European Leaders Research Articles

РЕТРОСПЕКТИВНЫЙ АНАЛИЗ ПРИЧИН ЛЕТАЛЬНОСТИ У БОЛЬНЫХ С ТЯЖЕЛЫМ ТЕЧЕНИЕМ COVID-19

In Ukraine, more than 3.5 million cases of COVID-19 have been registered during the pandemic, and the death toll is almost 90,000. Ukraine is a leader in Europe in the growth of new cases of COVID-19 and mortality from this disease. The search for effective treatment regimens and new approaches to the management of patients with coronavirus disease in order to reduce the severity of coronavirus disease, reduce mortality, the number of complications and improve the rehabilitation period is very important nowadays. The aim of the work. To determine the main causes of mortality in patients with severe COVID-19 by analyzing the frequency and structure of complications in deceased patients. Materials and methods. The study conducted a retrospective analysis of 122 medical charts of deceased patients with COVID-19 who were hospitalized in a communal non-profit enterprise “Kyiv city clinical hospital №17” for the period from September 2020 to November 2021. Results and discussion. The overall mortality among patients with COVID-19 was 9.3%, in the intensive care unit (ICU) – 48.4%. The most common causes of death in patients with COVID-19 were: respiratory failure (RF) – 100% of cases, pulmonary embolism (PE) and acute heart failure (AHF) - about 60%. The average length of stay of patients in inpatient treatment was 11.67 ± 8.05 days, and in the intensive care unit – 7.94 ± 6.24 days. The mean age of patients hospitalized in the ICU was 63.5 ± 12.9 years and the mean age of patients who died was 71.2 ± 10.29 years. Prognostically significant criteria for lethal consequences were the presence of comorbidity: cardiovascular diseases- 92.3%, endocrine system diseases – 28.4%, nervous system diseases – 23.07%, kidney diseases – 9.6%, cancer – 9,6%, autoimmune conditions – 7.69%, varicose veins – 5.7%, respiratory system diseases – 5.7%. In patients with fatal outcome lymphopenia (84.6%) was observed in patients on admission to the ICU. Vasopressor and inotropic support was performed in 50 % of patients with COVID-19. In 25 % of those who died during long-term treatment and long-term respiratory support, there was the development of multiple organ failure, which in most cases was the point of no return. Conclusions. The most common causes of death were: respiratory failure, thrombosis, acute cardiovascular failure, sepsis and multiple organ failure. The main nature of the complications is common, but the cohort may be affected by different factors and the percentage of complications may differ in other hospitals.

Influence of Photovoltaic Development on Decarbonization of Power Generation—Example of Poland

Climate change is becoming a global problem. In many countries, actions are taken with the main aim of reducing CO2 emissions. The main action, especially in developed countries, is decarbonization. The European Union has become one of the organizations that plays a leading role in decarbonization of the economy. For this reason, renewable energy sources are being intensively developed in the EU countries. Solar energy with the use of PV installations is developing the fastest. Poland is one of the European leaders in photovoltaic development, and according to estimates for 2021–2025, it will continue to be. The aim of this study was to find out the opinions of people toward actions related to the decarbonization policy in Poland. These opinions were obtained through the prism of respondents’ attitudes toward energy produced by means of PV micro-installations. A questionnaire survey was used in this research. The survey was conducted using the CAWI (Computer-Assisted Web Interview) technique. To analyze the results of the study, a Kruskal–Wallis ANOVA test and U–Mann Whitney test were used. Responses were obtained from 633 people. The results obtained from the survey allowed us to draw conclusions, which include the following: (1) a lack of general conviction of respondents about the effectiveness of Poland’s decarbonization policy on reducing global CO2 emissions, especially among those who show a higher willingness to use PV installations, (2) the willingness to use PV installations is motivated by economic rather than environmental benefits, (3) the need for more widespread public campaigns aimed at promoting the benefits of decarbonization and renewable energy sources, and (4) the finding that the respondents’ region of residence (with a different degree of insolation) mattered for the willingness to use PV installations.

