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Particular attention has been paid to the need to adapt the sources of financial law of Ukraine to the acquis communautaire. This paper emphasizes that the system of sources of financial law is inherently dynamic, which is reflected in the constant development of both its content and external form of expression.

This paper analyzes the main approaches to determining sources of law. The main features and peculiarities of the sources of financial law in Ukraine have been outlined. The positions of scholars on the characteristics of the sources of financial law of the European Union (EU) have been analyzed.

It is considered appropriate to allow soft law to belong to one of the sources of financial law. It is established that the adaptation of financial legislation of Ukraine to EU law is due to the following objectives: implementation of theoretical and practical experience of EU member states in the form of European standards enshrined in the sources of EU law; and harmonization of the rules of financial activity in Ukraine to the norms of EU financial law is necessary to ensure the free movement of persons, goods, services and capital.

The directives of the EU that regulate financial relations and the state of their implementation have been described. This paper proposes to improve the sources of financial law of Ukraine to harmonize the national legislation of Ukraine with the standards of the EU.

An attempt will be made to shed light on the course and pattern of the decentralization process by analyzing the historical development of local government and the territorial-administrative reform of 2015-2020 in Albania and the factors that have been shaping it. The scope is to understand the impact of the reform elements on the subnational governments and in general their overall impact on the government. The purpose of this paper is to fill the gap in the existing literature for Albania and at offering some insights on the administrative-territorial reform. Furthermore, it will contribute to the current debate on fiscal decentralization in South Eastern European (SEE) countries and the public management model implemented after the last reforms.

The first section analyzes the historical development of local government reforms from the 1990s to today and will help to identify if there is instrumentalism advocacy. The second section explains the determinants of the local government’s fiscal autonomy in Albania of the period from 2003 to 2016. Three indicators are used as proxies for fiscal decentralization: the proportion of subnational expenditure over national expenditure, of total subnational revenues over total revenues of central government and the indicator of own subnational revenues over total revenues of the central government. The data from the budget and the revised budgets are then compared.

Despite Albania’s commitment to decentralize its government functions, there is still work to do. The territorial and administrative reform has not generated the expected results. Almost 90 percent of the revenues still come from the central government’s unconditional transfers. Therefore, the Albanian Government should build capacities and skills, and train the employees of each level of government that currently benefit from international assistance.

The analysis represents a single case study on the territorial-administrative reform in Albania. Its implementation started in 2015 and it is probably too early to discuss outcomes. However, it might be useful to analyze the first results after a two-and-a-half-year period of implementation of reforms. Despite contributing to the existing gap in the literature, additional research will be necessary to better understand the decentralization process not only in Albania, but in all SEE countries.

It is necessary to first understand the lack of initial output, as well as the various challenges faced, in order to take the corrective measures on time.

This paper discusses in detail the reform adopted and the progress made by the Albanian local government units. The reform attempts to develop better relationships between the central and local governments and hence improve their service delivery, transparency and accountability. This paper is the first one that is attempting to analyze the initial output of the territorial-administrative reform of 2015-2020.

Flexibility (enhanced cooperation) has arisen in the European Union (EU) agenda as a function of recent enlargement rounds and is now one of the key issues in the construction of the EU polity with respect to diversity management. Whether enlargement has provoked normative reform in the EU, taking flexibility as an example is the focus of this article. The author argues that the flexibility case indicates that pressures of enlargement have not produced radical normative change in the EU. Tracing the evolution of enhanced cooperation from the 2000 Treaty of Nice onwards, the evidence points towards the continued existence of the traditional ‘frame’ of the integration process rather than its rejection in favour of more radical and innovative solutions to the EU's governance problems.

This article seeks to take a critical look at the proposed Common European Sales Law (CESL).

The article looks at the rationales given to support the enactment of the CESL. The approach is critical in nature seeking to vet the plausibility of the rationales given for a new regulation The article also takes a critical look at the CESL's structure and trilogy of coverage – sale of goods, supply of digital content, and supply of services.

The article exposes some of the shortcomings of the CESL and the dangers to substantive private law of crafting a regulation based on political feasibility.

The CESL as proposed offers some innovative ideas in areas of the bifurcation of businesses into large and small to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs), as well as rules covering digital content and the supply of trade‐related services. In the end, the analysis suggests a more thorough review is needed to better understand the CESL's interrelationship with the Convention on Contracts for the International Sales Law (CISG) and EU consumer protection law.

Further analysis is needed and unanswered questions need to be answered prior to the enactment of the CESL into law. A practical first step would to begin with a more targeted law focused on internet trading and licensing contracts.

This article questions the rationales given for the enactment of an ambitious new regulation covering disparate areas of sale of goods, supplying (licensing) of digital content, trade‐related services, and consumer protection. It further questions the rationality and practicality of the creation of the designation of SMEs as types of businesses in need of extra protections not currently provided by contract law's general policing doctrines.

