20 AbstrAct. In this paper we outline the status quo of ethics and social responsibility in small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in the European Union (EU). Social issues and SMEs is an established topic of research and subject of policy-making in Europe, and thus in this paper we are able to draw on existing activities to summarise what we know about the topic. We describe the important p...

The EU Control of Major Accidents Hazards Directive (Seveso II) requires an external emergency plan for each top tier site. This paper sets out a method to build the protection of public health into emergency planning for Seveso sites in the EU. The method involves the review of Seveso site details prescribed under the directive. The site safety report sets out the potential accident scenarios....

On 11 October 2014, the first European guidelines on syndromic surveillance in human and animal health, the ‘Triple-S guidelines for designing and implementing a syndromic surveillance system’, were published [1].The guidelines are one of the main outcomes of the European Union (EU) –funded project ‘Triple-S’, which main aim has been to increase the European capacity for near-real time surveill...

In this paper we estimate a sectoral real wage equation for three regional blocs of the enlarged EU that we defined as North (wealthiest EU), South (Greece, Portugal and Spain) and East (acceding Central and Eastern European countries). The estimation results show that real wages react differently in each of the blocs to the impact of market size, location and factor endowments across a range o...

LLAN MELTZER HAS PRESENTED a paper that rescues Milton Friedman’s 1953 defense of flexible exchange rates from its critics and presents an impressive amount of empirical evidence against today’s received opinion favoring fixed exchanges. Nothing is more bracing than the refutation of conventional wisdom nor more satisfying than the vindication of the simple faith that the market is always right...

OBJECTIVE To describe the current situation regarding protection, promotion and support of breast-feeding in Europe, as a first step towards the development of a blueprint for action. DESIGN AND SETTING A questionnaire was completed by 29 key informants and 128 other informants in the EU, including member states, accession and candidate countries. RESULTS EU countries do not fully comply wi...

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) is celebrating its fifth anniversary on 20 May 2010. At the beginning of May I started as the new Director of ECDC: it is both a pleasure and a challenge for me to take up my post and to continue the dedicated work of my predecessor, Zsuzsanna Jakab. Long before the Centre was established, I supported the idea of a European Union (EU...