World Finance: A Textbook Presentation and Overview

Financial globalisation is a general trend of contemporary world economic development that multinational corporations largely drive. Many of them come from English-speaking countries. Many of them are of the U.S. origin, which is why globalisation is often misunderstood and misinterpreted as Americanisation. English is the leading language of globalisation. Even European leaders of supranational level have to speak, communicate and pass E.U. legislation in English. That is why teaching and studying world finance in English is given a high priority in many countries. Russia is no exception to the rule and the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation (the University of Finance). This book attempts to outlay the theoretical and practical foundation for the world finance. It contains basic world finance terminology. The textbook can be recommended for teaching world finance and related subjects.

Pursuing ‘full gender equality’ in the European Commission: the case of a constrained selector

ABSTRACT Numerous European leaders have formed cabinets that contain equal numbers of women and men. But forming a gender-equal team at the center of the European Union remains a particularly difficult undertaking. This article analyses the case of Ursula von der Leyen, who, in 2019, set out to form a gender-equal college of commissioners. It analyses why von der Leyen’s first leadership project did not initially succeed and assesses the longer-term prospects of gender equality in the European Commission. Employing a framework drawn from studies of Commission leadership, commissioner selection, and gendered executives, it conceptualizes Commission presidents-elect as constrained selectors. Even with personal dispositions that support gender equality and access to powerful institutional resources, treaty-based rules and situational settings obstruct the ability of presidents-elect to achieve their representational goals. In the future, even presidents-elect who are strongly committed to gender equality will likely struggle to achieve fully balanced colleges.

PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS IN GERMANY 2021: ROLE AND INFLUENCE OF THE EUROPEAN AGENDA

The article presents the results of a study of how the role of Germany as the political and economic leader of the EU is perceived in modern Europe, as well as an analysis of possible mechanisms and ways of influencing the results of these elections from the point of view of the panEuropean agenda and from the side of pan-European political institutions, on the eve of the allGerman elections on September 26, 2021.Recent public opinion polls of Europeans showed their positive attitude to Germany and its Chancellor Angela Merkel as informal European leaders. And although the pan-European agenda did not occupy a significant place during the 2021 election campaign, nevertheless, all the leading German parties devoted a significant place to this topic in their election manifestos. Pan-European political actors, first of all, the European parties, also did not stay away from the German elections and, if possible, tried to provide all possible assistance and support to their member parties participating in them.

A RADICAL‐RIGHT POPULIST DEFINITION OF CROSS‐NATIONAL REGIONALISM IN EUROPE: Shaping Power Geometries at the Regional Scale Beyond State Borders

AbstractRadical‐right populism has become a structural political phenomenon in the European Union in recent years. This ideology, the core principle of which is based on a nurtured antagonism between the ‘people’ and the ‘elite’, combined with a parallel promotion of authoritarian and nativist ideas, is generally associated with the nation state and its core territorial ideology: nationalism. However, populism can also be scaled at the regional level, within or across European state borders. This article, which is based on critical discourse analysis, aims to investigate what might constitute the meaning of cross‐national regionalism according to a radical‐right populist leader in Europe. More precisely, my objective is to research the antagonism this type of leader can structure to organize territorial, symbolic and institutional claims associated with a specific cross‐national region. This research is based on the discourse Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán produced in relation to the Visegrád region. My analysis helps to reveal the types of power geometries articulated by populist leaders beyond state borders.

Translating the Muslim for Christian Europe: Re-assessing the Interpretation of aslama in the First Latin Translation of the Qur’an

ABSTRACT Around 1141, Peter the Venerable, one of the most prominent Christian leaders in Europe, commissioned Robert of Ketton, an otherwise undistinguished astronomer from Rutland, to translate the Qur’an into Latin for the first time. His objective was to provide an accurate understanding of the Qur’an, so that Christian refutations of Islam and Muslim belief could be more effective. The resulting text would become the most popular version of the Qur’an in Europe for the next six hundred years. However, the verb aslama, from which the words ‘Islam’ and ‘Muslim’ derive, was so thoroughly paraphrased in this translation that historian Norman Daniel would be moved to condemn it in 1960 for attempting ‘to obscure passages which define the religion of Islam and thin the more specifically Islamic content of the Qur’ān’. Since then, despite a renewed appreciation for his methods in general, recent scholarship on Robert of Ketton’s translation has failed to address this damning accusation in particular. This article therefore re-assesses the handling of the verb aslama in the first Latin translation of the Qur’an, by asking to what extent an authentic understanding of Islam and Muslim belief was provided by Robert of Ketton’s paraphrase.

