This chapter illustrates – by presenting the official speeches of the then President of the Italian Republic Carlo Azeglio Ciampi (1999 – 2006) – his passionate and convinced support for the process of European integration in a context of growing Euro-scepticism in both the Italian public opinion and political parties. In particular, it focuses on the positions of the President on the common currency, the semester of Italian Presidency of the European Union and the negative outcome of the referendum for the Constitutional Treaty in France and the Netherlands. It is argued that his strong belief in the deepening of European integration is necessarily grounded in the tragedy of the Second World War and the bloodshed his generation has known, but it is far from being limited to this aspect. Throughout his mandate, the President set up a dialogue with public opinion and civil society, seeking to show the concrete and tangible benefits that the European choice entails: for instance, in the financial stability brought by the Euro. President Ciampi vigorously reaffirmed the traditional pro-European position of Italy, making use of all his political and moral authority to limit the diffusion of the emerging anti-European feelings in the country

(Published version of EUI PhD thesis, 1995.); Contributing to the literature on European integration, this book investigates the perceptions of political actors towards the creation of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) in Europe. The research is largely based on personal interviews conducted with key informants in central banks, finance ministries, employers' organizations, and trade unions in Britain, France, and Germany. It examines why actors perceived EMU to serve or frustrate their interests, concluding that actors favored the EMUfor a variety of reasons.

Studying the relationship between foreignness and social bonding illuminates the logics of integration. In 18th century Vienna, the Ottoman presence was inscribed above all within the socio-political history of the city. The Ottoman presence played a part in the Kameralismus of the Imperial administration and in the development of Viennese enlightened absolutism, to the detriment of Municipal liberties. It reinforced the social position of the established ministerial elite against their challengers. It fit ted into a trans-imperial familiarity between the Holy Roman Empire and the Sublime Porte, and into the rise of a cosmopolitan oriental milieu in Vienna. In such a situation, the status of foreigners was no longer a brake on integration, but a pre-requisite and a catalyst for it instead.

After having briefly illustrated the importance of information technology in legal studies, legal informatics in the narrow sense and computer law are distinguished. The different sectors of the two disciplines are identified as well as their specific role in the formation of the jurists and practitioners. Finally, the historical evolution that led to this characterization of legal informatics and future developments and challenges are mentioned. The chapter states that it is appropriate to maintain the connection between legal informatics and computer law as this connection is based on the dependence of technological elements from both the disciplines, whose proficiency is a prerequisite of any legal analysis.

“Popular justice” can be roughly defined as “the exercise of justice by the people”. The institutions and practices pertaining to this form of justice vary widely across time and geographical space. The 18th and 19th centuries constitute a key historical period for the transition to popular justice in Europe. On the one hand, many long-standing practices (“ducking”, “Rügegerichte”) were progressively called into question. On the other hand, the democratization of European societies and the progressive advent of political liberalism helped bring about the emergence of an institutionalized popular justice with the establishment of institutions such as the justice of the peace and the jury. The legitimacy of popular justice remained nonetheless weak due to the government’s fear of losing control and regal powers. Its establishment further depended on the degree of modernisation of the States, which for the most part remained firmly anchored in the Ancien Régime. Despite the importance of popular justice during the 18th and 19th centuries, scholars have largely ignored this field of research or have limited their study to a national perspective. The very definition of popular justice remains vague and requires further conceptual analyses. This book offers a comparative overview of the history of popular justice in France...

This paper focuses on the process of establishment of a new Regional Electricity Market in South East Europe. This is an example of an intra-regional cooperation between the countries from the Western Balkans. In addition, the differences between this regional energy market and other Electricity Regional Initiatives in Europe up to date will be underlined, having in mind that the ultimate objective is that SEE REM shall be integrated into the internal energy market of the EU. So far, the regional initiatives covering the SEE countries in other fields have been characterized with a limited success due to the fact that most of these regional initiatives were initiated by external actors and a genuine will for cooperation between the SEE countries was missing in cases when an external incentive was lacking behind. Nevertheless, as it could be incurred from the existing successful REMs in other parts of Europe, the political will and dedication of the market players is essential for an effective integration of the national electricity markets. Even though the SEE REM was initiated as an idea of the EU and the Stability Pact, the development of the SEE REM in the framework of the Energy Community has been impressive in the short period of its existence. Despite the many remaining open issues before its effective functioning and integration with the other REMs in Europe...

