1,720,958 research outputs found
The Legal Effects of Harmonised Standards in EU Law: From Hard to Soft Law, and Back?
No full textTechnical standards are a form of soft law which has long played a fundamental role in the regulation of the internal market of the EU. Initially developed as purely private, voluntary instruments, the New Approach has used them as regulatory tools for harmonisation. The progressive evolution of legislation, institutional practice and case law has fundamentally changed their position within the EU legal framework. This chapter retraces this evolution and focuses in particular on the legal effects of harmonised standards, analysing the relevant shifts in regulatory technique and in judicial interpretation in terms of the ‘hardening’ or ‘softening’ of the rules of conduct contained in harmonised standards
The Commission's Proposal for a European Minister of Economy and Finance: Institutional Empowerment, Constitutional Tensions and the Ministerial Taboo
No full textThis paper analyses the Commission’s proposal for establishing a European Minister of Economy and Finance from a constitutional and governance point of view. It discusses to what extent the position deserves the name ‘Minister’ by drawing comparisons with the powers normally exercised by finance Ministers at national and federal levels. Furthermore, it examines whether the current regime enables combining two functions (Eurogroup President and Commission’s Vice-President) and what impact may this governance model have on the Union’s institutional balance. The paper also engages with two questions pertaining to judicial protection; namely whether a Commissioner presiding over the Eurogroup may, first, have an impact on the justiciability of the Eurogroup’s output under Article 263(1) TFEU, and second, give rise to the Commission’s non- contractual liability under Article 340(2) TFEU. Finally, it presents some preliminary thoughts on the kind and intensity of political accountability to which the Minister can be subjected. The paper argues that the proposal neither provides for the transfer of substantial powers to this new position nor reduces meaningfully the complexity that characterises the current allocation of competences in the field of economic policy. Yet, establishing this new position is capable to produce benefits in other aspects. First, the Minister could enhance the Commission’s influence in the euro area, hence contributing to bridging the gap caused by the euro area’s differentiated integration, which has been widened in the post-Lisbon era. Moreover, the setting up of a new Minister may shape the function and governance of existing Union institutions and also trigger a process leading to their gradual transformation. By assigning its leadership to a person whose one foot stands on solid supranational grounds, this reform shakes the Eurogroup’s intergovernmental foundations. In addition, the Minister has the potential of empowering the euro area’s ability to shape Union policies at the Commission’s level
Negotiating the EU data protection reform: reflections on the household exemption
Full text linkThe re-drafting of the household exemption comprises one of the main areas of dispute in the ongoing negotiations for the EU data protection reform. The aim of this paper is twofold: First, we present and critically assess the wording proposals that have been put forward mainly at EU institutional level and identify the particular areas which cause tension. Second, we concomitantly ask which is the most appropriate wording for the exemption in question and in particular, whether the household exemption should comprise a set of decisive criteria or whether it should provide a more general framework. We eventually argue for a broad wording of the Article 2(2)(d) coupled with the addition of further non-determinative criteria at Recital 15, i.e. the non-operative part of the proposed Regulation
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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