Inhaltsangabe:Abstract: It has been maintained that the European Union can best be considered a political system. Following this argument, foreign policy making in the EU should also be approached from a systemic perspective. Roughly, three main sources of foreign policy can be identified: the Common Foreign and Security Policy under Pillar II, external relations of the EU under Pillar I, and national foreign policies of the member states. The Northern Dimension policy is an interesting case in point because in various ways it touches upon all three areas. Thus, officially, the Northern Dimension is an EU external relations policy and is therefore located within the responsibility of the Commission. However, it has been adopted as a response to an initiative of one member state, Finland, and it can safely be argued that essentially national foreign policy interests formed the base for this advance by Finland. Furthermore, it has also been suggested that the Northern Dimension can be considered a type of security policy, at least from the point of view of an extended, post-modernist, security policy agenda. Not only for this reason is the Northern Dimension innovative and challenging for the EU. It is also meant to work and achieve its goals without any new institutional arrangements or additional money being spent. Indeed, these two aspects have widely been considered the main reasons for the relatively quick adoption of the initiative as an EU policy. At the same time, however, they have been the cause for substantial criticism and allegations that the initiative offers little to the Union beyond its rhetoric. This paper will explore whether there is any basis to such claims. It will be argued that so far the Northern Dimension has indeed been rather poor in substance, at least when taking as a base for judgment the Action Plan it is guided by. Nevertheless, the initiative has considerable potential by virtue of how it is supposed to work. This is not to say that concrete outcomes won t have to be achieved as well, but the way they might be reached is what could make the Northern Dimension act as a model for the EU s external relations. Before looking at the propositions on its functioning, however, I will review the objectives of the Northern Dimension policy, thus summarizing the rhetoric about the initiative. In the main part of the work, I will first regard the most salient criticisms against the Northern Dimension, above all the alleged [...]

In the contemporary policy debate on the EU's neighborhood, grand designs are transforming into more pragmatic considerations. This book examines regional cooperation among the countries of northern Europe, emphasizing the pitfalls and successes of engaging Russia. Drawing from the experiences of northern partnerships, the authors assess prospects for collaborating on energy, transportation, the environment, and public health. They conclude that practical regional cooperation with Russia can prove highly relevant not only for developing the EU's northern policy but also for working with Russia in general.

This book describes the current environmental changes due to global warming in northern Eurasia, especially focusing on eastern Siberia. Spring flooding, ice-jam movements, and monitoring using remote sensing are included. Additionally, current reindeer herding of indigenous peoples in Siberia and related environmental changes such as waterlogging, rising temperatures, and vegetation changes are addressed. As a summary, the book also introduces readers to adaptation strategies at several governmental levels. The book primarily focuses on 1) introducing readers to global warming and human-nature dynamics in Siberia, with special emphasis on humidification of the region in the mid-2000s, and 2) describing social adaptation to the changing terrestrial ecosystem, with an emphasis on water environments. Adaptation strategies based on vulnerability assessments of environmental changes in northern Eurasia are crucial topics for intergovernmental organizations, such as the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). Thus, the book offers a valuable resource not only for environmental researchers but also for several stakeholders regarding global environmental change.

Thorvald Stoltenberg Ambassador Chairman of the Editorial Advisory Board A.5 the second volume of the this yearbook goes to press, Europe faces new and to some degree unexpected dangers of political and ideological division. It is a frightening realisation that not even ten years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the subsequent dissolution of the Soviet Empire and the democratisation and economic transformation of most of the old Soviet-dominated Central and Eastern Europe, fissures have appeared that threaten to undo some of what has been accomplished in terms of East-West rapprochement. The immediate crisis over Kosovo may well have been resolved by the time this is being read. However, it is hard to escape a foreboding that some of the mutual ill will between Russia and the Western powers that has surfaced in the wake of that conflict may linger for years to come. It is therefore imperative that Russia and the Western powers sit down to discuss what can be done to avoid similar conflicts in the future and how to overcome mutual recriminations so that they do not harden into new political front lines between East and West in Europe. The recent developments make the promotion of integration in the NEBI area even more urgent. So far this process has been based on two equally impor tant platforms: economic integration and political integration, including mea sures to dismantle old conflict potentials.

In Imposing Standards, Martin Hearson shifts the focus of political rhetoric regarding international tax rules from tax havens and the Global North to the damaging impact of this regime on the Global South. Even when not exploited by tax dodgers, international tax standards place severe limits on the ability of developing countries to tax businesses, denying the Global South access to much-needed revenue. The international rules that allow tax avoidance by multinational corporations have dominated political debate about international tax in the United States and Europe, especially since the global financial crisis of 2007–2008. Hearson asks how developing countries willingly gave up their right to tax foreign companies, charting their assimilation into an OECD-led regime from the days of early independence to the present day. Based on interviews with treaty negotiators, policymakers and lobbyists, as well as observation at intergovernmental meetings, archival research, and fieldwork in Africa and Asia, Imposing Standards shows that capacity constraints and imperfect negotiation strategies in developing countries were exploited by capital-exporting states, shielding multinationals from taxation and depriving nations in the Global South of revenue they both need and deserve. Thanks to generous funding from the Gates Foundation, the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access volumes from Cornell Open (cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornell-open) and other repositories.