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The French political landscape completely changed after the last presidential and parliamentary elections, as the Socialist Party acquired a political monopoly. They have gained a majority in the Senate and won an absolute majority in the National Assembly. Most importantly, Socialist candidate François Hollande managed to defeat the incumbent and centre-right candidate Nicolas Sarkozy to become president. On 6 May 2012, Hollande won the election with 51.64% of votes compared to 48.36% for his opponent. Therefore after three failed attempts (in 1995, 2002 and 2007) the Left returned to Élysée Palace.
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The outcome of May’s French presidential elections reflected the will for change in France, in relation to both domestic and EU policies. Like numerous Member States, France is currently economically weak and requires extensive reform. Simultaneously, the European Union is experiencing a triple crisis in the economy, governance and political legitimacy. Low mobility and varying degrees of competitiveness between the countries that share the same currency sap the Union’s resources; inter-governmentalism, introduced as a replacement for the community method, has failed as a mode for solving the eurozone crisis; and European citizens increasingly view the EU with scepticism. In this context, François Hollande’s victory held out the promise of an improved political atmosphere for the discussion of EU policies and a novel means to deal with the eurozone’s long-standing financial crisis. By opening Franco-German cooperation to other Member States and broaching the debate on the EU’s “pro-growth agenda,” the French Socialist president is trying to reshape policies on both a national and European scale. François Hollande’s efforts to distance himself from his predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, are particularly evident in his attitude towards the financial crisis and the future of the EU.
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The divisions in the French Socialist Party around the issue of the European Union are nothing new. The most famous split occurred in the wake of the 2005 decision to hold a national referendum between those who campaigned for the treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe and those who were against it. Months before the referendum, the Socialist Party consulted its members. The “Yes” vote won with 59%, but the “No”-bloc continued their campaign outside the party, opposing the Constitutional treaty, citing a lack of democratic accountability and the threat that it posed to the European social model.
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Inauthentic activity in the Russian-language information space this quarter targeted NATO military exercises, peaking on 8 June with the commencement of BALTOPS in the Baltic Sea. Conversations amplified by both automated and anonymous accounts portrayed NATO’s summer exercises as exceptionally aggressive and demonstrative of the alliance’s ambitions to expand into Belarus and Ukraine. Throughout this quarter, we observed a significant increase in English-language bot activity. This flurry of activity was triggered by public statements suggesting the US move nuclear weapons, troops, and military equipment from Germany to Poland for permanent deployment. While the volume of Russian-language automated activity on both Twitter and VK shrunk this quarter, the percentage of conversations amplified by bot voices increased. Statebacked media outlets Sputnik and RT were popular sources of information among both English- and Russian-language audiences. The latter two sections of this report concentrate on the deleted account dataset published by Twitter in June 2020. First, we compare our list of previously identified bot accounts with those published by Twitter, which is visualised in Figure 5. Second, we evaluate Twitter’s capacity for combatting inauthentic activity on its platform, concluding that rates of identification, suspension, and deletion of accounts are unnecessarily slow.
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We analyze causal effects of geopolitical risks and economic uncertainty indices on the green bond market, utilizing two causality tests, around the military conflict in Ukraine. Consistent with the existing literature, the results of Toda and Yamamoto (1995) and Breitung and Candelon (2006) in the static framework show no causal flows from geopolitical risks throughout the period, either before the war or during the war. Further, we find no evidence for both temporary and permanent causal impacts from the geopolitical risks on green bonds. However, we see that changes in economic policy uncertainty Granger-causes fluctuations in green bonds in both full and during the invasion of Ukraine. The results also reveal that the causality is temporary and permanent over the full period; temporary before the war; but turns out to be permanent and stronger during the war, indicating that uncertainty index can exert causal impacts on green bond indices regardless of market conditions and strengthens its power across extreme market conditions. Further, we resort to a time-varying approach of Breitung and Candelon (2006) causality test based on a rolling window of 50 and 60 daily observations. We find that the causal flows from both indicators appear significant and those causation impacts are not constant but time-varying. Economic policy uncertainty is stronger than geopolitics risks in forecasting the movements in green bonds given a higher rejection of the null hypothesis for the former variable. The causality is mostly permanent rather than temporary and the causation impacts from both variables are stronger during the war.
