EU Eastern Research Articles

Living Wage a Relevant Topic for Europe

This policy brief examines the concept of a ‘Living Wage’ and its place in European political discourse. A Living wage is commonly understood as a needs-based estimate of the funds necessary for provision of basic goods for a worker and his/her family. Although the idea has seen a resurgence following the launch of the European Pillar of social rights, there is still no widely accepted conceptualization of it, or its relationship with statutory minimum wages now in place in many countries. The Briefing shows that minimum wages, particularly in Eastern EU countries, are often insufficient to cover the actual living costs of workers, even with very minimal conception of what these are.

Partnership with Civil Society and the Legitimacy of EU Policymaking: Exploring Actors’ Normative Arguments in Four Member States

Existing research on how the involvement of civil society actors improves EU democratic legitimacy produces controversial results. This is the outcome of a top-down analytical strategy. Scholars regularly gauge partnership practices against different concepts of legitimacy, but rarely ask how actors themselves perceive and construct partnership, let alone how these understandings relate to existing concepts of legitimacy. Utilising a bottom-up sociological perspective, this article examines how actors in four central and eastern EU member states understand the partnership principle for European Structural and Investment Funds and how these understandings relate to different conceptualisations of legitimacy. A reconstruction of actors’ normative arguments shows that representatives of three groups (state officials, civil society organisations and social partners) prioritise different legitimacy effects which trigger contestation about the proper formats of partnership. While state officials focus on input legitimacy, civil society organisations insist on throughput and social partners emphasise output legitimacy. Variation across countries and within groups of actors further complicates this picture. This has implications for our understanding of Europeanization and the role of European civil society.

Current account and real effective exchange rate misalignments in Central Eastern EU countries: An update using the macroeconomic balance approach

We make an assessment of the current account and price competitiveness of the Central Eastern European countries that joined the EU, using data up to 2016. Foreign capital flows, fiscal balance and relative output growth seem to play a crucial role in explaining the current account balance. The real effective exchange rate gaps behave in accord with the current account misalignments, which clearly display cyclical behaviour. When foreign direct investments are introduced as a determinant, the misalignments are larger in boom periods (positive misalignments), whereas the negative misalignments are smaller in magnitude. Overall, the countries have moved closer to their equilibria since 2010.

Central and Eastern European business interest associations and EU policy making

The interactions between Central and Eastern European (CEE) business interest associations (BIAs) and their EU trade associations have not yet attracted much attention in academic research. This paper has two main objectives. The first is to assess quantitatively the participation level of CEE BIAs in EU trade associations. The second is to assess qualitatively the nature of the relationships between them by surveying Bulgarian BIAs as a case study. This article stresses the fact that EU enlargement has decreased the representativeness of EU trade associations due to the weak level of membership of CEE BIAs. It also highlights the importance of membership in EU trade associations in terms of both Europeanization and socialization, even though CEE national BIAs, such as Bulgarian ones, are still very much anchored in their domestic interactions and lobbying.

Sveriges relationer med Ryssland: kontinuitet och förändring historiskt och idag

Relations between Sweden and Russia have historically been characterized by continuity and stability, despite occasional periods of friction. On the one hand, Sweden and Russia have a more active bilateral agenda than what is usually recognized, primarily in the areas of trade, investments and cultural and educational exchanges. On the other hand, there are several issues – like the Ukraine conflict, the EU Eastern Partnership, Swedish NATO cooperation and the security situation in the Baltic Sea area – involving competing claims and interests between Sweden and Russia. Further, Swedish foreign policy since the 1990s has been framed within a multilateral context, and that has a bearing on Swedish–Russian relations as well. This situation is likely to continue, unless dramatic changes occur in the political relations between Russia and the Western powers.

Firm resilience in regions of Eastern Europe during the period 2007–2011

Firms are important economic agents in regions, and their survival and prosperity in crisis periods is closely related to the evolution and welfare of the regions in which they are located. This ability of firms to respond to and recover from shocks is conceptualised by the notion of firm resilience. This paper studies the determinants of firm resilience in the regions of Eastern Europe during the period 2007–2011 using a novel, dynamic, spatial and broad conceptual framework aspect. The analysis shows through a variety of determinants that firms of Eastern EU countries have greater resilience, while it also highlights that the resilience of firms is defined, firstly, not only by current structural transformations but also by the initial conditions and, secondly, not only by the firms’ characteristics and capabilities but also by the spatial characteristics and irregularities of their broader environment.

Armenia and Belarus: caught between the EU's and Russia's conditionalities?

