The European Union legal system is one of the most complex and sophisticated in the world. This article models the Acquis Communautaire (i.e. the corpus of European Union law) as a network and ...introduces the Evolution of European Union Law data set, which tracks connections between European Union primary law, European Union secondary law, European Union case law, national case law that applies European Union law, and national law that implements European Union law. It is the largest, most comprehensive data set on European Union law to date. It covers the entire history of the European Union (1951–2015), contains over 365,000 documents, and records over 900,000 connections between them. Legislative and judicial scholars can use this data set to study legislative override of the Court of Justice of the European Union, the implementation of European Union law, and other important topics. As an illustration, I use the data set to provide empirical evidence consistent with legislative override.
The Europeanisation of candidate countries and new members is a rather recent research area that has grown strongly since the early 2000s. Research in this area has developed primarily in the context ...of the EU's eastern enlargement. A small number of theoretically informed book-length studies of the EU's influence on the Central and Eastern European candidate countries have provided a generalisable conceptual framework for this research area, drawing on the debate between rationalist institutionalist and constructivist institutionalist approaches in International Relations and Comparative Politics. This framework makes these studies highly compatible with analyses of the Europeanisation of member states, with which they also share one key empirical finding, namely that the impact of the EU on candidate countries is differential across countries and issue areas. At the same time, the theoretical implications of these findings appear more clear-cut than in the case of the Europeanisation of member states: rationalist institutionalism, with its focus on the external incentives underpinning EU conditionality and the material costs incurred by domestic veto players, appears well-suited to explaining variation in the patterns of Europeanisation in candidate countries. A very recent development within this research agenda is the focus on the Europeanisation of new member states. While the study of the EU's impact during the early years of membership was hitherto primarily a subfield of analyses of the Europeanisation of member states, it has now become an extension of studies of candidate countries by analysing the impact of accession on the dynamics of pre-accession Europeanisation and how durable and distinctive the patterns of candidate Europeanisation are in the post-accession stage. Adapted from the source document.
The European Union (EU) is said to be tired of enlargement - but how likely is it that a candidate would be ready to join within 10, 15 or more years? This research forecasts how prospective members ...are likely able to perform in implementing EU law until 2050. Using compliance data of all states from the 2004, 2007 and 2013 accession rounds, as well as of five current/potential candidates, we construct an empirical model on candidates' ability to comply with the acquis communautaire. We employ in-sample and out-of-sample techniques to ensure high model prediction accuracy and, ultimately, forecast the five candidates' potential compliance levels in 2017-2050. Our research shows that only one candidate might sufficiently be able to comply with the accession criteria until 2023, while many are unlikely to be ready before the mid-2030s. Focusing on prediction and forecasting, our contribution is given by the research's policy relevance and its methodological innovation.
On every enlargement, European Union applies to all its new Member States a set of common legal norms, known under the name of acquis communautaire, norms that also include multilateral or bilateral ...international agreements the EU is part of. Currently, the EU and the US are negotiating a regional trade agreement, namely the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), of which effects over the Member States will be established according to their particular national legal order, as part of the EU acquis, presented under the form of secondary EU legislation. As part of the 28 EU Member States, Romania’s legal system will apply the European international norms that regard the dispute resolutions that might occur among states or states and investors, in accordance with the European’s Court of Justice (ECJ) jurisprudence, as it will be provided by the legal text of TTIP, after it will be adopted, ratified and implemented by the EU, and subsequently, by each of the European Union’s Member States.
Background: The nature of the European Union (EU) as a global actor has long been the subject of diverse academic debates. Proponents of an understanding of the EU as a normative force believe that ...its greatest transformative power lies not in coercion but in a policy of enlargement that allows the EU to stimulate reforms in the candidate countries of the Central and Eastern European region, despite the crisis of enlargement. The aim of the article is to study the impact of the Europeanisation process on the legal systems of member states and candidate countries, in particular Ukraine, as well as the formulation of proposals for national institutions regarding the perception of the ‘Europeanisation’ impact of EU law on the legal system of Ukraine.
Methods: The methodological basis of the work is interdisciplinary and comprehensive approaches. The interdisciplinary approach is based on the application of theoretical developments in jurisprudence, philosophy, political science, and the theory of international relations, which make it possible to study the process of Europeanisation in relation to member states and candidate countries as fully and comprehensively as possible. The comprehensive approach is aimed at identifying the multifaceted and multifactorial ontological determinants of the Europeanisation process of legal systems. These approaches determined the choice of appropriate general theoretical and special scientific methods: hermeneutic, dialectical, analysis, synthesis, etc.
Results and Conclusions: As a result of the study of the political will, capacity, and legitimacy of the EU to defend the values proclaimed in the founding treaties, in cases of violations of the regulations of the EU law by the member states, the authors come to the conclusion that the EU may face negative consequences due to the display of democratic reformist coalitions in individual member states (Poland and Hungary ), as well as due to favouring (authoritarian) stability over uncertain (democratic) change. Concession to candidate countries for EU accession in terms of the fulfilment of the Copenhagen criteria in exchange for satisfying the interests of leading member states may undermine the credibility of the project of building a European identity based on the common values of the EU, as well as the loss of the reputation of the normative power of the European Union. Accelerating the process of Ukraine’s accession to the EU, which is connected with Ukraine’s acquisition of the status of a candidate for accession to the EU, requires the Europeanisation of the domestic legal culture as a prerequisite for the modernisation of all other elements of the legal system. This, in turn, implies the completion of the process of de-Russification of legal science and education, the development and approval of the Legal Education Development Program, and the modernisation of legal terminology.
The European Union's pre-accession conditionality was very effective in prompting the alignment of the post-communist candidate countries with EU law. As the conditional membership incentive was the ...main factor driving alignment, the changing incentive structure after accession suggests that - ceteris paribus - post-accession compliance with EU law will deteriorate. Data on infringements of EU law allow us a first insight into whether this negative scenario has materialized. The data suggest that, far from constituting an 'eastern problem', virtually all of the new member states outperformed virtually all of the old members during the first four years of membership. To explain this unexpectedly good performance, further research should focus on two factors, both related to the experience of pre-accession conditionality: a greater susceptibility of the new member states to shaming and an institutional investment in legislative capacity.
This article explains the institutional framework for EU-Russia cooperation, in particular in the field of combating terrorism. Under auspices of the Permanent Partnership Council, a political ...dialogue has been established, with four road maps concluded on its sidelines. Due to the Road map on the Common Space of Freedom, Security and Justice, Russia has the possibility not only to establish bilateral relations with EU member states, but also with the EU as an organization. This article discusses practical ways for Russia to cooperate with the EU and its Member States in the fight against terrorism. The authors emphasize the distinctive features between the simple exchange of information and real joint operational forces. This article highlights that Russia-EU cooperation will improve only if both sides consider the same terrorist organizations from common angle.
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