The 2004/2007 European Union (EU) enlargement by 12 member states offers a unique opportunity to quantify the impact of EU efforts to expand and integrate the scientific competitiveness of the European Research Area (ERA). We apply two causal estimation schemes to cross-border collaboration data extracted from millions of academic publications from 1996 to 2012, which are disaggregated across 1...

This paper overviews the curricula of nuclear medicine (NM) undergraduate training in 34 Central & Eastern European (CEE) and 37 European Union (EU) medical faculties. The data show enormous variation in the number of hours devoted to nuclear medicine, varying between 1-2 to 40 hours and highly differentiated concepts/ideas of nuclear medicine training in particular countries. In most EU countr...

Historical trends and levels of nitrogen (N) budgets and emissions to air and water in the European Union and the United States are markedly different. Agro-environmental policy approaches also differ, with emphasis on voluntary or incentive-based schemes in the United States versus a more regulatory approach in the European Union. This paper explores the implications of these differences for a...

In the past few decades, solid waste management systems in Europe have involved complex and multi-faceted trade-offs among a plethora of technological alternatives, economic instruments, and regulatory frameworks. These changes resulted in various environmental, economic, social, and regulatory impacts in waste management practices which not only complicate regional policy analysis, but also re...

In the European Union countries and neighboring regions, the expansion will produce a redistribution of the labour force between industries and countries. After the Romania’s adhesion to the European Union, the need for an increased productivity, the lack of capital, the competition on the EU market and the low wages have concurred to the intensification of the migration process of the labour f...

Health authorities in several European countries, including Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands have recommended a ban on soft PVC toys, such as teething rings and bath toys. The Spanish government requested action by the European Union (EU) in March, 1998. PVC, or polyvinyl chloride (also known as vinyl), is a common plastic that frequently contains toxic additives. Despite...

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...

Since its inception, the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has been discussed controversely. Data from the OECD and the World Bank show that the protectionist effects of the CAP between the 1960s and the 1980s were larger than those of its national predecessors. Moreover, there is evidence that already the piecemeal reforms of the 1980s reduced the level of protection and suppor...

Economic disparities between the regions of the European Union are of constant concern both for policy and economic research. In this paper we examine whether there are overlapping trends of regional development in the EU: overall convergence on the one hand and persistent or even increasing spatial concentration (agglomeration) on the other. Kernel density estimation, Markov chain analysis and...

This paper tests for long-run macroeconomic convergence among European Union countries according to the various exchange rate regimes that have prevailed over the last forty years. Applying a recently developed test to monthly index of industrial production data, output convergence is confirmed or rejected depending on whether or not the first largest principal component based on benchmark devi...