The purpose of this article is to explore an energy strategy for the European Union (EU) that could integrate the tensions between geopolitics and the market in a coherent and consistent external EU energy policy.

The approach consists of combining the theoretical framework of international political economy and Europeanization to European energy corridors.

The article finds that most qualitative energy security scenarios can be conceived as applications of international political economy paradigms. Its main result is to conceptually develop a geo‐economic strategy consisting on the Europeanization of EU's external energy corridors along its own energy regulations and standards.

The article explores a distinct hybrid scenario, the Europeanization of energy corridors, which could be instrumental in overcoming the apparent dilemma between EU's market and geopolitical‐based scenarios.

The original contribution of the article lies in the application of international political economy and Europeanization theories to energy security scenarios, and the inclusion of governments' preferences in the process of hedging market and geopolitical scenarios.

The purpose of this study is to assess the effect of institutional distance on national innovation systems.

This study uses social network analysis to analyze the connectivity between national systems of innovation. A regulative distance index is constructed by coding the European Commission progress reports and using weights to account for relevance to research and innovation.

Reductions in institutional distance (proxied by regulative distance) increase international innovation connectivity between national systems of innovation. More importantly, it leads to increase in both the complexity and resilience of innovation connectivity between countries.

This study provides fresh evidence on the pathways through which institutions affect international business systems. Policy harmonization has strong effects on firm-level corporate strategy.

This paper aims to examine how the Slovak Labour Code has evolved as a result of the “velvet revolution” which saw Czechoslovakia begin the transition from a “command” to a “market economy, the establishment of a separate Czech Republic and a Slovak Republic and Slovakia's accession to membership of the European Union.

The paper attempts to provide an empirical contribution to the understanding of how the process of industrial relations is evolving in the new democracies of Eastern and Central Europe in the post‐communist period.

The paper highlights how the detailed codification of trade union rights of the communist era have been drastically reformed in light of the Slovak Republic adopting a market economy and adopting the EU's social acquis communautaire. The governments desire to liberalise and encourage a more flexible labour market has seen many of the old powers of the trade unions transferred to other forms of employee representation such as works councils and works trustees.

The author has described the strategy of the government to marginalise trade unions by introducing works councils and transferring functions to them, which had previously been performed by the trade unions.

The paper provide an interesting insight into how “players” in the “employee relations game” perceive the re‐codification of the Slovak Labour Code. There seems to be a mixed response to the changes, for whilst the union claims that it is able to boast a 95 per cent success rate in winning cases in the courts arising out of the rights and protections provided for employees in the Labour Code, and not withstanding the very low incidence of industrial action, the paper notes with some irony that there is significant school of opinion amongst Slovak trade unionists that the price that they pay for all of this is some of the lowest wages in the region.

The purpose of this paper is to give a good overview of the relationship between industrial growth and industrial pollution in Turkey. The question is to what extent dirty industries have been affected by the regulations on the control of environmental degradation.

The approach for this study uses all regulations which serve for protecting human and its environment from danger arising from dirty industries in Turkey. After presenting brief explanations on green industry, next sessions explain and compare the situations of the Turkish dirty industries and its relationship with related regulations in the European Union (EU).

The authors offer three solutions. First, clean consumption should be stimulated in Turkish society. Second, Turkish Government should conduct more joint projects with the EU. Third, EU funds should be directed to cleaner production technologies to subsidize dirty industries during the negotiation process.

Green industry can be assessed as a steep road to build a sustainable future. For a long time, the unsustainability of current forms of industrial production has been discussed in Turkey. As a solution some argue that if governments support, industries can finance their own transformation more rapidly. However, these arguments do not mean that industries voluntarily accept these changes.

The experience of most European Union (EU) Member States has demonstrated effective anti-corruption practices, making the EU one of the leaders in this field, which can be used as an example to learn from in the field of anti-corruption. The purpose of this study is to analyze and identify the main features of anti-corruption legislation and strategies to prevent corruption at the national and supranational levels of the EU.

The following methods were used in the work: discourse and content analysis, method of system analysis, method of induction and deduction, historical-legal method, formal-legal method, comparative-legal method and others. Using the historical and legal method, the evolution of the formation of anti-corruption regulation at the supranational level was revealed. The comparative law method helped to compare the practices of the Member States of the EU in the field of anti-corruption regulation. The formal-legal method is used for generalization, classification and systematization of research results, as well as for the correct presentation of these results.

The main results, prospects for further research and the value of the material. The paper offers a critical review of key EU legal instruments on corruption, from the first initiatives taken in the mid-1990s to recent years.

In addition, the article analyzes the relevant anti-corruption legislation in the EU member states that are in the top 10 countries with the lowest level of corruption, namely: Denmark, Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany and Luxembourg.