POLITICAL PATHOGENIC MEGADISCOURSES NEUTRALIZATION: TROLLING STRATEGY

The article is aimed at specifying and visualizing the strategies and tactics of neutralizing the negative effects of the pathogenic political megadiscourses. On top of that, it explores the suggestion linguistic implementation features, having been examined basing on the European political leaders’ speeches and news texts, and emphasizes the specificity of trolling strategy, which is aimed either at escalating the emotionality and falsity of the information presented in the original textual array, or at bringing the information having been presented in the original array to the absurd, which would minimize the rationality of the original array perception, and subsequently – trust in the original array, and in the addressee of these arrays (later on). The trolling strategy is optimal in the framework of neutralizing the pathogenic arrays having been created in the fake news paradigm, given these arrays’ orientation onto presenting knowingly false information in order to escalate tensions in the information space and destabilize the situation as a whole. The author presents and validates examples of using all the tactics of this strategy (rough (destructive) trolling or flaming, constructive trolling, exaggeration / reduction, wiki-trolling, "big lies" tactics, sockpuppetting tactics), which follow all the features of the original pathogenic array, including the dominant influence markers, as well as the original array’s suggestiveness realization peculiarities, which allows (when presenting the neutralizing array to the same target audience that has already been affected by the original array) to reduce or neutralize the harmful effects of the original pathogenic array. The paper also outlines the prospects for further research in this area given its fundamental importance not only for identifying the basic strategies for constructing pathogenic arrays and in-depth mechanisms of their formulation and, consequently, their impact on recipients, but also ways to counteract each type of such megadiscourses, thus optimizing Ukraine’s information space in the conditions of information war currently being carried out not only in our country, but in the numerous world countries, as well.

The Digital O&P Workshop.

Digitalisation is the megatrend in healthcare, not only since the pandemic. We are two European digital health experts and industry leaders in the field of orthotics and prosthetics (O&P) and in this article we explored what are the underlying trends driving the adoption of digitalisation for customisation of prosthetics & orthotics. We showed that several trends in 3D image capture (input step), 3D modelling (processing step) and 3D printing (output step) currently converge and thus fuel the rapid transformation of the O&P industry. In short outlooks, we rated the probability and timing of adoption rates across the upcoming couple of years. We furthermore reviewed the impact of boundary conditions set by regulators as well as the reimbursement system. Towards the end of this article, we outlined a digital scenario of the near future by following around an orthotist during her work. We finished with a call-to-action targeting regulators, payors, prosthetists/orthotists, and patients to enable such a desirable future.

РОЗБУДОВА ФАРМАЦЕВТИЧНОЇ ІНДУСТРІЇ В ПОЛЬЩІ В КОНТЕКСТІ НОВИХ МОЖЛИВОСТЕЙ ТА ВИКЛИКІВ ЄВРОІНТЕГРАЦІЇ: ВИСНОВКИ ДЛЯ УКРАЇНИ

У короткостроковому періоді заходи уряду Польщі в процесі євроінтеграції виявилися малоефективними і не дозволили досягнути до 2002 р. поставленої мети – посилити конкурентоспроможність фармацевтичних підприємств. Впровадження стандартів і регламентів ЄС, ухвалення закону про форми підтримки інноваційної діяльності створили підґрунтя для запровадження урядом (за співфінансування фондів ЄС) підтримки науково-технологічних та інноваційних проєктів і запуску галузевої програми InnoNeuroPharm, що, разом з податковою пільгою на дослідження і розробки та іншими заходами політики, дали позитивні імпульси бізнесу. Із вступом до ЄС польські фармацевтичні виробники покращили економічні результати, проте ще і дотепер значно відстають від німецьких як за технологічним рівнем та інноваційною активністю, так і за продуктивністю й оплатою праці. Розвиток галузі ускладнює низка перешкод: відсутність чіткої стратегії та недостатня координація між органами влади; брак стимулюючих механізмів для залучення інвестицій; людський фактор і "промислова корупція". Польщі в процесі євроінтеграції вдалося швидко впровадити "згори вниз" формальні інститути, проте трансформація неформальних інститутів триває і сьогодні. Одна з причин відставання та слабкої конкурентоспроможності української фармацевтики полягає в тому, що євроінтеграційні процеси спрямовуються, передусім, на гармонізацію законодавчого і нормативно-правового регулювання діяльності з виробництва ліків, а не на нарощування потенціалу ендогенного розвитку галузі. Зазначено, що лише запровадження цілеспрямованої комплексної державної політики розбудови "технологічних чемпіонів" у фармацевтиці з опорою на ендогенні інновації здатне "конвертувати" євроінтеграційні процеси в конкурентоспроможні українські продукти і вивести їх на європейські ринки. Обґрунтовано, що без ментально-ціннісних змін, трансформації неформальних інститутів і вдосконалення рамкових умов для інновацій зиски країни від євроінтеграції для розвитку української фармацевтики будуть обмеженими і нездатними скоротити технологічний і економічний розрив з європейськими лідерами галузі.