ABSTRACTThis article looks into Armenia's and Belarus’ engagement with the European Union's (EU) and Russia's conditionalities, the two EU Eastern Partnership (EaP) countries that are also members of the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). While paying attention to political, economic (including energy and technical) as well as security dimensions of the EU's and Russia's approaches, as proposed in the present special section, the article demonstrates that the conditionalities extended by the EU and Russia to the two countries in question have differed. In their turn, Armenia and Belarus have reacted differently to Russia's and the EU's conditionalities. Against the backdrop of the changing significance ascribed to both the EU's and Russia's policies towards their common neighbourhood since the 1990s, the present contribution identifies and analyses factors that account for the diverging positions of Armenia and Belarus, including the type of regime, the geopolitical considerations, the stakes in the economic and energy spheres and the predisposition to integration. The article shows that in the resulting complex context, Armenia and Belarus have been able to influence the shape and content of the EU's and Russia's conditionalities, although in a different way and to a different extent.

Non-trivial Factors as Determinants of the Environmental Taxation Revenues in 27 EU Countries

The implementation of environmental taxation is one of the most important issues of environmental policy in Europe. To approach this matter, the paper aims to analyse the determinants of environmental taxation revenue for European countries. Besides investigating the most explored determinants, such as those related to production, consumption and environmental quality, particular attention is paid to some non-trivial factors. Firstly, we analyse the importance of the institutional context that is crucial for policy enforcement. Secondly, we consider the consumption of rapidly obsolescent goods, such as information and communication technology (ICT) goods characterised by intensive waste generation. Finally, the importation of final goods as a consequence of production offshoring is taken into account. The results demonstrate that the above-mentioned determinants have a heterogeneous impact on environmental taxation revenue in EU Western countries and EU Eastern countries, which can be due to a still weak institutional context of the latter economies and their peculiar patterns of development.

Constructing bridges and fostering growth: Interdisciplinary insights into European Union conceptions and perceptions

This article studies the EU’s role conceptions and projections towards its Eastern Neighbourhood, and Ukraine specifically. Informed by the novel focus on narratives and emotions in International Relations (IR) theory and in EU foreign policy studies, we propose an innovative interdisciplinary synergy between IR’s role theory [Harnisch et al. 2011; Holsti, 1970] and cognitive linguistics’ conceptual metaphor theory [Lakoff and Johnson 1980]. Using the tool of conceptual metaphor, we systemically explore the EU’s role conception (self-image) as well as its perception and expectations of the Eastern partners (role prescriptions). In doing so, we put forward a new method to systemically analyse cognitive and emotive elements in the EU’s foreign policy roles based on the notion that conceptual metaphors reveal fundamental cognitive and emotional traits central to the roles actors play. Empirically, we analyse the EU Global Strategy (June 2016) and the EU Eastern Partnership (EaP) Summit’s Official Memorandum (November 2017), as well as 12 interviews with EU practitioners dealing with Ukraine (conducted in 2017).

Time to look for evidence: Results-based approach to biodiversity conservation on farmland in Europe

Increased use of annual payments to land managers for ecological outcomes indicates a growing interest in exploring the potential of this approach. In this viewpoint, we drew on the experiences of all schemes paying for biodiversity outcomes/results on agricultural land operating in the EU and EFTA countries with the aim of reviewing the decisive elements of the schemes’ design and implementation as well as the challenges and opportunities of adopting a results-based approach. We analysed the characteristics of results-based schemes using evidence from peer-reviewed literature, technical reports, scheme practitioners and experts in agri-environment-climate policy. We developed a typology of the schemes and explored critical issues influencing the feasibility and performance of results-based schemes. The evidence to date shows that there are at least 11 advantages to the results-based approach not found in management-based schemes with similar objectives, dealing with environmental efficiency, farmers’ participation and development of local biodiversity-based projects. Although results-based approaches have specific challenges at every stage of design and implementation, for many of these the existing schemes provide potential solutions. There is also some apprehension about trying a results-based approach in Mediterranean, central and eastern EU Member States. We conclude that there is clear potential to expand the approach in the European Union for the Rural Development programming period for 2021–2028. Nevertheless, evidence is needed about the approach’s efficiency in delivering conservation outcomes in the long term, its additionality, impact on the knowledge and attitudes of land managers and society at large, development of ways of rewarding the achievement of actual results, as well as its potential for stimulating innovative grassroots solutions.

