1,721,001 research outputs found
Préfets of Europe,the role of the delegation of the Commission in Africa, issues at stakes
No full textWorkshop organised by Professor Pascaline Winand (IUE Firenze)info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublishe
Joining the European Communities : Denmark's road to EC-membership, 1961-73
No full textDefence date: 7 June 2004Examining Board: Prof. Alan S. Milward (supervisor) ; Prof. Pascaline Winand ; Prof. Hans Otto Frøland ; Prof. Johnny LaursenPDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digitised archive of EUI PhD theses completed between 2013 and 201
Digging for European Unity : the role played by the trade unions in the Schuman plan and the European coal and steel community from a German perspective, 1950-1955
No full textDefence date: 13 December 2007Examining Board: Prof. Wilfried Loth (Universität Duisburg-Essen) ; Prof. Bo Stråth (EUI) ; Prof. Pascaline Winand (EUI and Monash University) ; Prof. Gérard Bossuat (Université de Cergy-Pontoise)PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digital archive of EUI PhD thesesno abstract availabl
Russian fossil fuel production in the Arctic: implications for EU energy security
No full textThe EU-Russia energy relationship is a core aspect of their relationship, and one which has faced difficulties and tensions in recent years, characterized by mutual dependence of security of supply and security of demand. However, Russia has shown itself willing to use energy as a tool of foreign policy, creating vulnerabilities for the EU and individual Member States’ energy security. In recent years, the Arctic has emerged as an increasingly important area of energy politics. The littoral states seek to expand their sovereignty over an extended continental shelf and the suspected 22% of remaining undiscovered oil and gas reserves to be found there. These dynamics encapsulate the nexus between the Arctic, energy security and climate change but have remained insufficiently analysed. This thesis has contributed to the body of knowledge by establishing whether Russian Arctic energy projects would be beneficial or detrimental to EU energy security, given the current relationship. Using Andrew Moravscik’s liberal preference formation theory, and Richard Sakwa’s characterization of the Russian government as a ‘dual state’, the thesis has adopted an approach to energy security analyses not seen in the literature. It conceives of the EU, its Member States, and Russia as actors whose interests change in accordance with the dominant preferences within their policy-making structures. Simultaneously, it highlights the vastly different decision-making structures in place within the EU and the Kremlin and the resultant discrepancies in policy-making and coherence on internal and external aspects of energy policy. The thesis demonstrates that whilst Russia pursues greater expansion of Arctic fossil fuel production, the EU is experiencing a dramatic change in its Internal Energy Market (IEM), with greater levels of competition, integration and a diversifying, less fossil-fuel dependent energy mix. It also points to an important trend in the Arctic of abiding by the terms of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and bilateral delimitations as evidence of a thus far peaceful evolution of Arctic politics, refuting some claims of a risky, potentially zero-sum approach. The thesis therefore argues that there exists some evidence to support the view of a more cooperative Russian pattern of behaviour emerging in the Arctic. In turn, this reduces the qualitative risk to EU energy security that Russia’s politicking represents and the quantitative concerns over future Russian production levels. Internal mechanisms led by the European Commission in areas of sustainability and competitiveness act to filter the negative impacts of Russian energy coercion, but it is where EU cohesiveness is yet to emerge, such as in external energy policy where the risks remain greatest. Contingent on intra-EU gains, and a more coherent EU-level approach to external energy policy, fostering sustained Russian involvement via Russian Arctic resources could be of benefit to the EU’s energy security. Therefore, the Russian Arctic will be important, just as Russia itself will remain a key supplier to the EU, especially for the eastern Member States. However, the defining feature by which EU energy security will be realised in coming years is the relative cohesiveness of the EU and its Member States combined
The unexpected guest : Portugal and European integration (1956-1963)
No full textDefence date: 22 March 2004Examining board: António Costa Pinto, Instituto de Ciências Sociais de Universidade de Lisboa ; Fernando Guirao, Universitat Pompeu Fabra ; Pascaline Winand, European University Institute ; (Alan S. Milward, European University Institute)PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digitised archive of EUI PhD theses completed between 2013 and 201
The illusion of neutral time : myths and perceptions of the process of eastward enlargement of the European Union, 1990-2004
No full textExamining Board: Prof. Pascaline Winand (Monash University and EUI) - supervisor; Prof. Kiran Patel (EUI); Prof. Mercedes Samaniego Boneu (University of Salamanca); Prof. Ariane Landuyt (University of Siena)Defence date: 29 July 2008PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digital archive of EUI PhD thesesNo abstract availabl
Promoting low-carbon technologies in the European Union: stories of hope and hype
No full textThe European Union (EU) approved in 2009 an ambitious “Climate and Energy Package” with measures for the promotion of low-carbon technologies to fight human-induced climate change. This Package provided unprecedented EU-level support for carbon capture and storage (CCS), a new technology first mentioned in the EU’s political agenda in 2005. This dissertation answers the question: “what or who drove the sudden decision to support CCS in the EU?”; thereby covering important gaps in the literature. This literature largely explains away the EU’s choice for CCS as a logical measure to step up climate change mitigation. However, CCS is just one of many potential “innovative technologies”. Indeed, the vision of a European Supergrid acquired prominence as soon as CCS projects began floundering in 2010. A fraction of this EU literature does analyse the legal intricacies of support for CCS, but does not delve into the politics behind the laws. The thesis argues that a loose coalition led by traditional