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This paper aims to clarify the scope and content of the obligations and responsibilities which the European Community (EC) and the European Union (EU) Member States assumed under the Kyoto Protocol, including an examination of the procedures and mechanisms relating to compliance.

The paper explores the participation of the EU as a “Regional Economic Integration Organization” in the Kyoto Protocol and explores the implications of possible non‐compliance with its obligations.

While there is uncertainty, the text of the Kyoto Protocol as well as its negotiating history suggest that the EC entered into an emissions‐reduction commitment of 8 per cent additional to the obligations of EU Member States which redistributed their targets under a burden‐sharing agreement.

The paper challenges the prevalent opinion that the EC and the Member States of the EU share a common emission‐reduction target of 8 per cent under the Kyoto Protocol.

This paper aims to critically analyse the transposition implications of Union Directive 2014/95. This Directive identified the need to raise the transparency of the social and environmental information provided by the undertakings to a similarly high level across all Member States.

The paper considers how the European Member States of the European Union (EU) have transposed Directive 2014/95 into their regulations. The focus is on the juridification of social accounting in the pursuit of creating an overlapping consensus through Habermas’s concept of internal colonisation. The paper uses qualitative content analysis to scrutinise the national laws that transpose Directive 2014/95, discussing both what has been accomplished and what can be achieved by the release of future legislative provisions.

Despite the aim of Directive 2014/95 to create a common language for disclosing non-financial information, this study shows an implementation gap among and between Member States and an inconsistent picture of the employment of this Directive. Its implementation in the 28 European countries was considered a process of colonisation in implementing Union directives among European undertakings. However, the implementation process, which exemplifies Habermas’s juridification, has failed due to the lack of balance between moral discourse and actions.

This paper contributes to the ongoing debates concerning the implementation of mandatory disclosure of environmental and social information in the EU Member States, promoting new directions for the EU’s democratic laws on social accounting. In addition, it offers an example of how internal colonisation only catalyses effects when moral laws are legitimised through the provision of procedures.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse how austerity has impacted to date upon European Union (EU) financial reporting developments and how this might influence future reforms. It considers how a critical juncture in EU financial reporting might be recognized and factors which might prevent or delay such a juncture being realized.

The paper uses the theoretical conceptualization of the territorializing, mediating, adjudicating and subjectivizing roles of accounting (Miller and Power, 2013), linked to document analysis and interviews with members of the relevant policy communities. In technical terms, austerity makes accounting subject to greater demands for consistency and uniformity. In political terms, accounting is implicated in increasing external fiscal surveillance of sovereign states.

The authors have shown how the Miller-Power framework illuminates these developments. The territorializing role of accounting in sovereign states creates an environment which facilitates the mediating, adjudicating and subjectivizing roles. Austerity promotes re-territorializing, yet also creates incentives for governments to hide risks and guarantees: the comparability of financial reports and national accounts may be achieved only at a rhetorical level. Evidence for a critical juncture would be termination of national traditions of financial reporting, greater harmonization of accounting across tiers of government, weakening of the linkages to private sector accounting, and stronger alignment of government financial reporting with statistical accounting.

The paper provides a theoretically based analysis of how austerity influences government financial reporting and statistical accounting and brings them into closer contact. This analysis is located within broader tensions between technocracy and democracy that are institutionalized in EU fiscal surveillance.

The European Union has pursued two contradictory policies over the last decade in response to the challenges of globalization. On the one hand, the EU has loosened borders to facilitate trade and make the EU more competitive globally. On the other hand, the EU has tightened borders to enhance its security, fearing the negative consequences of a globalized world. In this paper, I examine the effects of implementation of the EU's Schengen border regime, a set of rules governing external border control, on the post-communist countries and the difficulties that Schengen has posed for the governments in the region. I also discuss the EU's emerging European Neighborhood Policy (ENP), designed to address many of the concerns voiced by the Central and East European (CEE) officials regarding Schengen. An important element of ENP is to work across the EU external border to facilitate economic relations and develop joint institutions with non-members to create new cooperative borderlands.

Two images are frequently invoked with regard to the evolution of the EU. Certain scholars portray the organization as moving toward a new, post-modern, post-Westphalian entity comprising an increasingly borderless Europe. Other scholars view European integration as a process by which the EU is increasingly taking on the trappings and functions of the state to build a “Fortress Europe.” The discussion of Schengen and the eastern enlargement suggests a more complex reality than either of these two images in which borders are constantly shifting and whose functions are changing in response to the different challenges posed by globalization and internal developments. The EU's external borders will continue to change, both in terms of where they are located and how important these will be. Europe's ENP, with its emphasis on cross-border cooperation, is changing borders into borderlands, zones of cooperation and collaboration across a line on a map. Governance and the shaping of policy are increasingly taking place at multiple sites and with different kinds of actors, further transforming the importance of borders. Perhaps, a new vision of European integration is needed to capture the evolution of the EU.

The increasing trend towards sustainable development has seen a shift from ‘end of pipe solutions’ to the ongoing threat of pollution. Policy makers have come to accept the need for some form of inbuilt environmental standards to be included in any overall planning strategy. These shifts come in the wake of the Brundtland Report and the Rio World Summit. They have also shaped environmental policy. A central feature of this new thinking is the theory of ‘Ecological Modernisation’ (EM). Underpinning this debate are the theorists Janicke, Weale and Hajer, who have each contributed to the conceptualisation of EM as a feature of modern society. It can be argued that EM theory reflects a critical new positioning of the environmental debate, moving away from the periphery of social, cultural and political channels and becoming an important aspect of policy planning in these areas.

