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"Trouble Brewing? EU and Member State Public Health Policy and the European Beer Industry". European Policy Paper #10, November 2005
Get PDF[Summary]. During the past decade, the European Union (EU) has increased its competence in consumer safety and public health. Under Article 152 of the Amsterdam Treaty, for example, the EU is committed to ensure "a high level of health protection." This increased competence has allowed the EU to extend its regulatory reach. In the summer of 2005, the European Commission began to enforce a ban on advertising and sponsorship of cross border events by tobacco companies within the EU. This includes a ban on sponsorships of Formula One race car drivers by tobacco companies. The new Commissioner for Health and Consumer Affairs, Markos Kyprianou, warned the alcoholic beverage industry earlier this year that it must stop marketing its products to young drinkers or the EU will take action in this area. Such Europewide regulations have been advocated by non-producer groups, which have increasingly mobilized in Brussels. The focus on public health issues poses new challenges to European business and has increased the incentives for firms and trade associations to mobilize more effectively in Brussels in order to influence the EU’s regulatory policies. This paper explores the political response of one sector of the economy – European beer brewing – to these new challenges. Beer brewing is an important industry in Europe. Europe is home to five of the six largest global beer producers. European beer brewers account for 60% of the world’s beer exports and 30% of global beer production. The European brewers are represented in Brussels by the Brewers of Europe (BoE), which is a confederation of 21 national associations and represents approximately 90% of beer producers in the EU-25. During the past few years, the brewers have restructured their trade association in Brussels and engaged in more aggressive lobbying in order to influence the EU’s policy-making process. In this paper, I seek to explain these changes by examining the increased concentration of the sector and the increased attention to public health by non-producer groups such as Eurocare7, the World Health Organization (WHO), some national governments, and the European Commission. I then analyze the extent to which the political activities of the brewers have shaped the debate over alcohol control in the EU. This case study on the European brewing sector and alcohol control policy allows me to explore several broader questions. These include: - What is the impact of industrial consolidation on collective mobilization? - How have market liberalization and the increased competence of the EU affected the debate over public health? - What is the relative effectiveness of industry and non-producer groups in the policy-making process? The paper draws on interviews with Commission officials, European and national trade association officials, and individual brewers, which I conducted in 1989-91 and in 2003-04. By conducting interviews over time, I can compare the changes in the political activities of the brewers before and after the major consolidation of the industry and before and after the emergence of major alcohol control groups and the accession of the Scandinavian countries to the EU. The paper is divided into six sections. The first section outlines the economic characteristics and political organization of European beer brewers prior to the 1990s. The second section explores the impact of increasing competitive pressures on the brewers during the 1990s and early 2000s, which led to the increased concentration of the industry and the emergence of five multinational firms - InBev, SABMiller, Heineken, Carlsberg, and Scottish & Newcastle. The third section analyzes the activities of Eurocare, WHO’s Regional Office for Europe, the member states, and the European Commission to reduce alcohol-related harm. The fourth section examines the political response of the brewers to those activities, focusing in particular on the political reorganization of their European trade association and its lobbying activities in Brussels. In the fifth section, I discuss the impact of the brewers’ political reorganization and lobbying on the debate over alcohol control policy in the EU. Finally, I draw some conclusions about the changes in the brewers’ association and the EU’s policy-making
Telecommunications policy in Turkey: restructuring for economic growth. European Policy Paper #11, November 2006
Get PDFIntroduction. Modern telecommunications technology is now widely seen as a critical driver in economic development. However, the issues involved in the rapid deployment of this technology are complex and frequently highly controversial. While some of these issues are technical, the most difficult ones involve changing a legal and regulatory framework which was originally designed for different times and different technologies. The process of changing this framework necessarily involves disruptive change for existing service providers as well as substantial benefits for the economy at large. This paper seeks to discuss these issues in light of Turkey’s progress to date in taking advantage of advanced available telecommunications technology and the myriad productivity-enhancing services that are associated with it.(1) An important element in developing a more competitive and dynamic sector in Turkey has been the desire of the country to become a member of the European Union. This has encouraged changes in the telecommunications regulatory regime following the guidelines set out in Chapter 19 of the EU “acquis” for candidate members. Nonetheless, substantial further efforts are needed to complete and implement the desired regulatory framework, particularly as it affects the former government monopoly carrier, Turk Telekom, and the cable companies. A further limiting factor has been an overall investment climate in Turkey which has been characterized by a high level of uncertainty for most investors, regardless of size or nationality. Policy recommendations to help accelerate the deployment of telecommunications technology include a clear reaffirmation of the government’s priorities for the sector, a reduction in the level of ownership and regulatory uncertainty, strengthening the Board and Staff of the Telecommunications Authority, and reviewing policies which reduce the scope and increase the cost of telecommunication licenses
Transatlantic Trade Policy: US Market Opening Strategies. European Policy Paper #1
Get PDF[Introduction.] Since the 1950s, the European Community (EC) has been trying to build up a new independent legal and economic order. This exercise has been difficult and gradual. Indeed, each step forward in the build-up of the community's legal and economic order requires a new compromise formula between the member states--for example, between the free traders and the economic interventionists; between the more service-oriented, the more industrial-oriented, and the more agricultural economies; and between the richer and the poorer regions. Obviously, the Community is not developing in a vacuum. Since the Community is a major player in international trade relations, its development has an effect, not only within the EC, but also on third countries. Naturally, since Community measures also affect third countries, those third countries, including the United States (US), have been trying to influence or even control the final shape of the EC's legal and economic order. As Jeffrey Garten, the US Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade, has recently explained, the US is determined to try and shape its trading partners' economic system in view of the US market opening objective. According to Garten, Washington would use its power to try to pry open markets even if it meant challenging "the very industrial organization of countries"(cited in Friedman, 1995). As a result, tension has developed between, on the one hand, the EC's sovereign right to set up its own legal order and, on the other, the outside world's interest in monitoring and influencing the EC's development. This paper examines this tension as it arises in the relationship between the Community and the United States. More specifically, the paper deals with the institutional strategies (multilateral, bilateral, and unilateral) used by the United States to monitor the EC's development and to keep the Common Market open for US exports. The main question is how far each of the institutional strategies was able to help resolve, or better, help prevent, "market opening" conflicts between the US and the EC. At the end of the paper, the current US market opening options toward the EC will be analyzed, including the recent suggestion to create a Transatlantic Free Trade Area (TAFTA) similar to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)
European community integration and the United States: Toward a new transatlantic relationship?
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Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe 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
Get PDF“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
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