People: Serbia’s Little Big Activist
The unfolding tale of Rastko Pocesta, precocious social networker and activist for progressive causes, illustrates the potential power of the Internet in Serbia – and its dangers.
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The unfolding tale of Rastko Pocesta, precocious social networker and activist for progressive causes, illustrates the potential power of the Internet in Serbia – and its dangers.
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Taking bribes is one thing. Wearing shabby clothes is quite another.
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Russia starts high-speed rail service between its two capitals, at a terrible price.
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Adolescent mothers and bleak lives are the toll of one Bulgarian Romani community's taboo against sex education.
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All may not be well in Central Europe, but the prospects for change and reform look a lot better than they did just a few months ago.
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This study is intended to prove the null and void nature of the organization of the institution issuing electronic currency in any of the legal forms set forth by Law no. 31/1990 on companies, such as it may be possible according to Law no. 127/2011 on electronic currency issuing and to the Regulation of the National Bank of Romania no. 8/2011 regarding the institutions issuing electronic currency, and supports its establishment only as a joint-stock company, whose particulars are otherwise, mainly regulated in the mentioned legislative documents and this legal form shall enable it to conduct a more efficient prudential monitoring.
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One of the novelties brought by the Civil Code in the matter of the divorce shall consist of the possibility to continue the action for divorce by the legal heirs. According to art.380, if the court pronounces a decree of the fault divorce for certain good reasons, under the provisions of art.373 letter (b), if the plaintiff spouse dies during the conduct of the legal proceedings, his/her legal heirs are able to continue the action for divorce. The action for divorce continued by the legal heirs shall be admitted if only the court finds the exclusive fault of the defendant spouse. Certain conditions may be extracted from the content of this legal text: the death should have occurred during the conduct of the legal proceedings; the deceased person should be the plaintiff in this case; the legal heirs should request the continuation of the action for divorce brought by their author; the exclusive fault of the defendant spouse should result from the produced evidence. A practical importance has also the date of the marriage dissolution, but also the enforcement of art. 80 NCC in time. In order for the abovementioned legal provision to be applicable, the plaintiff’s death should have occurred subsequently to the filing of the action for divorce with the court’s registry office or subsequently to its service by registered letter to a post office or to another legal entity carrying on courier services. From the point of view of the legal merits invoked by the plaintiff, it should be mentioned in the divorce claim that art. 380 NCC shall become enforceable if only the provisions of art.373 letter (b) NCC were invoked as the merits. The notion of plaintiff shall be construed so that it represents the party who filed the main claim founded on the provisions of art.373 letter (b) NCC and the defendant party who filed a counterclaim and invoked the same legal provisions as the legal merits. The proof of the heir capacity for the purpose of continuing the action for divorce may be made based upon the documents related to the civil status – in case of the legal heirs – or by presenting the will – in case of testamentary heirs. In case of the approval of the action for divorce filed subsequently to the effective date of the New Code of Civil Procedure, continued by the plaintiff’s heirs, the court shall establish the date of the claim filing as the date of the marriage dissolution. Art. 380 NCC shall be enforceable also if the action for divorce has already been pending before the court prior to the effective date of the New Civil Code. However, in this case the plaintiff’s death should have occurred subsequently to the 1st of October 2011, otherwise he/she is in the presence of the retroactive enforcement of the civil law.
