F15 - Economic IntegrationReturn

European national governments have faced since 90s two contradictory pressures. While European Union requires ever closer economic integration, individual regions have called for increasing political disintegration. In 2014 four crucial referendums on the independence of regions in Ukraine, Italy, Scotland and Spain were held. This wave of secession movement and the fear of contagion to states with latent autonomous tendencies turned attention from the integration studies to the research of disintegration. This consultation deals with the literature review of the political-economic aspects of secession tendencies in European integration. Secession spreads especially among the most developed regions of nation states. In an environment of economic barriers the right to secession is therefore not Pareto-optimal. Economic integration of small states, however, provides the benefits of the single market and reduces costs for the secession of the mother country. Comprehensive survey serves as a basis for future research of the political economy of conflict in the contemporary secession pressures.

Trade Facilitation is a topic of the discussion of the members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) since almost its establishment, since the WTO Ministerial Conference in Singapore in 1996. The issue has been included into the agenda of the current round of negotiations that has been open as Doha Development Agenda in 2001 and remains in it also after exclusion of some topics from the agenda in 2004. Trade Facilitation is in interest of developed as well as developing countries. The core of the issue is facilitation and harmonization of procedures accompanying business operation. Progress in this field will have significant benefits for business sphere, but it requires an extended investment from the participating governments. The text sums up the area of Trade Facilitation and deals with interests of the EU in this field.

The topic of European Union budget is very important for each member state, especially nowadays because of recessive economic crisis and on-going crisis of euro zone. This article analyses not only development of net position for selected countries of EU, but also compares the net position development with the GDP development. The level of GDP should be one of the most important indicators for calculation of contributions for each member state, but because of many exceptions and very complicated mechanism its influence could be low. The aim of this paper is to verify the hypothesis that there is some correlation between the development of net position per capita and the development of GDP per capita for selected net recipients of EU. For verification of this hypothesis is used especially selective correlation coefficient.

The aim of this paper is to analyse the impact of the EU commitment to Human Rights on its trade negotiations with Serbia. The data collected was from completed trade agreements, human rights reports, progress reports and enlargement strategies, as well as a wide range of press conferences and statements made by various European institutions. The positioning by the EU of human rights commitments within their trade negotiations are analysed through four variables (rationale, definition, priority and conditionality) over a ten year period from 2003-2013 by using a process tracing method. These trade negotiations demonstrate that the EU has been playing a highly normative role in such negotiations with Serbia using actively the principle of conditionality.

Eastern Partnership (EaP) is a relatively new initiative within the European Neighbourhood Policy. The EU assists the EaP partner countries in their economic and political reforms and offers them better access to the EU internal market and economic integration in form of the deep and comprehensive free trade agreements, parts of the Association Agreements. However, the EU trade policy priorities towards the EaP are threatened by Russia's ambitions to deepen integration in the Eurasian space. Further development of the EU trade policy and the position of Russia will be affected by the outcomes of the third EaP Summit in November 2013 and by the subsequent revolutionary events in Ukraine. The aim of this paper is to highlight the objectives of the EU foreign trade policy towards the EaP, to evaluate the prospects of creating a free trade zone between the EU and EaP countries in the context of Eurasian integration ambitions and mutual cooperation with Russia.

The research on small states calls attention to the fact that these states are usually unable to push through their national interests and needs on the international scene although their number far outweighs the bigger countries. At the same time, it shows that small states can partially eliminate their inability through regional connections and membership in international organisations. Such activities are becoming increasingly evident also in the European Union. Therefore, the text observes tactics that small states use to push through their national interests in decision-making. It focuses on the Council of the European Union as it represents the main decision-making body. The text also reveals capacity and voting limits that small states are faced with in the Council of the EU. At the same time, it explores strategies that help small states eliminate these disadvantages and strengthen the role of small states in decision-making processes in the Council of the EU.