Russia and its shared neighbourhoods: a comparative analysis of Russia-EU and Russia-China relations in the EU's Eastern neighbourhood and Central Asia

ABSTRACTThis article examines the conditions under which great powers succeed or fail to shape a cooperative security agenda in their shared neighbourhoods. It compares Russia's interactions with the EU and with China in their respective shared neighbourhoods: the EU's Eastern Neighbourhood region and Central Asia. The article applies a synthetic framework. It analyses how the interplay between three factors – ideas, capabilities and circumstantial factors such, as the personalities of leading politicians, – shape the process of interaction between great powers. It starts from a comparison of the images of the two regions in Russia's mind-set because such images provide cognitive lenses through which powers make sense of political developments in shared neighbourhoods. The article then moves to show how change in the balance of power (soft and hard) created enabling conditions for competition/collaboration. Finally, the article shows how specific circumstantial factors led to or shaped the Russian-European conflict. At the same time, similar factors prevented Russian-Chinese conflict in Central Asia.

Homogenous and Extra-territorial Border Regime? Migrations and Control Efforts Across the Eastern EU External Border

ABSTRACTIn light of the high amount of refugees wishing to cross the EU’s external borders into the Union, the border regime is becoming more and more standardized and, to a great extent, involves the EU neighbor states. These are confronted with a double strategy with regard to their involvement in the EU’s migration policy. On the one hand, the EU tries to guarantee its own security by setting up a tough border regime. On the other hand, the EU strives for a closer connection with its neighbors by including them more and more into its migration regulations. By having a look at Ukraine and Moldova, the paper asks what this involvement in EU policies means for the mentioned countries and focuses on their perspectives. How does their participation in EU extra-territorial migration regulation look like? What does the extra-territorialized border regime mean for those actors wishing to cross the border? For this purpose, a concept of the EU’s eastern external border regime will be developed first, including its targeted homogeneity and its partly extra-territorial functioning. By discussing the results of an ethnographic border regime analysis, the paper will present the perspectives of specific actors in third states who implement EU migration regulations on a local level by carrying out concrete EU-driven projects. Furthermore, voices from refugees and inhabitants of the border regions in third states are taken into account.

A Financial Conditions Index for the CEE Economies

Financial Conditions Indexes (FCIs) are analytical tools devised to synthesize the information contained in a set of financial variables in order to identify how financial conditions affect economic activity. In this paper, for each of the three main Central and Eastern EU member states outside the euro area (Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic) an FCI is constructed as an unobserved factor estimated using the EM algorithm. After having assessed their performance in providing information about future economic activity (both in-sample and out-of-sample), these FCIs are used to describe the evolution of financial conditions in the three economies between 2001 and 2016. The overall findings of this study support a narrative whereby all three economies, after their integration into the EU, enjoyed very accommodative financial conditions until 2008; the Czech Republic and Hungary subsequently turned out to have been more exposed than Poland to the spillover effects from both the global financial crisis and euro sovereign debt crisis.

Income Inequality in Latin America and Eastern EU through the Great Recession: An Ordered Probit Analysis

Income distribution directly affects economic growth and the spending patterns in an economy. This paper employs an ordered probit panel to measure the effect of the Great Recession on income inequality in Latin American and Eastern EU members. The results suggest the crisis increased inequality in studied countries overall. However, those countries with low levels of inequality saw their Gini coefficients decrease further, while the crisis increased inequality in countries with already high inequality. Additionally, the results show that European Union membership on average contributed to lower likelihood of high Gini coefficients. Furthermore, marginal effects lend additional evidence of lower income gap for the Eastern EU members as they generally show negative marginal effects for countries with initially high inequality and positive for those with low Gini coefficients. Finally, we find no evidence that FDI and capital incentives have any direct impact on inequality, while GDP growth, poverty, and export incentives are associated with higher and tax revenues and export growth with lower income inequality.

A Comparative Analysis of Initiatives and Adaptation Measures To Climate Change Undertaken in Poland and Eastern EU Countries

Climate change is one of the greatest contemporary threats to our planet’s environmental, social and economic condition. It is accompanied by massive changes in life support systems on Earth, where its far‑reaching effects will be felt in the upcoming decades. The development of a national adaptation policy (strategy and/or plan) serves as an instrument that provides the necessary framework for adaptation by coordinating the consideration of climate change across relevant sectors, geographical scales, and levels of decision making. The purpose of this paper is to compare the degree of influence of climate change on the economy of the Eastern European Union and compare national strategies for adaptation to climate change in selected countries of Western Europe and Poland. The study shows that countries bearing the brunt of the negative impacts of climate change are Cyprus, Malta, Bulgaria and Poland. These countries recorded the highest climate change index, the greatest losses in terms of estimated GDP, household welfare, land losses, and lower incomes in the agricultural and tourism sectors. With appropriate adaptation measures, countries such as Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia can take advantage of the future changes in weather conditions. A shift in the productivity of the agricultural sector and tourism from south to north can be noted.