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The community legislator has the merit of having created, under the Regulation (EC) no. 44/2001 on jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters, a coherent and uniform system of rules in civil and commercial matters for the member states, for the purpose of a more efficient judicial cooperation and of the completion of a space of freedom, security and justice. However, each member state has its own system of law and there is a risk that the definitions used for the regulation of these matters should be interpreted differently. Consequently, the Court of Justice of the European Union plays an essential part in the enforcement of the Regulation, which has as a mission to explain these notions to the national courts, through autonomous qualifications given in the consideration of the goals and of the system of the Regulation. In this study we propose to examine a new aspect with which the courts have been facing for the last several years, regarding the enforcement of art.5 item 3 and art.15 para. (1) letter c) of the Regulation, in the context in which the internet became a more disseminated source of information, but also an interactive mean to develop relationships with the customers. The ubiquity nature of the internet, allowing to the information to exist and to be disseminated worldwide instantaneously, without any actual possibilities of control and with a disseminating „network” including the users sometimes, made the interpretation of art. 5 item 3 difficult, but also of art. 15 para. (1) letter c). In case of the delicts prejudicing the personality rights, committed via the internet, „the place of the prejudice occurrence” receives, in the light of the recent case law of the Court, a more balanced and broader interpretation, and the competent court shall be in the jurisdiction where the victim has his/her interests, in case „the center of interests” may be the place where he/she resides or the place where he/she develops the professional activity.In case of „guiding” the activities of a professional to a member state, the identification of the competent jurisdiction shall suppose, as we will see, the identification of one or several elements from which the professional’s intention may result for developing business relationships with the customers of a certain member state.
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This study proposes a synthetic presentation of one institution of the Anglo-Saxon law – estoppel – which is barely known by the Romanian lawyers,but which gives rise to an increase interest in the French case law and doctrine, where it penetrated through the agency of the international arbitration and of the international private law disputes. Moreover, “estoppel” was granted textual assistance in France in the arbitration field by the amendments brought to the French Code of Civil Procedure in the year 2011. The estoppel rule is connected to the interdiction principle of self-contradiction („no one can contradict himself to the other’s detriment”), to the principle of loyalty of the debates and of the procedural coherence, being classified as a possible new filtering instrument of the claims submitted to the courts of law. Starting with the origin and definition of the concept in the Anglo-American law, I explained significant test cases of the last 6-7 years of France, as well as the complex analysis carried out by the famous experts of the French law for the purpose of formulating a new guiding principle of the civil proceedings and of finding an adequate legal regime. Likewise, I examined (not in an exhaustive manner) the instruments that the New Romanian Code of civil procedure provides for the observance of certain modern principles such as the loyalty and procedural coherence. Thus, in the circumstances of the intention to internationalize the civil proceedings, of a certain legal “ecumenism”, expressed even by the French Court of Cassation, we consider that it’s worth to draw our attention also to the estoppel theory which – apparently! – will develop a “career” in the Roman-German systems of law, as well.
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The Government Emergency Ordinance no. 109/2011 concerning the corporate governance of state-owned enterprises is commonly regarded as a genuine reform, a turning point in regulating these entities, whose work has sunk, throughout the past two decades, into a normative system which is brief, incomplete and inadequate to the features of the state-owed enterprises.. The corporate governance mechanisms which the legislator has considered are mostly grounded on the orientations of the OECD Guidelines on corporate governance of state-owned enterprises (2005) and on the transplantation of the governance mechanisms from the common corporate law provided by the Companies Act no. 31/1990, as amended. In this paper, we argue that, giving the way they have been conceived, the mechanisms used to reform the corporate governance of state-owned enterprises in the end of 2011 are far from being able to assure the improvement of economic performance and to stimulate the privatization of these enterprises. Several issues derived from the state acting as a shareholder are preserved, under the circumstances where some of the international corporate governance recommendations (OECD, 2005) have not been implemented within the reform. The ordinance erroneously focuses on prerequisites imported from the shareholders structure of the common corporate law companies and overlooks treating the real governance issues which characterize the intervention of the state as owner of companies, failing to provide means for a clear separation of the three functions the state plays as a shareholder in the context: ownership, regulation, and industrial policy maker. The reform at the end of year 2011 does not provide a ground for promoting, as per OECD recommendations, a foreseeable and coherent state shareholding policy, given the absence of a centralized authority competent to exercising the state ownership function. Certain governance mechanisms related to the type of state-owned enterprises are unsatisfying, such as ignoring stakeholders approach and a weak accountability to the public. These matters may be accompanied by governance characteristics connected to the case of some key public enterprises privatization, which condition the efficiency of the reform on other political resolutions and legal measures, like the ones regarding the choice of the manner and the time of privatization. Ultimately, the uncertainties regarding the enforcing of the insolvency procedure distort the governance mechanisms and objectives considered by GEO No.109/2011, under the circumstances in which many of the state-owned enterprises undergo financial difficulties.
