Reflecting the commitments undertaken by the EU through the conclusion of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), the European Disability Strategy 2010–2020 not only gives a prominent position to accessibility, broadly interpreted, but also suggests an examination of the obligations for access to cultural goods and services. The European Disability Str...

Following Easton’s conceptual framework discussed in the introductory chapter, a hierarchical relationship exists between three objects of support: output support, support for institutions, and support for the community. The latter two objects of support are examined in turn in two subsequent chapters on trust in European political institutions and the relationship between citizenship and ident...

Over the last 20 years, several scholars have argued that the legitimacy of the European Union (EU) suffers from an alarming level of public apathy toward EU affairs. Such critiques often assume that the public is largely ignorant about EU politics. However, we have yet to empirically determine the extent to which Europeans understand the EU or to identify the conditions that lead the public to...

What effects do interest groups have on the democratization and legitimacy of the European Union (EU)? Interest groups can democratize the EU only to the extent that they do not replicate inequalities. We use a newly constructed database to look for inequalities: Are the big organizations in Brussels the same as the ones in the EU member states? Are some member states’ lobbies more active than ...

OBJECTIVE Our objective in this paper is to assess diets in the European Union (EU) in relation to the recommendations of the recent World Health Organization/Food and Agriculture Organization expert consultation and to show how diets have changed between 1961 and 2001. DATA AND METHODS Computations make use of FAOSTAT data on food availability at country level linked to a food composition da...

In this paper the concept of tax co-ordination within the European Union (EU) is discussed, in view of the coming enlargement of the EU. The tax externalities that possibly arise in a single market are analysed, as well as the ways these externalities can be prevented or internalised. These theoretical reflections are placed alongside the actual system of tax co-ordination within the EU. Focusi...

The European Union (EU) has powers and responsibilities in the area of public health, while the organisation of healthcare facilities remains the concern of member states. However, a series of directives has, since the late 1970s, sought to ensure the right of individual practitioners to travel freely throughout the EU, both to obtain specialist training and to practise in all member states on ...

We examine the number of patent applications for climate change mitigation technologies (CCMT) filed at the European Patent Office and seek to relate it to the oversupply of emission allowances under the European Union Emission Trading System (EU ETS). We use a panel count data approach to show that firms covered by the policy take the oversupply into account when determining their level of inn...

The imperative to increase seafood supply while dealing with its overfished local stocks has pushed the European Union (EU) and its Member States to fish in the Exclusive Economic Zones of other countries through various types of fishing agreements for decades. Although European public fishing agreements are commented on regularly and considered to be transparent, this is the first global and h...