We kindly inform you that, as long as the subject affiliation of our 300.000+ articles is in progress, you might get unsufficient or no results on your third level or second level search. In this case, please broaden your search criteria.
The matter of EU enlargement to the Western Balkans has become overshadowed by pressing issues such as Brexit, the rise of the radical right and international terrorism. Notwithstanding the pressure to address these issues accordingly, increasing tensions and ethnic outbursts across the Western Balkan region are reason enough for the European Union to devote significant attention to accession talks. This article addresses the Western Balkan countries’ Europeanization process with consideration of Russia as an external actor. By assessing the candidate countries’ progress amid EU negotiations, the article suggests that the countries’ bilateral ties with Russia have an impact on the Europeanization process which is particularly visible in Chapter 31 Foreign, security, and defence policy of the acquis communautaire. The broader geopolitical framework that comprises the multifaceted relationship between the EU and Russia is crucial for understanding the dynamics of EU-Western Balkans-Russia triangle.
More...
Outsourcing and outstaffing are the ways ways to optimize the activities of doing business. Outsourcing is a form of inter-firm cooperation and involves concentrating efforts on the functions and activities that are field-specific to the business and transferring incidental functions and activities to specialized legal entities - outsourcers. In the paper the historical and legal aspects of the formation and development of outsourcing and outstaffing in the world practice are considered, the types and forms of outsourcing used in practice are distinguished. In turn, “outstaffing” means also that the company employees are taken outside the company staff. When outstaffing, a staff enters into employment contracts not with a company that is not the actual employer, but with an intermediary organization or an outstaffer. Particular attention is drawn to the competitive advantages of implementing these business technologies, their inherent advantages and disadvantages. The article analyses the legal nature, the constitutive signs of outsourcing and outstaffing contracts that are not named in the current legislation of Latvia, determines their place in the contractual law system, gives their legal and typological characteristics, discloses the content of obligations arising on the basis of these contracts, analyses the differences between these contracts and outsourced employment and recruiting.
More...
The article is a theoretical study of legal strategies introduced in states under political transformation (post-communist states in Europe, Australia, South Africa) to deal with the effects of former political regimes. As the author argues, opening a discussion concerning the evils of former regimes is important for raising public engagement in building a new state of law. Legal retribution expresses the public contempt for committed crimes and reasserts the existence of public norms. However, following the arguments of Judith Shklar and Niklas Luhmann, the author warns against the inner limitations of legal instruments in defining the space of social and moral relationships. An antidote against the possible political instrumentalization of law and the dominance of legal regulations in public sphere should be found therefore in independent historical research and cultural debate that seeks for a deeper understanding of the past.
More...
The text is a reflection on the lustration law of 2007, which imposed an obligation of submitting lustration statements on people whose professions involved significant public responsibility. Academic professors, along with journalists, or lawyers were subject to this obligation. The article, which was in the most part written in the course of these events in 2007, is a document of moral dilemmas brought by the lustration law. By posing the general question “What should I do” in the face of such state-imposed obligation, it considers a series of opposite arguments concerning the validity of this law and the reasons to submit to it, or to reject it in an act of civil disobedience.
More...
Disclosing of secret service files should be considered as an integral part of the accounting with communist past. In the process of creating a new social order many countries have opted for the approach of discovering dark past while some maintained the principle "what happened in the past, should remain in the past." Whether they have opted for the first or second approach, the states had to solve a series of economical, social and even political issues. The main point of this paper is reviewing the experiences of Eastern Germany and Czech Republic in the disclosing of secret files, with making references to solutions adopted in other former communist countries. The paper demonstrates the differences in the legislative of two countries, which are reflected in the availability of documents and persons having access to them.
More...