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The regulation of the trust was placed from the very beginning under the sign of the legislator’s concern of not creating an instrument which could be used for tax evasion or money laundering purposes. This concern is described in the explanatory memorand
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In our article, we present some aspects of e-learning environments and networks evolution within the logic of social development, through the formalization of collected data from field research and through the participation modeling, in several counties in Romania, and also the results of a socio-cultural project developed in Ialomita county, ESD - KRAFTEDUCOM - Council of Europe. The concept of e-learning environment acquires additional connotations, resulting from the combination of electronic knowledge and network area defined in the social development, common to all types of learning. By using and exploring the different learning situations, personal, organized, social, informal, on the territorial network, the system provides thus the information technology and instrument status, but also the learning environment, with relevant attributes of a shared oral culture in learning communities or local communities.
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The world has realized that the economic success of the states are directly determined by the quality of their education systems and that the most effective factor of production is human capital expressed in knowledge, skills, creative abilities and moral qualities of individuals in society. The specialists consider that in the economy of the 21st century the education system became a priority branch of production, being regarded as an occupational field, as a profitable investment sphere. This conception concerning the mission of education will dominate the educational policy of most countries in the world in the next period. Improving the quality of the education and training systems is one of the core components of the cooperation between Member States by creating academic networks, study visits and partnerships. The communication from the Commission of the European Communities1 emphasizes the role of universities and research programs in the Europe of knowledge. The cooperation regarding the policies in the education and training field began with the adoption of the White Paper on education and training "Teaching and learning - Towards a Learning Society", by which the European Union defines itself as moving toward a learning society based on acquiring new knowledge and lifelong learning.
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In this article, we propose a methodological view, which a management consultant operating in the educational system at different levels - central authority, local, school organization - can tackle; we insist in the points of negotiation and strategic stakes for the educational actors involved. The process of identifying interests and negotiating positions is followed by concrete proposals for action for consultancy, with the idea of harmonizing the interests of major actors in education and serve the purpose, which is not evident in all public policies, and sometimes diverge from it - building human capital.
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The international concern about contemporary education strategies and their need for innovation seems to have had some positive results in the recent UNESCO Delors Report, which the Romanian scholar Basarab Nicolescu is presenting in one of his books, connecting its view to his own in matters of global education improvement. My intention here is to briefly discuss his perspective on transdisciplinarity as a new integrative concept and its possible creative influence in the evolution of education nowadays.
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The contemporary world is characterized through an unprecedented diversity and complexity, generated by the great revolutionary transformations, by the changes which are produced in all fields – political, economical, social, technical, and scientific and, especially, armed forces’ relations. All these transformations mark, one after another, specific characteristics to the international life, to the relations between states, by bringing in the foreground some phenomenon, tendencies and events which require adequate solutions in order to ensure peace, security and people’s progress. Despite the fact that nowadays using force is incriminated under any circumstance, war continues to be used for advocating the personal interests of some countries.
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Our inspiration for this article is based on the truth that Lucian Blaga is known especially as a poet and philosopher and less as a teacher – the creator of the philosophical system. He was not destined to teach, but he had a vocation for universality, and he was unquestionably the greatest Romanian philosopher of the interwar period. Through his seminars and courses Lucian Blaga formed a myriad of intellectuals who were integrated into our national culture.
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I. Bibo, T. Huszar, J. Szucs, Regije evropske povijesti, Naprijed, Zagreb 1995., E. Morin, Misliti Europu, Durieux, Zagreb 1995., M. Cacciari, Geo-filozofija Europe, Ceres, Zagreb 1996.
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