<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>This article explores how cyber-attacks affect freedom of expression. It begins by outlining the literature on cyber coercion and exploring other conceptions of how offensive cyber operations have been used to shape adversary behaviour, including efforts to intimidate through cyberspace, and the concept of ‘cyber swaggering’. The article moves on to explore how cyber-attacks have been used to undermine electoral process, to erode free and fair media reporting, and how manipulation of social media can constitute a ‘virtual infiltration’ and ‘virtual occupation’ of the information domain. The article then explores how cyber-attacks conducted during the conflict in Ukraine have limited or otherwise affected freedom of expression. I argue that the wider effects of cyber operations on political, civil and human rights have been underexplored in the cyber security literature; that cyber-attacks have adversely affected freedom of expression in the conflict in Ukraine and in other political disputes; and that the coercion concept is ill-suited to accounting for the socio-psychological impact of modern cyber operations.</abstract>

Cyber-Attacks and Freedom of Expression: Coercion, Intimidation and Virtual Occupation

<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>What has now been coined the term XXI Century Silk Road had evolved from a speech given by Chinese premier Xi Jinping in Kazakhstan in 2013. It was initially a plan aimed at promoting the bilateral relations of China and its neighbors; however, the initiative had since then traversed the region’s borders and become a global project. This paper examines the Silk Road Economic Belt initiative in light of Chinese-EU relations. It reviews the initiation of the Silk Road Project and focuses on its political economic analysis through investigating the potential routes the Belt can take, the EU-Chinese trade and investment standings as well as the global political context that the increased cooperation and connection is likely to influence. The paper uses the Modern Silk Road concept as an example of China’s foreign policy in the wake of globalization and the emergence of a new multipolar world order. To set the stage we will begin with a political-economic approach of the New Silk Road. Highlighting the possibilities of Chinese high culture, which accommodate global governance, we state that the Modern Silk Road project is one of its materialized forms. The concept of the New Silk Road (together with the Eurasian Union) denies the previous era of corruption and personality cult and indicates a milestone in the development of China, proving that it is already a globally responsible power (Värk, 2015). Even if transport by land is significantly more expensive than transportation by sea, the New Silk Road may have significant advantages: It may take only two weeks, saving potentially a week in shipping time, and diversify China’s dependence on sea transport that could reduce the importance of its regional diplomatic conflicts. Already these aspects show that the purpose of the Modern Silk Road is basically not to explore cost-efficiency but to contribute to the establishment of a new, multipolar world order. The fact that the Modern Silk Road is a supply-driven concept in spite of the historical one underlines this argument. Even if politics dominate, henceforward directing the economic activities, we will nonetheless examine the China-Eastern European relations through the lenses of trade and investment as well. After the initial analysis and description of the Silk Road Economic Belt as a tool of Chinese foreign policy, the paper goes on to examine the potential routes the railway takes from China to Europe. It reviews the trade and investment ties that the two entities share and assesses how this initiative contributes to the rise of Europe and China beside the USA. Lastly, it outlines how various regional and global powers are affected by the renewal of the Silk Road. </abstract>

The Political Economics of the New Silk Road

<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>Despite the fact that documentary letters of credit (LC) are meant to facilitate the process of international trade, their specific characteristics may increase the risk of fraud while being used as the method of payment in the process of international transaction. Many factors like exclusive use of documents, geographical distance, absence of efficient prosecution, the diversity of legal system at the global level and restricted application of fraud rule can be considered as reasons for LC fraud. While billions of dollars are lost annually due to fraud in the course of LC operations, such vulnerability can result in reducing the global popularity of documentary letters of credit as the main method of payment used in international trade. Meanwhile, it is worth mentioning that fraud risk management is an unexplored territory in the practice of documentary letters of credit operation. Existing research tries to fill the gap in the study on comprehensive methods for mitigating fraud risk in operations with documentary letters of credit by using risk management theory in order to answer the question of how to manage fraud risk in LC transactions? In a quest to answer the research question, the paper is divided into two parts: the first part is dedicated to preventive measures while the latter explores responsive measures of an enterprise to manage fraud risk in LC transactions.</abstract>

Mitigating the Risk of Fraud in Documentary Letters of Credit

<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>Following the political changes in 2000, Serbia has rapidly started to catch up with the countries of Central and Eastern Europe in various aspects of the transition process. One of these very important aspects were foreign investments, both ‘direct’ and ‘portfolio’ ones, that had a significant impact on the development of Serbian economy by recovering economic structure and raising competitiveness in world markets, followed by improving the balance of payments and technological, scientific and managerial base. Foreign investments as an “economic engine” enable accelerated realization of national economic goals which include re-industrialization and renewal of industrial capacity. The openness of the Serbian market and the lack of financial resources allow China and other states concerned under favourable conditions invest in the development of Serbian economy. In this way, Chinese investments have become a driving force for the promotion of economic and other relations between the two countries. On the other hand, however, Chinese investments have proven to be an ideal test for the realization of the objectives of the development strategy of the ‘New Silk Road’ which among other things include the improvement of China’s position on world markets, including the EU market. For the proper understanding of Sino-Serbian relations, this study first gives a short explanation of the Chinese strategy of the New Silk Road. Then, it includes an analysis of Serbia’s position towards China. Analysis of the development of Serbian-Chinese economic relations, especially in the field of foreign investment and within the framework of multilateral cooperation mechanism ‘16+1’, occupies the central part of the study. The study concludes with an evaluation of comparative advantages and certain disadvantages for the Chinese foreign investment in Serbian economy, which in itself has certain significance for the realization of the New Silk Road strategy.</abstract>