electrical utilities successfully pushed for the support of CCS at the EU level, subtly emphasizing its use in new coal-fired power plants as an innovative way to enhance European security of supply. The thesis contends that this coalition downplayed the uncertainty surrounding CCS deployment, disregarded the EU’s strengths in industrial CCS, and its increasingly coal-importing, low-growth economy. More coal power hardly addresses the EU’s supply worries and adds pressure on climate targets; yet it absorbed all EU funding made available to CCS – with few results. By contrast, steelmaking provided a trial ground for CCS with no current low-carbon alternatives, a fact that was widely ignored. A constructivist understanding of technological change underpins this thesis. This means that debates about technologies are assumed to socially “construct” their future development (or at least support for it) along “storylines” describing such development. The dissertation also drew on insights about the pitfalls of economic modelling as well as the relevance of the concept of “hype” in decision-making about future technologies. Documental analysis and interviews were used to reveal the social construction of low-carbon technologies in the EU, and the role of modelling therein. These methods also helped analyse the extent of hype. In its exposition, the dissertation traces chronologically the process of EU decision-making on CCS. Process-tracing highlights the influence of a dominant “storyline”, used by the aforementioned coalition, to extol the potential of CCS for coal-fired power plants in the EU. This EU storyline was based on a largely unrelated (and partly unfounded) global storyline, which originated in the early influence on CCS of the coal-rich USA and in a global community awestruck by the coal-propelled rise of China in the 2000s. The global storyline was relayed and relied on by authoritative organisations (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the International Energy Agency). Eventually, the utility-led coalition adopted it in the EU – in order to safeguard not only the climate, but also its coal assets and interests. Two further points on modelling and hype can be derived from the process-tracing exercise. Firstly, a classic hype dynamic can be observed in the fact that, after a decade of being largely ignored and with little more data available, CCS for clean coal suddenly appeared essential worldwide. Secondly, this research reveals that the dominance of this CCS storyline sidelined other existing low-carbon options, such as the Supergrid. Notably, the economic modelling that backed CCS in the EU was fundamentally biased, assuming that only CCS would be capable of breakthroughs and that conditions not conducive to CCS deployment were “extremes”. Literature on CCS generally has failed to consider in depth the potentially very different role of CCS in each world region or its relation to other technologies. Drawing lessons from the findings above, this dissertation suggests a strategic approach to CCS promotion in the EU that takes into account (1) the possibility of breakthroughs in non-CCS low-carbon technologies and (2) the advantages of promoting CCS in industrial sectors with no other mitigation options
US and EU cooperation on financial regulatory reform during the financial crisis: the role of interdependence
No full textAfter progressively deepening political, security, trade and financial ties over successive decades, at the time the financial crisis hit Europe in 2008, the level of financial and economic interdependence between the United States and the European Union was highly developed. Examining several case studies on US and EU cooperation on financial regulatory reforms in the early stages of the financial crisis — the convergence of accounting standards across the Atlantic, the regulation of credit default swaps, the regulation of credit ratings agencies and a reinforced role for the International Monetary Fund and the Financial Stability Board — this thesis considers the role that financial and economic interdependencies played in policy decision-making. It follows an approach outlined by Keohane and Nye, considering the political processes involved in situations of complex interdependence. This research shows how, in an effort to save, protect and reinforce their respective and common financial and economic interests in each other’s markets and around the world, they developed a coordinated agenda for bilateral and international financial regulatory reform. The result was not only a deeper relationship, intensification of the transgovernmental decision-making policy process, but also greater policy convergence in several financial regulatory issue-areas. This research finds there are several important theoretical and policy implications of this cooperation. It shows how financial markets and economic interdependencies had a direct causal effect on the decisions by regulators and policy-makers to cooperate on policy reform. US and EU financial and economic interdependencies were found to have constrained the agenda of political actors and diminished their alternatives. The policy implications are that closing existing gaps in transatlantic financial governance, sustaining political will for close policy cooperation and maintaining a robust regular and effective dialogue to contain the risks of financial contagion in the transatlantic market remains imperative
American social sciences and Europeanization: theories of integration in the early 1950s
No full textThis thesis seeks to investigate the influence of American intellectual trends, namely structural functionalism, on the first fifteen years of Europeanization after the end of World War Two. In particular, it examines the role played by German intellectual refugees in the development of neofunctionalist theories of integration that accompanied American policymaking in this era by focusing on the work of Karl Deutsch and Ernst Haas in the 1940s and 1950s. It analyses their account of the conditions in Europe that led to WWII and of the action required on the part of the USA to encourage western Europe back onto the path of successful modernization, defined with reference to the historical example of American federalism. It highlights the specifically technocratic conception of democracy that underpinned the neofunctionalist theories of European integration, and points to enduring imprint of this on contemporary European institutions
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