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A report of an international conference organised by the Hans-Böckler-Stiftung and the International Partnership Initiative e.V., Wolfsburg, November 9/10 2000
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A general characterisation of the social landscape of Serbia as an extremely insecure and unstable environment, unsurprising as it is, is painfully accurate. All the general features of Serbian society are showing pronounced signs of decay and the stability of south-eastern Europe, which has been pronounced as the key goal of the Stability Pact for South-East Europe, is a far-fetched goal in Serbia which seemed, earlier this year, to be plunging deeper and deeper into a crisis of internal security and political legitimacy. This paper consists of two main parts. The first deals with the key elements of insecurity in Serbian society, while the latter, and briefer one, deals with the main questions that the Stability Pact poses for Serbia and Serbia for the Stability Pact, respectively. In conclusion, I argue that there are things that the Stability Pact ought to do that are quite different from the things that it does now. I argue that such a change of course would help induce a far greater degree of stability in Serbia, thus offsetting the destructive consequences of the deep internal political and social crisis.
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the article gives some remarks on the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe and its potential impact on future European Integration from the point of view of the Bulgarian government.
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This article focusses on the group of six countries from the region, the so-called recipient countries or target countries, prior to the incorporation of Federal Republic of Yugoslavia into the Pact following the events of October 2000. Understandably, these countries are all represented in the Stability Pact by their government structures and also by their parliaments, local authorities, NGOs and the private sector. The article is an edited version of a presentation by the author at a conference on Balkans reconstruction, held in Prague on September 21 2000 under the auspices of the George C. Marshall Foundation, the East-West Institute and the World Bank.
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This article briefly examines the main types of corruption in the region, the required measures to combat it and the circumstances that must be satisfied prior to these measures being able to be fully and adequately implemented. Its main contention is that stability must be introduced as an environment that makes possible the elimination of corruption, rather than it being expected as an outcome of the elimination of corruption. Only in stable social and economic circumstances is it possible to introduce transparent mechanisms of corruption monitoring, assessment and control, and such circumstances will be introduced only where the state and society are sufficiently strengthened adequately to take on and fulfil their roles and duties towards their citizens. To do this, they need decisive guidance and financial, political, logistic and expert support from the European Union, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
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Conference note on a seminar held at the London School of Economics in December 2000.
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This article will look at the way trade unions can participate in the Stability Pact in a somewhat hypothetical sense, by framing the Pact through a lens which sees organised labour both as an NGO (non-governmental organisation) and as a partner of other NGOs that focus on social issues. The issues of Working Table II are the most important discussion point for trade unions, but the idea of labour participation in NGO networks indicates also an interest in the labour-related issues of the other two Working Tables. Through potential partnerships, trade unions, other NGOs and civil society organisations can create a system of dialogue concerning “cross-cutting” issues in the Stability Pact and, in general, engender the potential to leverage their influence in order to gain a greater voice in Stability Pact discussions.
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A flowchart of the major international institutions and initiatives involved in reconstruction, development and stabilisation is highly complex, even without the special dimension of Kosovo assistance and the protectorate. Since mid-1999, however, the key initiative is the Stability Pact – both in terms of finances and the organisations involved. Whereas the lead organisations in Working Table I are evidently the Royaumont Process, the UN and the OSCE, Table III is “in the hands of” the WEU, the EU’s CFSP and – to a far lesser extent – NATO and the PfP. Table II, the economic Table, has the largest number of lead organisations, including most of the international financial institutions, the EU, SECI, EBRD, EIB, BSEC (Black Sea Economic Co-operation) and the CEI (Central European Initiative). A key dilemma of all the international programmes, and the EU strategies in particular, is the internal asymmetries and heterogeneity of the Balkans. The differences in economic development, stability and prosperity between the EU-15, ECE and SEE are relative: the differences within the region are of a similar magnitude. Consequently, regional co-operation is hard to achieve and the conditionality principle of the European Union tends to consolidate differences and differentiation within the region, where typically almost every country has its own “level” of bilateral relations with the EU as the dominant regional (economic) power.
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The interest of the Moldovan authorities in the Stability Pact is determined by the advantages the Republic of Moldova could draw from it in solving the pressing problems that it faces and, in the first place, by the perspective of full integration into the European Union (EU) that the Pact offers to the countries of south-eastern Europe. This perspective attracts Chișinău like a magnet. The problem is that, for quite a long period of time, Moldovan diplomats have been trying unsuccessfully to obtain from Brussels a clear sign regarding the prospect of the country’s integration into the EU. They have requested the signing of an Association Agreement that would include such a clause. So, from the very beginning, the Stability Pact was perceived in Moldova as a lifejacket that could draw the country out of the “muddy waters” of the CIS and lead it towards Brussels, even if it would take a roundabout route through the Balkan region. Thus, in the eyes of Moldovan officials, the Stability Pact for South-Eastern Europe is rather a Pact for EU Integration, and so one of the main directions of current Moldovan diplomatic effort is aimed at the full inclusion of Moldova in it. This article intends precisely to examine how the Stability Pact is perceived in the Republic of Moldova, what is the current stage of its efforts to join the process and what are the chances of Moldova to achieve this goal.
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In this article, I will focus on an analysis of the achievements of the Stability Pact with regard to the issues of social and socio-economic development, the construction of democratic societies and proceedings against unemployment and corruption. A comprehensive analysis of the initiatives under all three Working Tables would clearly exceed the framework of this paper and bypass its central purpose. The following section will briefly familiarise the reader with the basic structures of the Pact and elucidate the approach of assessing the state of the social development projects referred to in this article. The section will also highlight the most pressing socio-economic problems in the region, surveying those issues that must be addressed via the concept of comprehensive socio-reconstruction. Having explored both the available instruments of the Stability Pact and the problems demanding primary attention, section three will turn to analyse the concrete proceedings of the Stability Pact by exploring those projects, which are scheduled for immediate implementation on the ground. The third section will assess how the concrete proceedings of the Pact match its initial pretensions and spotlight the areas which require further improvement if the ambitious stabilisation process is to succeed.