This chapter analyses major issues surrounding the Annual Report Questionnaire (ARQ) – the key mechanism through which the UN collects data on various facets of the world’s illicit drug market. As the ARQ is currently under review by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the authors suggest ways to incorporate the gains made at the United Nations General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on the World Drug Problem.

The UNGASS Outcome Document has, to certain degree, enabled the international community to move away from the simplistic goals of a drug-free world enshrined in the 2009 Political Declaration and towards a more comprehensive health- and human rights-based approach. The UNGASS has also laid important groundwork for the 2019 Ministerial Segment, where member states will delineate the global drug control approach for the next decade. In this context, the issue of metrics and indicators has a critical political role to play as it will shape how member states will measure progress against their international drug control commitments.

Starting with a review of the ‘triple trouble’ – poor data quality, low response rates from Member States and other inconsistencies that have long persisted with the ARQ – the chapter moves on to offer substantive critiques on the content of the Questionnaire and ways to better incorporate issues related to health, human rights and development. The chapter concludes by providing guidance on possible synergies with the Outcome Document and the Sustainable Development Goals, bringing international drug control in line with the UN Charter.

This paper aims to examine the extent of successes and challenges of adoption and implementation of Financial Action Task Force (FATF) codes in member states by highlighting the influence of the FATF anti-money laundering policy framework on money laundering (ML) and the way forward in heightening the fight against the fast-evolving nature of ML and terrorist financing activities.

This paper, based on a purely qualitative desktop study, is drawn on historical information from FATF’s recommendations, its periodic reports, publications and other secondary sources such as books, journal articles on financial systems and scholarly literature.

The challenges found include difficulty in domestic coordination, capacity constraints of countries, inadequate operational resources and assessment complexities in the implementation of FATF standards. Nonetheless, FATF has chalked some successes such as the harmonization of legislation and enforcement efforts through the provision of coordination points. Other successes include flexibility in response to new threats, adoption of the mutual evaluation process, which advanced peer pressure on defaulting members, enhancement of the international financial space and the enhancement of the legitimization of FATF’s processes.

This paper provides a description of the successes and challenges of the FATF’s 40 + 9 recommendations since its establishment. The outcome would alert countries and players within the international financial space to invest more in capacity building and the entrenchment of the recommendations into their domestic laws.

The purpose of this article is to examine the national law regimes related to the remediation of contaminated land.

The methodology used is comparative. Models for different systems are described on the basis of varying interpretations of the polluter pays principle. The regimes present in the Member States are then analysed to see which model they have adopted. A comparator from each model group is then considered.

This article presents three key findings. First, it concludes that the extent to which additional national legislation relating to environmental damage is permitted, which depends upon the notion of “more stringent” legislation, is incoherent where more than one interpretation is given to the polluter pays principle. Second, the different interpretations given to the principle undermine harmonisation. Finally, this has wider implications for how we justify liability for contaminated land.

This comparative study of the interpretation of the polluter pays principle, through its implementation in Member States, provides a valuable and novel insight into environmental liability regimes in Europe. It also demonstrates the different type of regimes that are developed on the basis of such different interpretations. Although the different national attitudes to contaminated land policy and remediation have been considered before, this article adds to this debate by suggesting a central cause of such variation in the shape of different interpretations of a principle of the European Union.

The rules on takeover bids are generally considered to be an important factor within the debate on corporate governance. The risk of a takeover bid – and of a consequent change in company control – should motivate a company’s board to act in the best interests of the shareholders (the so-called disciplinary mechanism). The European rules on takeover bids are enshrined in Directive 2004/25/EC (which is also known as the Thirteenth Directive on Company Law), which applies to bids for securities of companies (issuers) governed by the laws of Member States. In this chapter the author analysed the European rules on takeover bids and highlighted certain national options for implementing the Directive, although a revision of the European Directive, which will be based, among other things, on an examination of the advantages and disadvantages of its application, has been under way since 2004. The chapter also considered the revisions currently being proposed by the European Commission and the European Parliament.

The Lamfalussy process was implemented from early 2001, following the report of the Committee of Wise Men on the Regulation of European Securities Markets, chaired by Alexandre Lamfalussy. Four years on, this paper concludes that, while it is too early to assess progress in areas such as implementation and enforcement (Levels 3 and 4 of the Lamfalussy process), significant progress has been made in implementing the proposals contained in the original Lamfalussy Report. Preparation of EU legislation affecting securities markets is now more transparent, with better involvement of external stakeholders and enhanced political cooperation between all the institutions (Commission, Council and European Parliament). This has resulted in an improvement in the quality of legislation and an acceleration of the legislative process. The use of implementing measures will make it easier and faster to adapt Community legislation in the future. The process is also encouraging regulatory and supervisory convergence. Nevertheless, this paper suggests further improvements that could be made in areas such as consultation, including better involvement of consumers; timetables for transposing measures into national law; focusing more on general rules and principles in framework legislation (Level 1) and avoiding over‐prescription in implementing measures (Level 2); achieving more consistent implementation across member states (Level 3); further strengthening political accountability; and strengthening efforts to foster greater understanding of the Lamfalussy process.