Was the Mankind of the Declaration of Rights 1789 a gendered category ? Olympe de Gouge and feminists who claimed the revolutionary legacy gave a first response to this issue when they asked that women should be included in the political body of the Nation. Besides the feminist, other female voices argued for another definition of Mankind. By operating a shift in time and space, this article provides an insight on the representation of the Mankind of the Bill of Rights that prevailed in the Catholic women’s movement. Our analysis will primarily focus on the writings of the founder of the Union of Catholic Women of Italy. According to the author, the figure of the Catholic Citizen emerged as a political subject who differed from the male citizen. The article highlights the evolution of the discourse of Catholic associations in Italy, which rallied the feminist agenda by considering that women should be awarded political citizenship.; Qui représentait l’Homme de la Déclaration des Droits de 1789 ? A quels individus de chair et d’os cette catégorie abstraite renvoyait-elle ? Olympe de Gouge et les féministes qui se réclamèrent de l’héritage révolutionnaire apportaient une première réponse pour faire reconnaître le caractère bi-sexué de l’Homme et être inclues dans le corps des citoyens. A côté d’elles...

Dans ce qui fait figure d’une affaire d’Etat - et de juges - relative à la question prioritaire de constitutionnalité (QPC), la Cour de Justice de l’Union européenne (CJUE) a jugé le 22 juin dernier par son arrêt Melki et Abdeli qu’un mécanisme de contrôle incident de constitutionnalité des lois était compatible sous certaines conditions avec l’article 267 TFUE. Une semaine plus tard, la Cour de cassation passait la QPC au crible des conditions posées par la CJUE. Jugeant qu’elles n’étaient pas toutes remplies, elle neutralisa en l’espèce le caractère prioritaire de la question de constitutionnalité et demanda au juge a quo de procéder à une application stricte de la jurisprudence Simmenthal. Nonobstant la relative ouverture manifestée par la CJUE à l’égard du contentieux constitutionnel français, la Cour de cassation semble ainsi avoir fait le choix de l’orthodoxie communautaire au risque d’hypothéquer l’avenir de la question prioritaire de constitutionnalité. Il s’agirait pourtant de ne pas substituer une guerre des juges à une autre.

En el contexto de la globalización neoliberal, el Área de Libre Comercio de las Américas (ALCA) fue el acuerdo internacio¬nal más ambicioso promovido para reducir o eliminar las barreras comerciales internacio¬nales en las Américas. Las consecuencias pre¬vistas del ALCA provocaron la movilización de los movimientos sociales y los sindicatos en todo el continente. Después de una déca¬da de resistencia al ALCA, se podría soste¬ner que estos movimientos y sindicatos son parcialmente los responsables de su fracaso en 2005. El papel de los sindicatos plantea una interesante pregunta teórica sobre cómo la participación transnacional de organiza¬ciones nacionales influye en su activismo a escala nacional. Este artículo analiza cómo entre 2002 y 2010 un importante sindicato, la Central de Trabajadores de la Argentina (CTA), organiza su acción en varias escalas y cómo estas se interrelacionan.

Published online on 13 June 2014; So far, historians working on the two sides of what used to be a divided Europe have had considerable contacts but they have operated – at least in the realm of international history and the history of European integration – with largely separate agendas and networks. The authors of this special-issue introduction have both come to work on the increasing interaction between East and West in the framework of détente, and feel that the time is ripe for a scholarly analysis of the concepts, strategies and approaches of the Socialist regimes to pan-European co-operation in the long 1970s. Through a collaborative research effort, specialists on specific Socialist countries and historians of Western Europe (and particularly of its integrative experience) are brought together in this special issue of the European Review of History to bridge the existing gap between two parallel strands of scholarship. Their close collaboration is the key to the conceptual development of a broader view of pan-European co-operation against the background of global economic trends.