Chinese Investments in Serbia—A Joint Pledge for the Future of the New Silk Road

<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>In order to examine the impact of cultural and institutional distance on China’s OFDI towards the One Belt, One Road (OBOR) area, the paper selects 28 countries along The Belt and Road. The empirical results using panel data from 2006-2014 indicate that institutional distance is negatively correlated with China’s outward foreign direct investment (OFDI). At the same time, cultural distance interacts with bilateral trade, resulting in a “benefit of foreignness” effect.</abstract>

How Do Cultural and Institutional Distance Affect China’s OFDI towards the OBOR Countries?

<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>The EURODAC Regulation establishes the database of the fingerprints of asylum seekers. In 2015, the new EURODAC Regulation came in force and some basic concepts that were not in the previous regulation have been changed. The article analyzes the responses to the new EURODAC Regulation from UNHCR and the Commission and the threats that this new regulation is creating. This article aims to find out whether the changes introduced in the new EURODAC will bring potential discrimination concerns and whether asylum seekers are treated as potential criminals and therefore causing stigmatization of those groups of people in society. The article gives an overview of the EURODAC database, fingerprinting and biometric systems, and comparison of old and new EURODAC regulation. The full assessment of the application of the regulation can be done after it has been in force for some time</abstract>

The New EURODAC Regulation: Fingerprints as a Source of Informal Discrimination

<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
Contemporary technology and artificial intelligence increasingly facilitate the delivery of justice by automating, accelerating, and supporting judicial procedures with digitisation and automation tools. This article analyses options for the automatisation of the European Small Claims Procedure. The authors propose the digitisation of the procedure to a greater extent by additional features, such as AI-powered translation and text-to-speech tools, as well as creation of a trustworthy system for submission and storing of procedural documents based on the Estonian e-File example within the framework of the ongoing EU-funded SCAN II-project.
</abstract>

Automation Within a Novel Platform for the European Small Claims Procedure

<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
In order to continue to grow and prosper, modern society is increasingly adopting the products of companies, institutions, and organizations providing credit services. However, as a result, dissolution of a marriage tends to pose problems and raises unavoidable questions concerning the determination of the nature of the obligations of the spouses and the division of these obligations, which is why it is quite common in divorce cases for a third party, a creditor whose interests also need to be protected, to be involved. In cases concerning family relations, protection of the public interest predominates because protection of the legal interests of the spouses as well as the creditors must be guaranteed, also the proportionality of the protection of the legal interests between the parties must be achieved, because everyone has the right to defend their violated rights, and the state must ensure the protection of those legal interests. However, this protection is often compromised due to the lack of information available to notaries, which could be alleviated by more extensive use of technology. The article’s aim is to analyze the amendments to the Civil Code of the Republic of Lithuania as of 1 January 2023 concerning extrajudicial divorce at a notary, its advantages and drawbacks, as well as to discuss the existing and the possibility of adaptation of new technological solutions with an aim of improving the protection of creditors in the divorce process.
</abstract>

Divorce at the Notary: Protection of Creditors’ Interests

<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
The spread of online databases and the increasingly sophisticated search solutions in the past 10–15 years have opened up many new opportunities for lawyers to find relevant documents. However, it is still a common problem that the various legal databases and legal search engines face an information crisis. Legal database providers use various information extraction solutions, especially named entity recognition (NER), to mitigate this problem. These solutions can improve the relevance of the lists of results. Their limitation, however, is that they can only extract and create searchable metadata entities if the latter have a well-defined location or regularity in the text. Therefore, the next era of search support for legal databases is semantic processing. Semantic processing solutions are fundamentally different from information extraction and NER because they do not only extract and make visible and/or searchable the specific information element contained in the text but allow for the analytical analysis of the text as a whole. In addition, in many cases, legal database developments using machine learning can be a significant burden on a company, as it is not always known what kind of an AI solution is needed, and how the providers could compare the different solutions. Legal database providers need to customize processing their documents and texts in the most optimal way possible, considering all their legal, linguistic, statistical, or other characteristics. This is where text processing pipelines can help. So, the article reviews the two main natural language processing (NLP) solutions which can help legal database providers to increase the value of legal data within legal databases. The article then shows the importance of text-processing pipelines and frameworks in the era of digitized documents and presents the digital-twin-distiller.
</abstract>

How Could Semantic Processing and Other NLP Tools Improve Online Legal Databases?