Post WWI Chinese Revolutionary Leaders in Europe

Post WWI Chinese Revolutionary Leaders in Europe

Fiscal Integration in an Experimental Union: How Path-Breaking Was the EU's Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic?

Fiscal Integration in an Experimental Union: How Path-Breaking Was the EU's Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic?

Making an Arab-Muslim Elite in Paris: The Pan-Maghrib Student Movement of the 1930s

AbstractThis paper aims to clarify the scope and limitations of the ideals of Pan-Maghrib nationalism as developed by the Association of North African Muslim Students in France (AEMNAF) in the 1930s. The AEMNAF members’ inclination toward sciences and technology and their emphasis on conserving their mother culture made them consider Arabism and Islam their most important identity markers. Moreover, the AEMNAF created a sense of solidarity among Maghribi students in France and extended its social influence by cooperating with French and Mashriqi opinion leaders in Europe. However, the AEMNAF's narrow definition of Muslim-ness and its elitist nature led to the exclusion of Maghribis with French citizenship from the organization. The dualistic view of technology and culture in Maghribi nationalist thought also contributed to prioritizing Francophones over Arabophones, Muslims over non-Muslims, men over women, and students in the sciences over those in humanities.

The impact of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict on military expenditures of European states: security alliances or geography?

ABSTRACT The Russo-Ukrainian conflict has shaken the European post-Cold War security order. In response, European leaders started to talk about the need to strengthen the defense of European nations. This article quantitatively analyses changes in military expenditures of European states in the aftermath of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict. There are significant differences in changes in ME´s of European states, which however cannot be explained by freeriding within NATO, the relative power of individual states, within-state variables or by membership in the EU. Instead, our results indicate that it was the distance from Russia which drove changes. Interestingly, while traditional operationalization of distance based on fly distance from capital-to-capital showed strong explanatory power, our operationalization based on road distance fared even better. Our results indicate that even in the 21st century distance remains an important geopolitical factor.

How Contagious Were the Capitol Riots in Europe – In Praxis and in Perception?

ABSTRACT This contribution presents a short overview on the impact of the Capitol Riots riots in Europe. Fear of a similar mass-mediated contagion was explicitly expressed by most of the European leaders. Echoes and acclamation for the riots in the U.S. were indeed heard on websites, QAnon-sites, and within circles of Trump supporters in Europe as well. An earlier storming of the German Reichstag (in 2020) was cited. In the Netherlands, the curfew riots of 24–25 January 2021 also were put into this context. Security agencies and officials in the U.K. and the Netherlands repeated this threat awareness in recent, formal threat assessments.

In Memoriam: José Baselga's Journey in Cancer Medicine.

In Memoriam: José Baselga's Journey in Cancer Medicine.

The Critical Need to Build a European Governance Model for Online Access to Medical Information Services: A Position Paper.

European pharmaceutical companies have a legal requirement to provide non-promotional Medical Information (MI) services to support healthcare professionals (HCPs) who are using their medicinal products. While the industry has self-regulating bodies with established Codes of Practice, these mainly focus on promotional messaging and commercial activities. In the absence of similar frameworks for MI, such services struggle to understand how to meet HCP digital expectations, often in fear of breaching the promotional codes. This is limiting access to the wealth of non-promotional patient-focussed information held within the industry. Meanwhile, a large volume of unregulated, low-quality information can be readily found on the internet. To understand the current status, the Medical Information Leaders in Europe (MILE) industry association performed a benchmarking survey which explored the online MI service provision of 13 mid-large pharmaceutical companies across Europe. This highlighted a great diversity in approach in terms of geographical coverage and content. Visibility and access for HCPs is complex, compromising online engagement and website utilisation. This MILE position paper highlights the critical need to establish a clear governance model, which empowers pharmaceutical company MI functions to provide unbranded, non-promotional, medicinal product information sources to support HCP online information needs. It is essential to build confidence, transparency and trust by establishing a practical quality framework with principles and standards for online MI services for HCPs.