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The aim of this paper is, firstly, to present a new perspective on Crouch’s exchange theory of IR (1993) and, secondly, to use this approach to analyse empirical findings regarding the changes which have occurred in IR at the company level in Romania since 1989. The empirical findings will be presented for each of the six categories investigated, analysing the development of IR since 1989. After that, a synthesis of the findings will be presented in an attempt to answer the research questions indicated in the next section.
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The objective of this article is to explore institutionalised initiatives towards the region, especially the Stability Pact. Until recently, Serbia was not officially (at the level of the republican government) part of these initiatives and institutions, and consequently there has been much reaction on the Serbian side. This article stresses the role of NGOs, which have produced action plans for many projects viable in Serbia, and presents initiatives from Serbia, sectioned in the form of particular actions (socalled democracy projects) and proposals which have been made by European structures. These actions have had positive effects and have sparked a good public reaction in Serbia. In concluding, the article draws up a framework for future political and economic reform and for the possibilities of co-operation within the region and with Europe.
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Economic forecasts are an essential building block for a budgetary anticipation in order to determine the budgetary objectives and to sustain the tax and expenditure plans. In Romania the surveillance process is ensured by the use of budget programs. The aim of this paper is to improve the budgetary planning by recommending the use of the forecasted general budget balance provided by the institution with the highest accuracy during the crisis (2008-2013). More types of projections were analyzed during the recent economic crisis and the IMF forecasts for this indicator outperformed those provided by Dobrescu model and the European Union. Therefore, the recommendation is related to the use of IMF predictions in establishing the next budgetary plan for 2014 and 2015. Moreover, this research also brings improvements in the methodological framework, by proposing some aggregated accuracy indicators (S1, S2, S3 and S measures) for solving the problem of contradictory results of different accuracy indicators.
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The interdependence is definitely the most common concept used to describe the relations between the EU and Russia. Nevertheless, despite their obvious interdependence, there are still a series of debates in literature which usually arise when it comes to describing its typology and its implications, especially in the analysis at the Member States level. Moreover, given the complexity and variety of relations between the EU-27 and the Russian Federation, the present study aims to outline a comprehensive picture of the interdependence between the two actors at a regional level by conducting a comparative analysis of the European Union Member States according to their interdependence with Russia, considering energy as the main aspect of their relations. In this sense, the scientific approach will focus on a comparative analysis of the mutual energy dependencies between the member states and Russia, in order to characterize the interdependence typologies, as well as to identify the distribution of cost and advantages.
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According to the Romanian Constitution (Art. 115, paragraph 1), the Government, as a body of the Executive Power, is endowed with attributions belonging to the Legislative function, specific to the Parliament. Thus, we are dealing with what the juridical science calls “legislative delegation”. On this basis, the Government may issue simple ordinances, under a special enabling law and emergency ordinances - in case of special circumstances, which both represent primary normative acts with the power of a law. In this paper we approach the issue of the legislative delegation during the recent five years (2010-2014), focusing on a few aspects relating to the fields of finance and economics.
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Tourism is an opportunity for people from different cultures to meet and interact, to exchange ideas, traditions and ways of thinking. In this industry it is very easy to judge a person just after taking an overall look and studying her general behavior. The aim of this article is to determine the intercultural issues that can show up during the tourist act, while people belonging to different cultures interact. The research method used for creating this article is documentary study. The tourist offer shall be adapted to different types of tourist, taking into consideration some aspects as tourists’ behavior, the type of tourism they prefer and, most of all, the culture they belong to and the culture of the people from the place they visit. Despite the immense diversity of our minds, there is a structure that can serve as a basis for mutual understanding.
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In this research paper the main focus is on religion and how it is influenced by income and education level, how people from different social classes look at religion nowadays. It is a known fact that our income, our education will influence our opinion regarding religion and I analyzed these aspects using a survey carried out by Gallup International for 2014, in Romania. The statistical data shows us clear differences between people with low income and basic education, and people with high income and high education, when it comes to religiosity. Therefore, we can say that income and educational attainment impacts religious belief, but we have to take into consideration that there are exceptions among people and this does not apply to all.
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Dans l’étude ci-dessous on a été réalisé une interprétation de l'impact des fluctuations des taux de change du leu moldave (MDL) sur certaines variables économiques. La période considérée est Novembre-Décembre 2014 et le début de l'année 2015. Notamment au cours de cette période, le taux de la monnaie nationale par rapport aux principales devises de référence de change a commencé la voie de fortes dévaluations. Cette tendance, cependant, s’est placée dans le contexte des situations similaires dans la région, qui a ainsi permis sa dépréciation graduelle. Compte tenu que la dépréciation de la monnaie est un phénomène aux effets complexes et multilatérales, une fois arrivé dans un pays "X", celui-ci devrait, afin d'améliorer la situation, en premier lieu, augmenter leur présence sur d'autres marchés de ventes, plus stable et avec de plus grandes possibilités.
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The global economic and financial crisis of 2007 highlighted the risks, threats and enormous costs of a global economy in the absence of a global government. The aim of this paper is to emphasize the importance of global governance in a world in which states are facing the erosion of national sovereignty. The two concepts are being analyzed from various points of view, including current challenges and future scenarios. Despite the fact that states, especially major powers, are not prepared to accept some elements of global governance and the limits that they would put on their national sovereignty, recent developments seem to make global governance a key component of the international scene.
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