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The relationship between strategic communications and values does not only concern how we define StratCom itself. The articulation of values has also been a central part of how actors have shaped and shifted discourses in relation to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. When actors use certain terms and concepts—defending Western values, protecting our freedom, fighting an existential war, to name but a few—they aim to shape how we understand the events going on around us, and how we react to them. But in doing so they also shape and sometimes (re)define the terms themselves. It is worth considering the origins of some of these terms, and setting out how and why they have recently been used and contested by different actors. The discussion below is by no means exhaustive. It addresses the most relevant and contested terms that have regained currency in discourse surrounding the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022. The status of the debate is depicted below, rather than any fresh definition of the terms selected. Terms have already been extensively conceptualised during a rich history that has seen lively academic debate. Instead of redefining them here, better to show how contested some are, and contextualise how they are used today.
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At this point the discussion broadens to include a wider consideration of how discourses move in relation to one another in societies. Discourse shaping seeks to create a new norm. As the philosopher Timothy Garton Ash observes: ‘The deepest power is that of determining what people consider normal. If you can persuade others that your way of doing things is normal, you have won. At the moment many mature democracies are experiencing the normalization of the anti-liberal far right.’ And ‘normalization’ as a term now widely employed, he reminds us, ‘came to prominence after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. It meant the attempt to return a European society to Soviet communist norms.’ Here we emphasise that any two-dimensional representation misses an important component in creating new norms. Communicators rarely seek to influence a single mainstream conversation but several aspects of the same conversation simultaneously.
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Crossing the shatterbelts of Eurasia and the commercial sea-lanes of the Indo-Pacific, the Belt and Road Initiative has put the distinctively geopolitical outlook of China’s strategy into the spotlight. Beijing articulates this strategy through the deployment of multidimensional diplomacy, Leninist ‘propaganda work’ and ‘united front work’, economic statecraft, and deterrence signalling. By framing the deployment of this vast array of tools as a strand of ‘geopolitical strategic communications’, this chapter examines the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on Beijing’s attempt to shape the perceptions and choices of foreign countries’ decision-makers and public opinions. The chapter explores how the pandemic has both expanded and created avenues for influence, with a focus on the Global South. At the same time, it examines how Beijing’s concern for regime security and diverging national strategies in containing the pandemic have emboldened China’s geopolitical strategic communications vis-à-vis other regional and global powers.
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This past July, as the Georgian summer approached its height, and Tbilisi sweltered, it was clear the country had learned to live with Covid-19. Things had pretty much gone back to normal despite a five-fold rise in infections between one week and the next; numbers had risen from 100 to 500 infections per week, and almost doubled in the capital. (Why the spike? This is pure speculation but there had been two large protest rallies and a pop festival in Tbilisi in the ten days before.) Nonetheless, the health secretary, Zurab Azarashvili, pronounced the epidemiological situation in Georgia ‘calm’ and ‘fully manageable’—and indeed that seemed an altogether fair assessment given that in that preceding fortnight, deaths had been down to between one and three.
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Ethno-religious risks pose a serious threat to national security and the stability of societies. They include conflicts and tensions arising from differences in ethnic and religious identities. These types of risks can lead to social strife, terrorism and even war. Understanding and managing these risks requires extensive research that analyses the factors that cause them, as well as developing strategies and policies to promote stability and security. This complex problem requires an integrated approach that brings together aspects of religion, ethnic identity and social factors in order to promote tolerance and peace in societies.
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The previous chapters provide detailed insights into key areas of the Czech foreign policy in the period 2007–2009. This concluding chapter will analyse the most important foreign policy decisions and events with respect to some domestic factors of the Czech foreign policy making. Specifically, it will look into the most influential ideas shaping the Czech foreign policy and it will consider the perennial problem of the foreign policy coordination.