Fraud is interdisciplinary, intersectoral and international. Fraud cases may include smuggling, illegal tax schemas, documents of falsified goods, and documents of nonexistent deals, artificially increased prices, money laundering and other illegal activities. Fraud risk in European Union fund financed projects is common not only for Latvia, but also for other European Union member states. All the member states are facing similar problems, therefore antifraud activities’ definition and implementation were defined by the European Commission as one of the preconditions for fund financing for countries in 2014-2020 planning period. The goal of the work is to explore the most common fraud schemes in European Union financed projects and to provide recommendations for fraud prevention.
More...
Surrogate motherhood is an arrangement in which a woman agrees to carry and deliver a child for another couple who ordered the pregnancy. This procedure is applied today in Great Britain, Holland (although without legal regulations), Israel, Greece, Ukraine, Armenia, Georgia, the USA and Australia, and it is forbidden in France, Austria, Spain, Germany, Switzerland and Slovenia. There are two types of surrogacy, one when the woman gives birth to a child who is genetically her own ("partial", genetic surrogacy), and the other where the surrogate mother only carries and gives birth to a child, whereby the child is genetically from the couple that wanted the child, or the fertilized egg is from a third woman (donor), or the embryo was donated ("full", "total", gestational surrogacy). In these cases two women take part in conception and birth of the child while in the last case there is a third woman who will raise the child. Biologically observed, the woman whose egg has been fertilized may be called the genetic mother, while the woman who carried the pregnancy and gave birth to the child – the gestational carrier. Taking into consideration that the Preliminary Draft of the Serbian Civil Law anticipates the introduction of surrogate motherhood into domestic law, we believe restrictive solutions should first be taken into consideration. This would mean that only full surrogating should be allowed, namely the egg should be from the woman who wants the child and not the surrogate mother. In domestic conditions, genetic surrogation should not be allowed as it leads to confusion in family relations, and kinships still have an important social and legal significance in our country. The surrogate mother should be a woman who has already given birth, because in that way any possible shocks which might arise after birth when the woman who has to handover the child to the intended couple would be avoided. The next condition would be that persons involved in this procedure should have usual residency in Serbia so as to prevent any international complications or problems. As far as compensation is concerned, only compensation of so-called reasonable expenses which the surrogate mother would incur should be allowed. The surrogate contract should be approved by a court judge, who would have the obligation to determine if all legal conditions have been fulfilled for surrogate motherhood, and to explain the contract effects to the contracting parties. Apart from that, psycho-social counseling of all persons involved in the procedure should be anticipated.
More...
In the last couple of years almost all European countries have passed legislation which regulates organization and functioning of information-security system. This is also the case with Italy, a country which has a long tradition of legal regulation of information-security and protection of data secrecy. The Act No. 801 of 1977 on establishment and organization of services for information and security and state secret is surely one of the most important legal sources in this area. High quality solutions which it contains have remained in force for three full decades, in spite of frequent periods of political instability. Nevertheless, the current information-security system is based on a fully new regulation – Act No. 124 on Information system for security of the Republic and new regulation of state secret. On the basis of this Act of 2007, some of the key information and security institutions of the Republic of Italy have been reorganized or renamed.
More...
The article looks at the main issues related to Nord Stream 2, i.e. a proposed natural gas pipeline route from Russia to Germany which expands the already operating Nord Stream. It covers the origin of the project, its political context and controversies, including Poland’s opposition, as well as legal disputes, including the application of the Gas Directive to gas pipelines between the EU and third countries.
More...
Due Due the political and religious discords the issue of money laundering and terrorist financing is the main discussion topic at the global arena. Illegal cash flows and terrorist financing affect not only our daily lives but also national integrity, stability and economic growth and development. In this regards, the more coordinating and efficient steps for combating money laundering and terrorist financing shall be taken. The European Parliament and the Council animated stronger rules to combat money laundering and terrorism financing by adopting on 20 May 2015 the 4th Money Laundering Directive (hereinafter AMLD4) [1]. The AMLD4 introduced more clarified, substantive and procedural minimum provisions in order to effectively fight against international money laundering and terrorist financing. This paper aims to assess whether the measures adopted are effective in the fight against international money laundering and terrorist financing and as well as evaluate possible problems while transposing the provisions into national frameworks.