<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
The following desk research was conducted in the framework of the Horizon 2020 project Mediatized EU to study how media discourses have been constructed to foster or hamper the European project and how they resonated among the public, by focusing on the elite–media–public triangle. This is an in-depth longitudinal review of the existing academic literature, policy developments, and available data on the transformation of media discourses, elite views, and public opinion on the EU and Europeanization in Estonia, Estonia’s path towards European integration, and the ways in which the media has influenced public opinion throughout the last twenty years since Estonia joined the European Union.
</abstract>

Elite Agenda, Media Framing, and Public Perception of European Integration in Estonia

<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
The rapid development of information and communication technologies (ICT) in recent years has brought about significant changes in many social sectors such as communication, economy, entertainment, and others. To define the key role that ICT plays in its development course, the European Union (EU) has developed a composite indicator, the Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI), to assess the digital policy performance of its Member States. In the current work, an attempt is made to evaluate the performance of the EU countries on the digital economy and society with respect to implemented EU digital policies by studying the five dimensions of the DESI for the years 2014–2019, using the corresponding DESI reports (DESI 2015 – DESI 2020). Moreover, the digital convergence among EU Member States, in terms of similarity of their performance in the five dimensions of the DESI by grouping them according to the optimal number of clusters, is also examined. Since the optimal number of clusters is two, EU Member States are classified in two groups, one of high and one of low performance in the five dimensions of the DESI. The evolution of each member country and the possible transitions from one group to another during the years 2014–2019 is also a point of interest. The grouping of EU Member States into the two clusters showed that socioeconomic factors may affect the overall DESI. Linear mixed effect models confirm the positive effect of Gross Domestic Product per capita, the public expenditure for education and research and development (R&amp;D) on the DESI and the negative effect of the average number of weekly working hours. The results could be used to reform the existing EU digital policies and identify areas where further improvement is needed.
</abstract>

Evolution of the Digital Economy and Society Index in the European Union: Α Socioeconomic Perspective

<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
India was the first country in South Asia to establish diplomatic relations with the European Economic Community (EEC). Once, the country was one of the top beneficiaries of the EEC development assistance. However, this article traces the evolution of development policy with India and how the relationship has evolved between the two partners over time. Particularly, the discussion focuses on the development cooperation between the European Union (EU) and India from 1957 to 2020. A major shift took place in 2004 when the EU and India became strategic partners, and India is the only country from South Asia that has established a strategic partnership with the EU. The study also explores the founding principles of the relationship between both partners. The qualitative research method is applied here in the empirical setting to explain the crux of diplomatic relations and development cooperation. Likewise, we found here, through the latest results, that EU–India relations were established and strengthened in the past decade. The EU also concluded some trade negotiations, but the complete free-trade agreements (FTAs) are still in the dialogue phase.
</abstract>

Evolution of the European Union Development Policy towards India

<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>The paper analyzes the Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI), which characterizes the development of digital economy. Based on the data of 28 European countries for 2013–2018, using the panel regression, we studied the influence of the consumption index growth by the purchasing power parity and unemployment among the active population on the structural units of DESI. It is shown that a 1% increase in the consumption index results in about 0.2 increase in the DESI, and an increase in unemployment by 1% leads to about 0.2 DESI decline. It is also shown that the 98% value of DESI is actually determined by its previous trends, and therefore it is impossible to increase this index rapidly. Some reflections and conclusions are made on the perspective of the developing states, i.e., Ukraine, that is not yet assessed in DESI ranking.</abstract>

The Analysis of the Digital Economy and Society Index in the EU

<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>François Mitterrand had a leading role in directing the course for the European integration process. While he orchestrated the economic integration of Europe, he remained deeply opposed to further political integration within the Communities. This article researches Mitterrand’s rationale for his clear focus on economic affairs and develops his vision for the institutional setting of the European Union (EU). The focus of the article is allocated to four different perspectives that reflect the four pillars of Mitterrand’s European policy: the common currency, the establishment of a closely integrated and small Western European based EU, the development of the Social Europe and of a free trade area between Europe and Africa. It is argued that although EU institutions have been established based on Mitterrand’s design, today’s reality deviates from the conditions on which his plan was based. For Mitterrand, the ideal EU involved a deep-rooted Western Europe with France at its core and a loose association with Central and Eastern Europe. His perception resembles the current discussions of multi-speed Europe and the determination of France and Germany to proceed to the next stage of the integration process. Importantly, Mitterrand’s print can still be recognised in the EU’s social policy included in the treaties, yet still far from being implemented. Notably, like all of the French Presidents, Mitterrand developed a design for Africa in which an extensive free trade area between Europe and former French colonies were to be established. In this proposal, Germany was to be assigned the part of the economic engine behind the actualisation of the proposal, while France was to carry out the role of a required middle man of the transactions. To further assure France’s political predominance over the Communities, Mitterrand designed a common currency for a small number of homogenous Western-European states.</abstract>

Mitterrand and the Great European Design—From the Cold War to the European Union

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TalTech Journal of European Studies

Tallinn Law School, Department of Law, School of Business and Governance, Tallinn University of Technology

 TalTech Journal of European Studies (abbreviation TJES) is a semiannual international peer-reviewed research journal (formerly known as the Baltic...

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 TalTech Journal of European Studies (abbreviation TJES) is a semiannual international peer-reviewed research...