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The Challenges of Modern Democracy and European Integration

Boek - Boek

This book is the very first creation of the Centre for Direct Democracy Studies (CDDS) at the Faculty of Law of the University of Bialystok. The Centre was established in 2011 to foster and institutionalise research on direct democracy in Central and Eastern Europe.
Among its goals, the Centre aims to launch a series of peer-reviewed publications on democracy and European integration. For the first book in the planned series the Centre called for papers on the challenges of modern democracy and European integration. More than a dozen scholars from across Europe have kindly accepted its invitation.
This volume is divided into two parts. The first part looks at the nature of the principles on which the European Union (EU) is founded. Cristina Stanculescu examines in the first chapter the characteristics of the EU through the lens of its external borders and their functions, in particular whether the role of these borders is to exclude or rather to allow contact and exchange. In chapter 2, Paul Brzesina analyses the reasons for the decreased support of European integration in the Member States and discusses why citizens' protests would become an answer to the legitimacy crisis in the EU. Andreas Orator and Stefanie Saghy look in chapter 3 at the use and evolving understanding of the democratic principle in the recent case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union. In chapter 4, Margerite and Ozan Turhan consider questions the EU needs to deal with before its accession to the European Convention on Human Rights and analyse what such an accession might mean for the principle of the supremacy of the EU law. Filip Krepelka looks in the fifth chapter at the linguistic regime of the EU, its recent developments and the quest to reconcile the European multilingual reality with efficiency. In chapter 6, Bernhard Kitous discusses the concept and rules of Islamic finance - the notion which triggers growing interest in Europe due to increased economic exchange with the Muslim world and which, at the same time, raises the question of its prospects within European democracies. In chapter 7, Matylda Pogorzelska explores one of the recent judgments of the Court of Justice of the EU concerning asylum seekers in the EU in which the Luxembourg Court, by a reference to the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, found that an asylum seeker may not be transferred to a Member State where she risks inhuman treatment, as de facto not all Member States offer equally high standard of protection.
The second part explores the relations between the EU and its neighbours and partners from a democratic perspective. First two chapters here look at the candidate countries. In chapter 8, Adam Szymanski investigates the democratisation process in Turkey from the viewpoint of its relations with the EU in 2010-2011. Marko Babic and Jacek Wojnicki give in the ninth chapter a thorough analysis of integration efforts and problems of the former Yugoslav countries on their way to the EU as well as of the EU readiness for future enlargement toward the Western Balkans. In chapter 10, Elzbieta Kuzelewska studies the reasons why transatlantic relations, built on common values and interests, have loosened since late 1990s. In the final chapter, Adam Bartnicki thoroughly evaluates integration processes in the post-Soviet democracies, in particular in the proposed Eurasian Economic Union.
Series: European Integration and Democracy Series
Aantal pagina's: 249
ISBN:978-83-7545-324-9
Jaar van publicatie:2012
Trefwoorden:democracy, direct democracy, European integration, EU, Europe
Toegankelijkheid:Open