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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 goal of this chapter is to analyse the decisions of the Croatian Competition Agency in the field of grocery retail mergers in the 2004–2009 period. In particular, various criteria used by the Competition Agency to evaluate grocery retail mergers are identified and discussed.

Using the comparative approach the author attempts to detect the relevant sources for certain solutions embraced by the Competition Agency by examining especially the relevant practice of the European Commission as well as relevant decisions adopted by some competition authorities in EU member states.

The grocery retail market in Croatia has seen a flurry of mergers since 2004 with the largest competitor spreading to various local markets. For the Croatian competition authority this merger wave has perhaps been the biggest challenge since its inception. In the face of growing market concentration, the authority saw fit to shift from initially providing green light to duly notified transactions to subsequently addressing serious competition concerns by ordering a number of remedies. The Croatian competition authority relied extensively on EU acquis when deciding on specific merger cases, especially as regards the relevant market definition.

The value of the chapter is reflected in the fact that this kind of comparative analysis of Croatian merger cases in the field of grocery retail mergers was not available before. It is especially in the light of the accession of Croatia to the EU, as foreseen on 1 July 2013, that this kind of study becomes useful both for domestic but also EU audience.

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.

The chapter presents and discusses the development of a number of new transnational surveillance and information systems in Europe. It relates their development to the question of whether we here have an example of ‘law without a state’. Guenther Teubner's notion of a ‘lex mercatoria’, a system of global contract law developed by large law firms and international business lawyers, is paralleled by a ‘lex vigilatoria’, a system of global control in the making. The chapter provisionally concludes that the ties to the nation-state of an integrated surveillance system are increasingly diluted.

The purpose of this research is to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the EU's public diplomacy – towards both domestic and external audiences – during times of crisis. The EU's public diplomacy is examined across six major crises: the Eurozone crisis (2008), the Ukrainian crisis (2014), the migrant crisis (2015), the Brexit referendum (2016), the new transatlantic relationship (2017) and the COVID-19 pandemic (2020). The goal of examining these crises in conjunction is to derive policy-relevant insights.

This article adopts a problem-driven approach – the problem being how successful is the EU at public diplomacy during times of crisis – that draws theoretical and empirical insights from Communication Studies, International Relations and EU studies via a “strategic narratives” framework. It situates the EU as a unique public diplomacy actor, one which is becoming more prominent due to the mediatisation of diplomacy, especially driven by the advent of cyberspace.

The article finds that the EU has been experiencing a cycle of crises that have affected the political, economic, symbolic and social foundations of the common project. The EU has had some notable success – such as restoring confidence at the height of the Eurozone crisis – and some notable challenges – such as effectively combatting disinformation. Regardless, the EU has the potential to better manage these and future crises by engaging in an effective public diplomacy strategy that tells a shared European story that informs and inspires people, both domestically and externally.

The article offers an original examination of the EU's public diplomacy response to six different crises. It looks at different types of crises and utilises concepts from different social science perspectives. It offers novel strategic and policy recommendations.

The Cyprus conflict is a classical case of protracted ethnic conflict with very obvious and important international dimensions. It is one of the major unresolved inter national conflicts, which for decades attracts the attention of the international community. The involvement of many countries and international organizations in the Cyprus conflict demonstrates the importance and seriousness of the conflict. During the last decades the conflict has cost a lot both for the Greek Cypriots and for the Turkish Cypriots. It claimed a lot of lives and caused serious economic damages and psychological destruction. The conflict began in the 1950s, erupted violently with blood shed at the end of 1963,and culminated in 1974 with the interventions of Greece and Turkey that led to the island’s current de facto division as the Greek Cypriot South and Turkish Cypriot North. Over the past 40 years many states have came out with various initiatives and have proposed various approaches for final settlement of the conflict. It also has been addressed by dozens of UN Security Council resolutions but all these have proved to be futile so far.