Impact of Romania’s Accession to the European Union on the Austrian Trade, FDI and Labour Market
Gábor Hunya, Anna Iara
Abstract:
This paper explores the potential impact of Romania’s accession to the European Union on Austria in three major fields: foreign trade, FDI and labour market. While conditions of doing business in Romania have improved in recent years, they are still more complicated than in old and new EU member states. Romania remains a rapidly growing market for investment goods, consumer goods and services alike providing good opportunities for Austrian companies. While the effect of Eastern European labour immigration to Austria can be expected to be marginal on total employment and wages, it may affect specific segments of the labour market. Overall, labour immigration from Romania will remain relatively unproblematic.
Keywords: Austria, FDI, labour market, labour migration, Romania’s accession
Inflation Targeting in Eastern Europe
Laurian Lungu, Juan Paez-Farrell
Abstract:
This paper addresses the inflation targeting approach in three transition economies, namely Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic with the use of Taylor rules as benchmarks. The three economies considered have been successful at achieving disinflation, but deviations of inflation from its target have been persistent in all cases. Except for the Czech Republic, deviations from the Taylor rule are large and persistent, with Hungary displaying the largest fluctuations. Polish interest rates have consistently exceeded those suggested by the Taylor rule and given the prevalence of high unemployment, these undershootings do not augur well for the stability of monetary policy. Finally, the behaviour of Czech interest rates can be remarkably captured by the simple Taylor rule proposed in this paper, suggesting that the Czech National Bank has been the most successful at stabilising inflation and output around their target levels.
Keywords: Eastern Europe, inflation, Taylor rules, unemployment
Turkey into the European Union: Past Challenges and Future Prospects
Murat Metin Hakki
Abstract:
This paper aims to analyze the impact that the EU accession process has already had on Turkey’s foreign policy since the acceptance of that country’s ‘candidacy’ for EU membership in 1999. It also endeavors to highlight the potential challenges ahead for eventual membership, while commenting on the problems that Turkey may face in its future negotiations with the EU, with particular emphasis on the areas in which Turkish Foreign Policy (TFP) may need ‘further’ adaptation.
Keywords: Cyprus, EU accession, European Security and Defense Policy, Greece, Turkey
Why Legal Transplants instead of More Adaptation within the Process of Legal Approximation in the Central-Eastern European Member States of the EU and the Candidate Countries?
Mónika Józon
Abstract:
The paper discusses the strategy of the EU in designing and implementing the legal approximation process in the candidate countries, on one hand, and the possibilities and constraints of the candidate countries in framing this process under their domestic conditions, within the European context. It questions, whether could have been feasible other alternative strategic solutions both for the EU and the candidates for achieving a less costly and more effective functional compatibility between the conditionalities of the candidates and the integration mechanisms of the EU?
At the very heart of the problem there are the function of law, in general, and the function of legal approximation or other methods of legal unification of market regulations, in changing market conditions. In this context the analysis defends a strong case for the interdisciplinary research of the ‘effectiveness’ of the legal-institutional approximation process highlighting the limits of market regulations in generating convergence of the market conditions and institutional culture.
Keywords: candidate countries, Central Europe, Eastern Europe, EU accession, legal approximation