Search results

The prevalence of anti-EU integration and anti-immigration rhetoric across the continent, the increased presence of Eurosceptic parties in the European Parliament, and most importantly Brexit suggest that the European Union is having an existential crisis. This chapter debates the role of the EU citizenship regime on this crisis, by resting its central thesis that there is a fundamental mismatch between the way that EU citizenship is at present derived from Member State citizenship, and the transnational affinity of the EU citizenry that is invited by the internal market and migration. As a remedy, the chapter projects a supranational EU citizenship regime that coexists with the current EU citizenship regime. Focussing on the social and political imperatives, the chapter brings forward tangible policy recommendations for the proposed EU citizenship regime and expounds how it can be an effective policy instrument for the EU’s internal and external struggles.

The European Union (EU) is not a state, though it has some statelike attributes; it is not an empire, though it includes many former European imperial powers; and it is not a federation, though Euro-federalists seek to make it one. There is, however, no need to argue that the Union is a singularity, nor to invent novel terminology, such as that deployed by “neo-functionalists” and “intergovernmentalists” to capture its legal and political form. The EU is a confederation, but with consociational characteristics in its decision-making styles. This conceptualization facilitates understanding and helps explain the patterns of crises within the Union.

As the society has long ago left the “industrial age” and entered the “information age”, people, enterprises and above all decision makers are constantly trying to get the best out of the opportunities and the technologies offered, for facilitating their life and their work. One of the most active and promising domains nowadays, is eParticipation, which is actively promoted by all stakeholders, as there is a great need of reconnecting citizens with the decision makers and re‐engaging them into the democratic procedures, especially as during the last years this gap is expanding, with the most convincing proof being the huge figure of voter turnout during the latest European elections. The purpose of this paper is to address these issues.

A review of the most active and well‐known eParticipation action pilot projects funded in the European Union is presented, alongside with a methodological framework that has been followed for mapping, assessing and evaluating those projects, using a beyond the state‐of‐the‐art classification method.

Conclusions of the performed work are in a position to outline the current status quo of eParticipation in Europe, highlighting lessons learned and opportunities for future activities and research.

This paper includes valuable information towards practitioners, decision makers and administration officials, based not only on the established knowledge and on the experiences gained, but also on the identified gaps of the domain, aiming to support them in understanding the status quo of the domain and in the design process of future research roadmaps for eGovernace and policy modelling.

The contribution draws upon the protests against a proposed trade deal between the European Union (EU) and the United States as an example of the potential to identify as European citizens. It is relevant given the multiple challenges the EU is currently facing, particularly a crisis of democratic legitimacy. While trust in EU institutions is at a historic low, some citizens – such as the Anti-Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) protestors – want to have a say in EU decision-making. The resulting conflicts should not be misunderstood as a threat. Instead, the author’s suggestion here is that democratic conflict has the potential to contribute to the politicisation and the identification of citizens with the European project. Following this line of thought, the potential of the Anti-TTIP protests lies in a civic democratisation of the EU through conflict. The author focusses on protestors’ participation experiences and their self-understanding processes as European citizens. The author explores the different ways in which protestors experience themselves as European citizens which aims to open up the discourse about the multiplicity of European citizenship. This variety of meanings ascribed to European citizenship is not regarded as a danger, but as the potential to enrich Europe with new ways of being and acting as European citizens.

Poland has traditionally been perceived as a net emigration country. The scale of the recent inflow of foreigners to the country, however, places Poland among those states of growing attractiveness to migrants. Therefore, the main aim of this chapter is to present the Polish model of integration policy and describe the development of Poland's migration and integration policy at the national level. As the local perspective on migration and integration has become increasingly important, local policies are also presented through the example of several of the largest Polish cities. Additionally, the role of public discourse in shaping Polish society's attitude towards migrants is discussed. Finally, some aspects of economic migrants' integration are described.

Poland still lacks a long-term and comprehensive migration and integration policy that covers all areas of integration, and all categories of immigrants and so far only once, for a short period, has adopted migration policy at a national level. There is also little coordination among the different governmental bodies that deal with this issue. Therefore, only some of the crucial elements of integration policy at a national level, like the liberalization of the labour market, have occurred successfully. It seems that local policies, especially in large cities, have addressed more precisely various issues faced by immigrants, not only related to employment, and could foster the process of integration.

Every geometric model corresponding to a unique feature whose errors of parameters uncorrelated, so the linearization technique can be successfully applied. The solution of a linear least square problem can be applied straightforwardly. This method has advantages especially in calibrate the redundant robot because it’s relatively small. The parameters of kinematics are unique and determined by this algorithm.

In this paper, a geometric identification method has been studied to estimate the parameters in the Denavit–Hartenberg (DH) model of the robot. Through studying the robot’s geometric features, specific trajectories are designed for calibrating the DH parameters. On the basis of these geometric features, several fitting methods have been deduced so that the important geometric parameters of robots, such as the actual rotation centers and rotate axes, can be found.

By measuring the corresponding motion trajectory at the end-effector, the trajectory feature can be identified by using curve fitting methods, and the trajectory feature will reflect back to the actual value of the DH parameters.

This method is especially suitable for rigid serial-link robots especially for redundant robots because of its specific calibration trajectory and geometric features. Besides, this method uses geometric features to calibrate the robot which is relatively small especially for the redundant robot comparing to the numerical algorithm.