News from the East: Perceptions of the Free Movement of Persons in the Polish Popular Press

The free movement of persons in the EU has been thought of as reflecting an ideal of supranational solidarity within the single market. However, over the past decade, it has become a source of political contention among European peoples. Much attention has been paid to Western European, anti-EU sentiment regarding Central Eastern European migration. Yet euroskeptic populism has recently risen within the eastern EU as well. Despite this phenomenon, less attention has been given to discursive views of the free movement of persons in the eastern expansion countries. This contribution takes issue with transactionalist and utilitarian approaches to identity formation. It argues that resilient national identity shapes the perception of national interests regarding the market-based citizenship promoted by the EU institutions. Through qualitative analysis of the high-circulation popular Polish press, this study finds that when viewed through national identity–based interest perceptions, the free movement of persons is not framed in terms of “actual” economic benefits or opportunities. Instead, it is framed as a dubious benefit of EU integration, in relation to many obligations of EU membership. In contrast, the press discourse examined here frames intra-Union migration as the continuing unfortunate necessity of emigration. Thus, national identity conceptions may influence the eastern EU press narrative, causing it to frame the free movement of persons negatively, in terms of perceived interests.

The economic impact of east\u2013west migration on the European Union

This study contributes to the literature on destination-country consequences of international migration, with investigations on the effects of immigration from new EU member states and Eastern Partnership countries on the economies of old EU member states during the years 1995–2010. Using a rich international migration dataset and an empirical model accounting for the endogeneity of migration flows, we find positive and significant effects of post-enlargement migration flows from new EU member states on old member states’ GDP, GDP per capita, and employment rate, and a negative effect on output per worker. We also find small, but statistically significant negative effects of migration from Eastern Partnership countries on receiving countries’ GDP, GDP per capita, employment rate, and capital stock, but a positive significant effect on capital-to-labor ratio. These results mark an economic success of the EU’s eastern enlargements and free movement of workers in an enlarged EU.

Military Expenditures and Economic Growth in Central and Eastern EU Countries: Evidence from the Post-Cold War Era

Although the relationship between military expenditures and economic growth is well documented for the old members of the European Union, empirically little is known for the new members. Thus, the goal of this paper is to investigate the economic impact of military expenditures in Central and Eastern European countries employing panel cointegration and causality methods for the period 1993–2013. Findings indicate that the variables in question do not move together in the long run and the direction of causality in the short run is from economic growth to military expenditures. The implications of the results for international relations are discussed.

Green infrastructure development at European Union's eastern border: Effects of road infrastructure and forest habitat loss

The functionality of forest patches and networks as green infrastructure may be affected negatively both by expanding road networks and forestry intensification. We assessed the effects of (1) the current and planned road infrastructure, and (2) forest loss and gain, on the remaining large forest landscape massifs as green infrastructure at the EU's eastern border region in post-socialistic transition. First, habitat patch and network functionality in 1996–98 was assessed using habitat suitability index modelling. Second, we made expert interviews about road development with planners in 10 administrative regions in Poland, Belarus and Ukraine. Third, forest loss and gain inside the forest massifs, and gain outside them during the period 2001–14 were measured. This EU cross-border region hosts four remaining forest massifs as regional green infrastructure hotspots. While Poland's road network is developing fast in terms of new freeways, city bypasses and upgrades of road quality, in Belarus and Ukraine the focus is on maintenance of existing roads, and no new corridors. We conclude that economic support from the EU, and thus rapid development of roads in Poland, is likely to reduce the permeability for wildlife of the urban and agricultural matrix around existing forest massifs. However, the four identified forest massifs themselves, forming the forest landscape green infrastructure at the EU's east border, were little affected by road development plans. In contrast, forest loss inside massifs was high, especially in Ukraine. Only in Poland forest loss was balanced by gain. Forest gain outside forest massifs was low. To conclude, pro-active and collaborative spatial planning across different sectors and countries is needed to secure functional forest green infrastructure as base for biodiversity conservation and human well-being.

ЮРИДИЧНИЙ МЕХАНІЗМ РЕГУЛЮВАННЯ ОСНОВНИХ НАПРЯМІВ ТРАНСКОРДОННОГО СПІВРОБІТНИЦТВА НА НОВОМУ СХІДНОМУ КОРДОНІ ЄС

У статті досліджуються проблеми інституціонального і організаційно-правового забезпечення транскордонного співробітництва на новому східному кордоні ЄС.