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Tato kapitola nejprve představuje konceptuální východiska a politický kontext, a to zejména geopolitický kontext a dlouhodobou českou podporu evropské integrace západního Balkánu, ale také základní problémy, se kterými se česká zahraniční politika vůči zemím Balkánského poloostrova dlouhodobě potýká. Následující část kapitoly uvádí hlavní události, jež ovlivnily agendu české zahraniční politiky vůči zemím Balkánského poloostrova, jmenovitě vývoj v evropské politice, postup v normalizaci vztahů mezi Srbskem a Kosovem a řešení sporu společnosti ČEZ s Albánií. Následuje analýza mediálního kontextu a závěrečné shrnutí.
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Předchozí vydání této publikace zaznamenávaly důležité události v české zahraniční politice vůči jihovýchodní Evropě, zejména ty ve spojení s evropskou integrací, migrační vlnou, zesílením geopolitického soupeření Západu s Ruskem, sporem polostátní skupiny ČEZ s Albánií, dohodou o normalizaci vztahů a dialogu mezi Bělehradem a Prištinou či dlouhodobými dopady finanční krize. Během této doby aktéři české zahraniční politiky rozvíjeli vztahy s jihovýchodní Evropou a v roce 2015 se v aktualizované Koncepci zahraniční politiky České republiky zaměřili zejména na aktivní podporu integračního „úsilí Srbska, dalších zemí západního Balkánu a Turecka“. Přitom se však museli vyrovnávat s vlastním ambivalentním a polarizovaným vztahem ke Kosovu i s podnikatelskými neúspěchy při balkánské expanzi skupiny ČEZ. Mediálně zdaleka nejzmiňovanější balkánskou zemí bylo v posledních letech Řecko, a to zejména ve spojitosti s dluhovou a posléze migrační krizí. Přímé politické vztahy České republiky s Řeckem však byly doposud poměrně omezené.
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Stejně jako v předchozích letech, i v roce 2015 pokračovali aktéři české zahraniční politiky v proaktivní podpoře euroatlantické integrace západního Balkánu jako hlavní dlouhodobé prioritě balkánské dimenze české zahraniční politiky. Tak jako v předchozích letech však docházelo v české zahraniční politice k polarizaci a politizaci kvůli nezávislosti Kosova. Proces normalizace vztahů mezi Srbskem a Kosovem, nastartovaný dohodou z dubna 2013, se v české zahraniční politice stále ještě nikterak neprojevil, začal však již být brán v potaz v českém mediálním prostoru. V roce 2015 také pokračoval trend geopolitického soupeření mezi EU a Ruskem, který započal v roce 2014 a doposud fungoval jako katalyzátor euroatlantické integrace západního Balkánu a protiváha únavy z integrace ve starých členských státech EU.
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Identically to former years, some representatives of the Czech foreign policy continued with the proactive support of the Western Balkans Euro-Atlantic integration in 2015 as the main long-lasting priority of the Balkan dimension within the Czech foreign policy. Identically to former years, the Czech foreign policy was polarized and politicised in regard to the independence of Kosovo. The normalisation process be-tween Serbia and Kosovo, commenced by the agreement from April 2013, was not reflected in the Czech foreign policy but it was considered by the Czech media. In 2015, the trend of geopolitical competing continued between the EU and Russia; it started in 2014 and functioned as a catalyst for the Euro-Atlantic integration of the Western Balkans and the counterbalance to the tiredness from the integration in the old EU member states. The general procedure during the integration of the Western Balkans was accompanied by the further development of direct economic and social relationships with all South East European countries, and the economic dimension in 2015 was less affected by former unsuccessful investment expansion of Czech power generating companies in this area. Like in the previous year, the Greek debts played quite a significant and special role in the Czech foreign policy in 2015; it was strongly discussed in the public debate on European and macroeconomic topics but the communication on the official side of the Czech foreign policy was minimal. The new subject of reaction in 2015 from the Czech foreign policy representatives, the public, and media was the wave of migrants passing through the Western-Balkan migration path. In regard to the structure, this chapter focuses on the current solutions and political context of the Czech foreign policy in regard to the Balkan Peninsula. Subsequently, the attention is focused on the agenda and the events in 2015, namely the Euro-Atlantic integration of the Western Balkans, the economic and social relations with Southeast Europe, the refugee wave and the migration. Prior to the conclusion, the analysis of the media context of the Czech foreign policy has been introduced with respect to individual Balkan countries.
