector, the on-going development of a methodology and corresponding decision-support tool to cross-compare in a consistent way safety, risk and reliability performances of different energy systems across their specific fuel cycle chains is described.

PLAN - past, present and future

The Plant Life Assessment Network (PLAN) is a Brite Euram Type II Thematic Network, initiated by the European Commission to facilitate structured co-operation between all cost shared action projects already funded by the Commission, which fall under this common theme. The projects involved address a multiplicity of problems associated with plant life assessment and are drawn from Brite-Euram, Standards, Measurement and Testing, Nuclear Fission Safety, Esprit from the EC IVth Framework Programme, plus programmes of the Vth FWP. The main aim of the Network is to initiate, maintain and monitor a fruitful co-operation process between completed, ongoing and future EC R&D projects, thereby promoting improved cross fertilisation and enhanced industrial exploitation of R&D results.In 1996, several experts in the broad area of plant life assessment met to define the outlines of this ambitious project. This paper aims to take the reader on a journey from the initial meeting, describing the background to the PLAN initiative, through the progress made in realising a suitable structure for such a Network, and terminating with many successful deliverables and a way forward for a structured approach to information dissemination, exploitation, and added value for Europe’s valuable research resources. Progress is critically reviewed, whilst highlighting in detail some of the technical deliverabIes achieved in the areas of inspection, instrumentation/monitoring, structural mechanics, maintenance, and the strong links developed in the areas of marketing and innovation. Lessons learnt, specifically related to the difficult task of maintaining momentum in such a complex networking environment, are also analysed. Further, the added value, both for the EC and for the participants of such a Network is evaluated with a view to establishing support for its continuation. The future of PLAN and related networks in the context of new European Commission initiatives proposed for the VIth Framework Programme is elaborated in particular with the strong accent on innovation and exploitation, networks of excellence, involvement of SME’s and linking EC to national research programmes.

The British Government's Commitment to Interaction Within Europe for V.E.T.

This article is based on the author's Masters dissertation entitled: 'Towards a Competitive British Workforce in Europe: Britain's European Links in Further Education'(1994). The research involves the British Government's commitment to VET (Vocational Education and Training) within a European framework, the range of European Commission Initiatives for VET and the extent of British involvement, original research in the Training & Enterprise Council and in four FE colleges in Britain and their participation in European issues. The British Government's extent of commitment to the European Union has reached a level of controversy that threatens to make or break the fabric of political parties and their ability to rule. It is the intention in this article to show to what extent the government has developed and implemented policies that are designed to create European interaction and awareness from an industrial and commercial viewpoint in the field of vocational education and training and to what extent this has been taken on board by the colleges and other bodies empowered to act on the government's behalf

Europe 1992: The European commission's policy in telecommunications

AbstractThis article deals with both the principles of the Green Paper on telecommunications and the current situation of its implementation. It presents the measures necessary for the completion of the Community's internal market and the liberalization of the markets for telecommunications terminal equipment and services. Moreover, it describes the European Commission's initiatives in the field of public procurement and Community‐wide telecommunications infrastructures.