More...
Croatia acceded to the European Union, becoming its 28th Member State in 2013 after approximately ten years of negotiations. Croatia is the second former Yugoslav republic to join the European Union. As it is well known, both the State and its society actively took part in the straggles of the civil war of the southern Slavic nations in the 1990s. In my article, I deal with how current Croatian legislation was evolved and improved after the independence of Croatia with due attention to the EU-Croatia negotiations for integration.
More...
The article introduces the Blue Cards data of the District Police Headquarters in Żyrardów from the period of 2012-2015. It concentrates on such issues as: the number of completed forms of Blue Cards over the mentioned period of time, the domicile of persons filling them up, the profile of victims and perpetrators of domestic violence, the number of domestic violence perpetrators detained by the police, perpetrators under the influence of alcohol and types of violence and the help offered to victims. Selected issues from the empirical part were compared with the earlier research conducted by the Author in the discussed subject area.
More...
Hereditary monarchy and enlightenment political theory hardly seem to be reconciled at first glance. And yet, the advantages and disadvantages of monarchical succession according to lineage were a continuous subject of debate between some of the most prominent enlightenment thinkers. Outlining this debate, the paper at hand gives an – even if eclectic – account of a controversy that spans over more than two and a half centuries.
More...
This paper explores some aspects of the supranational criminal protection against terrorism. It begins with an outline of the traditional approach to the issue, namely from the perspective of the international criminal law, which considers terrorism as a crime of an international character. Special attention is paid to the basic characteristics of the Criminal law of the European Union as the new and most rapidly expanding field of European law. The position of the EU legislature in the area of combatting terrorism is examined. Finally, the challenges posed to national criminal law are defined.
More...
One of the foundational laws of the Republic of Turkey on the exclusion of the Ottoman heritage and Islam is the Law 677 which was enacted in 1925. The Law outlawed the mystic orders and closed their lodges as well as hundreds of shrines in the country and prohibited visiting them. Shrine keepers were dismissed and replaced by shrine officers in some shrines. Relying substantially on Republican archives, Parliamentary Proceedings and the previously untapped archival evidence from the Istanbul Museum Directorate of Shrines (İstanbul Türbeler Müze Müdürlüğü), this article examines the transformation of this occupation and “nationalization” of shrines from 1925 to the 1970s by situating the analysis within its legal context. It will elaborate who was a shrine keeper in the late Ottoman Empire, what happened to the shrines and shrine keepers after the shrines were closed down, the theft incidents the new shrine officers were involved with, policies regarding the “nationalization” of shrines and the tensions as well as negotiations between different actors regarding the shrines. Aiming to shed light on a previously untackled aspect of republican history, the article demonstrates how the abandonment of shrines and the policy of nationalizing and turning them into museums brought along a rupture in the cultural history of the country and contributed to the destruction of historical heritage.
More...
The conditions for marriage under the prewar law in Vojvodina were numerous and more complex than in our contemporary law. In the prevailing part of Vojvodina in that time there was in effect the Hungarian Family Law Act from 1894 by which civil marriage was introduced and religious differences were abolished as a marriage impediment. Religious form of marriage was still in effect in Srem and in those parts of Vojvodina which were before unification under Austrian jurisdiction (Military Border). Cohabitation was not recognized and had no family law effects. Legal status of the children born out of wedlock was much worse than the legal status of the children born in wedlock. Discrimination on the ground of sex was a rule, not only in the law of Vojvodina, but also in other parts of The Kingdom of Yugoslavia. For example, women could get married only with the dispensation of the minister of justice, at the age of 16, while men could get married at 18. Woman was subordinate to her husband and could legally represent only her children born out of wedlock. She could exceptionally be the legal representative of her children born in wedlock.
More...