Volume 3 (2013): Issue 1 (June 2013)

The article approaches the current economic crisis from an historical perspective, analyzing the building of the monetary integration and the common currency. The process is explained through pointing out its effects on the European integration and outlining the positive and negative consequences of the introduction of a common currency in the European Union. The investigation continues with a general outlook of the current situation of the countries which were more affected by the current crisis-Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy and Cyprus. What all these countries have in common is the necessity of extra funding in a context of austerity, plus some national particularities. The author proposes an expansion in the public spending as the only reliable way to stimulate European economies in the crisis. As the introduction of the euro meant the end of the monetary independence for the Member States, an innovative solution is proposed-the creation of an Economic Government in the union in order to transfer funds from wealthier states to the countries in trouble. It is presented as a necessity for the states in crisis, a necessity for the wealthier states, and a must for the European Union.

For a long time Russia has regarded the European Union and China as its main economic and trade partners, giving preference to the EU. A sudden change occurred in October 2008, when as a response to the EU’s sharp criticism of the Kremlin over the Georgian-Russian military conflict, Russia decided to re-orient its foreign economic and trade policy from the EU to China and partially also to India. At the same time Russian-Chinese military and energy cooperation started to grow. Russia sold China oil and gas at low price and supplied it with advanced weaponry, which has increased China’s aggression toward its neighbours. Russia also started to politically and militarily support China’s activities in Syria and Iran, which, in turn, worsened Russia’s relations with several EU Member States, including Germany, France and Italy, with whom Russia was planning to cooperate in the developing of the Nord Stream gas pipeline project. However, Russian President Vladimir Putin still declares a great continuing friendship and solidarity with China and is hoping to see the worsening of China’s conflict with the US, which, Putin claims, could avert China’s direct conflict with Russia. Several leading Russian military and political experts describe this hope as unrealistic. At the same time, the volume of EU-Russian mutual trade was almost 395 billion US dollars in 2011, which exceeds in volume the Chinese-Russian trade volume by more than four times. It shows that Russia’s trade reset from the EU to China has been negligible. Also, it is bad news for Russia and China that Iran today stifles cooperation with Georgia and Chinese separatist Uyghurs, and Syrian Bashar al-Assad’s regime is developing cooperation with al Qaeda, and does not explain Russia’s and China’s current similar foreign policy toward Iran and Syria.

United Europe-China relations have a long history. For many years they have developed successfully, but not along a simple course. The main thesis of this article is that the year 2008, which is associated primarily with the onset of the financial crisis in Europe, became a watershed in the history of bilateral relations between EU and China. Over the past few years the agenda and the role of the actors, and also the content and format of discourse have changed dramatically. This article is devoted primarily to some aspects of the EU’s position in relation to China and, to a lesser extent, to the position of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Therefore the history of contacts between the two sides will be considered especially in the light of some EU publications, while China will be outside our primary area of focus. Unlike many studies on economic cooperation between EU and China, our paper will accentuate the political component of the relationship. We shall try to demonstrate that, beginning with 2008, Europe has been partly losing its status as the driving force in the EU-China dialogue. We will conclude by addressing the problem of adequate understanding of Chinese political texts, without which no political communication of Europe with China can be successful. A critical analysis of a recent document prepared by the EU eliminates some problematical points within the united Europe, which affect the effectiveness of its Chinese policy. Our method can be described as eclectic in the sense that it borrows arguments from a variety of political research techniques and terminologies (discourse analysis, historical institutionalism, engagement and stakeholder theories), as well as from sinological (by which we understand the analysis of Chinese texts in the cultural perspective) and historical approaches.

This comprehensive article provides an overview of the broader process of political, legal and societal changes characterizing the Baltic countries’ convergence towards the European Union. The article aims to identify the specific areas and issues which reveal both similarities and differences between the three Baltic countries. Special focus has been given to issues of economic development, economic policy choices, employment, public opinion and some legal aspects. The article, first of all, tries to reveal the differences between Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania stemming from different economic policy decisions made by the Baltic countries in the 1990s as well as from to the fact that in 1997-1999 the European Union treated the Baltic countries somewhat differently in terms of conditionality. However, during the 21^st century, especially due to the economic recession, the ‘Baltic clocks’ have been synchronized despite the obvious differences in political system and levels of economic development. The author of the current article believes that the main factor behind that development was the convergence to European Union.

This article studies the Internet from an evolutionary point of view, based on historic analysis, to confirm institutional change predictions suggested by Utterback’s innovation development theory. It explores the appearance of rules and the consolidation of public and private initiatives that could enhance the capacity of the private sector to coregulate in the digital sphere, which is especially relevant to the field of electronic commerce-related transactions. This institutional review distinguishes between two distinct layers of the Internet. Also, formal and informal regulatory patterns are identified in their evolutionary stages, revealing the prevailing models: unregulated, self-regulated, co-regulated, or regulated. These conceptual associations aim to provide a framework scheme to further study specific topics in the fields of Internet governance, digital economy, and the information society. This primer should also induce interdisciplinary research, for better understanding on how rules influence digital innovation and behaviour, in practice. Implicit in this account is that most of the credit for the efficient development of these technologies, in their two layers, during their first stages, might be attributed to the availability of collective, collaborating, or independent self-regulatory capacity. The most immediate observations show a growing tendency towards over-prescriptive regulatory systems, promoted to control its use and content; incompatible with the needs and interests of the majority of stakeholders. A concluding claim is that the Internet and telecommunication technologies in general, considered as enabling mediums, would benefit from dynamic and mixed regulatory solutions, according to and depending on whether their object is their infrastructure or the surface layer of its applications.

Innovative financial instruments, in the context of the funding schemes of the European Union, are different from funding by way of direct subsidies. These financial instruments can be divided in two large groups: instruments offering risk capital and equity capital and debt instruments. The instruments help to engage resources from the private sector in projects which might be considered too risky without the said instruments and the implementation of which would be impossible or related to significantly higher expenses for the promoter of the project. As seen from Estonia’s perspective, up until now the use and impact of innovative financial instruments have generally met the expectations. In view of the diversity of areas and target groups of the innovative financial instruments planned within the framework of European Union’s Financial Framework 2014-2020, it may be presumed that several new instruments will be successfully implemented in Estonia.

The conceptual and methodological tools of Identity Structure Analysis (ISA) are applied to a particular instance of an individual at variance with dominant societal norms in order to demonstrate the efficacy of ISA for elucidating complex identity processes in socio-historical and biographical context. The empirical results presented in this article indicate that the interrelationship between societal constraints and individual values and beliefs are shown to be effectively detailed using ISA.