Ukrayna için AB Üyeliğinin Perspektifleri: Başlıca Zorluklar ve Tehditler

With the entry into force of the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the EU the relations between Kyiv and Brussels have reached their peak. At the same time, there are numerous challenges and threats that impede the further deepening of Ukraine's integration into the European Union. The intensification of internal disharmony in the EU after the enlargements in 2004 and 2007 have led to an increase of the enlargement fatigue. The aspirations of some European leaders to first regulate the situation inside the EU and only then to consider the prospects for enlargement potentially threaten Ukraine to stay down in the gray zone between the EU and Russia for a long time. However, the fact that Brussels is continuing a dialogue on enlargement with the Western Balkan countries may be the source for optimism for the Ukrainian side. Citizens of key EU countries consider the high level of corruption and low economic indicators of Ukraine to be the main challenges for the Ukrainian state on its way to membership in the Union. In recent years, despite the ongoing Russian aggression, Ukrainians managed to form an institutional and legal framework to counteract corruption and set the stage for economic growth. This creates grounds for expectations that the impact of relevant negative factors will decrease significantly over time. The position of Russia is the greatest threat for Ukraine's European prospects. After beginning of the Russian aggression in Ukraine, the leading states of the world and EU, while implementing foreign policy in the eastern direction, gradually have opted out of the “Russia First” principle. At the same time, the number of achievements of Russian diplomacy in the EU lately confirms that Russia remains one of the key partners of the leading capitals of Europe. Accordingly, now the Russian factor is a major deterrent to Ukraine's EU membership.

Compliance with EU Law and Argumentative Discourse: Representing the EU as a Problem-Solving Multilevel Governance System through Discursive Structures of Argumentation

This paper analyzes how, during the Juncker Presidency (2014–2019), the European Commission employed argumentative strategies to address the question of member-states’ compliance with European Union (EU) law. There is a literature gap regarding how European leaders employ argumentative strategies to coax member-states to comply with EU legislation and how those strategies can be associated with multilevel governance designs and problem-solving approaches. Building on van Eemeren and Grootendorst’s (A systematic theory of argumentation. The Pragma-dialectical approach, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2004) pragma-dialectical approach to argumentation, the paper explores what dialectical and rhetorical strategies were employed by the Juncker European Commission to build an argumentative regime where the question of compliance with European Union law is articulated with the representation of the European Union as an efficient multilevel governance system. Starting from the distinction between procedural and operational concepts of problem-solving in multilevel governance polities (Maggetti in Public Administration 97:355–369, 2019), the paper questions whether the Juncker Commission’s arguments on the need to ensure European Union law compliance favor a particular conception of problem-solving in multilevel governance systems. The paper argues that the argumentative strategies employed by the Juncker European Commission in the field of compliance reveal a preference for an operational notion of problem-solving combined with some aspects of a more procedural perspective of problem-solving in multilevel governance polities. The background of this paper is associated with the growing impact that European legislation has on member-states and also with the efforts developed by the Juncker European Commission in discussing how to improve EU regulation to increase compliance with EU law.

Brexit disruption and transborder leadership in Europe

ABSTRACT The turbulence of Brexit threatens to undermine England–European Union (EU) transborder cooperation at the subnational scale. This paper discusses the lived experience of city and regional leaders involved in developing cross-European cooperation during the early phase of the Brexit ‘project’. It contributes to the idea of relational leadership as a framing device for studying leadership in transborder cooperation in the England–EU subnational setting, and surfaces challenges faced by subnational leaders in transborder cooperation during significant policy turbulence. Two main findings of the research have wider relevance for emerging city and regional (place) leadership theory and practice. First, the unanticipated shock caused by Brexit to the supra-national policy environment is impacting significantly on subnational leaders’ ability to maintain good transborder working relationships; and second, continuing non-prejudicial dialogue and meaningful conversations between subnational partners are an antidote to the negative legacies of such policy disruption.