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This paper provides a comprehensive overview of the World Bank Group, which comprises the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), the International Development Association (IDA), International Finance Corporation (IFC), Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), and the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). It includes details on the group's structure, locations, and a brief history. The World Bank offers a diverse range of financial products, including loans, risk management services, credit enhancement, disaster risk management insurance, contingent financing, and advisory services. The bank is exposed to several types of risks, including operational, and corporate risks, and financial risks. The bank is also exposed to risky events such as fraud, noncompliance, and losses. The World Bank Treasury manages the bank's activities and is responsible for Treasury Risk, Compliance, and Controls (TRERC). The World Bank is focusing on promoting sustainable development by addressing the root causes of poverty and inequality, such as lack of access to education, healthcare, and economic opportunities. By addressing these underlying factors, the bank aims to promote long-term resilience to risks and create sustainable and inclusive growth.
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These days the global economy and humanity as a whole are in deep and permanent regression. Due to continuous making and widening of imbalances, the economy fell in a confluence of crises (cascading crisis, rolling crisis or a crisis in the system of crises). Along with the economy, the planet has fallen in a serious trap of dying slowly but surely. Finding systemic solutions to growing imbalances both in the economy and the planet as a whole is the imperative of our time. The so-called “green transition” is a big idea to mitigate current crisis and make a recovery. From an economic perspective, it is a way to nullify the existing structural imbalances of economic neoliberalism and misconceptions of related reactive policies, as well as a platform backing sustainable and inclusive economic growth in balance with the limits of nature. This approach is particularly suitable for developing economies that aspire to catch up with the developed world through new industrialization. In this paper, we attempt to concentrate, among dozens of complex issues concerning the transition from an old to a new economic order, on those solutions pertaining to the economic system adjustments in line with the natural limits in a landlocked, small, open, and developing national economy such as Serbia. The great majority of economics scholars have agreed upon the root causes of the current economic crisis as well as the key assumptions regarding problem solutions. In defining our proposals, despite different angles, we intend to integrate the most effective elements of a widely accepted but outside-the-box view. It is not certain for how long the current crisis will last. Some crisis management actions are already being implemented. Unfortunately, it is not enough. To reverse the regression trend, four questions need to be answered. How to adjust local actions to global priorities? What would be a feasible and effective growth model and conceptual platform of economic policy for the crisis mitigation along with the subsequent revival and set-up of a sustainable and inclusive economy? How to coordinate transformative activities in the right direction at the local level? How to weight different instruments to finance the transition from a new normal to a better normal, particularly from the perspective of the goal function and performance measurement system within basic economic agents? To answer the previous questions, the economic theory and policy should abandon the nexus of neoliberal rules, in both microeconomics and macroeconomics, and adopt a new nexus of economic rules, capable of explaining the real behavior of economic agents, sometimes irrational and inconsistent as explained by behavioral economics, but always under and “universal connectivity” as a dominant free good in the post-industrial age, as well as under the impact of natural limits. The above requires the implementation of the circular model of growth and heterodox economic policy platform. Following the previous line of reasoning, the material is organized in four parts, besides Introduction and Conclusion. The Part 1 discusses unsustainability of the current growth model and related economic policy platform and underlines the necessity for a truly radical paradigm change to mitigate the structural crisis and to set up a new conceptual platform for sustainable and inclusive growth. The Part 2 is focused on the reasons why reactive economic policies failed during a structural crisis. The Part 3 proposes the green transition as a breakthrough idea for radical system change. The Part 4 analyzes the macroeconomic performance and development opportunities of Serbia as prerequisites for the transition toward a greener economy.
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The researched problem is dedicated to the results of the economic sanctions of the EU against Russia, which lead to a significant transformation in the energy mix of Europe. The main highlights of the changes are in the field of gas and oil.
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This research is devoted to a subject, beyond the control of the conceptual features of the critical geopolitics, on the basis of which is the understanding of the space. The major segments of belonging, which express the spatial identity of Bulgaria, are consistently analysed: Proto Bulgarian ethno-genetic root; Orthodox culture; Slavic ethnic and linguistic belonging; Balkan and European identity.
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