Search Results (374)

The climate crisis exacerbates structural inequalities and disproportionately affects women, particularly in rural and low-income contexts where limited access to resources, education and financing undermines their adaptive capacity. This article examines how gender considerations are integrated into European Union (EU) climate adaptation governance, combining doctrinal analysis of EU and international legal frameworks with a bibliometric analysis of the scientific literature. The bibliometric component maps research trends and thematic gaps on gender-responsive climate adaptation. The doctrinal analysis focuses on the European Climate Law, the EU Gender Equality Strategies and selected national instruments, with Spain’s 2021–2030 PNIEC and PNACC as illustrative case studies. These frameworks are assessed against five human-rights-based criteria: substantive equality and intersectionality, participation and empowerment, accountability and access to justice, data and monitoring, and financing and institutional arrangements. The findings reveal a structural “transformation deficit” between normative commitments and operational reality: core climate instruments lack robust requirements on gender impact assessments, sex-disaggregated data, women’s participation and gender-responsive budgeting. The study argues that a truly transformative Gender-Responsive Climate Adaptation (GRCA) in the EU requires moving beyond symbolic references toward binding gender-responsive governance mechanisms derived from CEDAW and EU primary law, capable of dismantling structural barriers and ensuring an environmentally effective and substantively just transition. Full article

The regulation of artificial intelligence (AI) and copyright in the European Union has proceeded almost entirely within the domain of economic rights, systematically overlooking the moral rights of authors whose works are ingested into AI training datasets and reproduced in AI-generated outputs. This article examines why this omission constitutes not merely a regulatory gap but a normative failure and proposes a framework for addressing it. Through doctrinal analysis of the DSM Directive’s text and data mining exceptions, the AI Act’s general-purpose AI obligations, and the AI Code of Practice, the article identifies a four-dimensional regulatory gap—substantive, jurisdictional, structural, and institutional—and situates it within the broader architecture of EU fundamental rights law. Drawing on the personhood theory of authorship, international human rights instruments, and the first European judicial engagement with AI-related moral and personality rights claims in GEMA v OpenAI (Regional Court of Munich I, November 2025), the article develops a rebuttable presumption model as the organising principle for author-centred AI regulation. Two complementary regulatory pathways are proposed: EU harmonisation of moral rights with AI-specific provisions, and the integration of moral rights obligations into existing AI compliance frameworks. The article concludes that in the algorithmic age, human creativity must be valued—not merely accommodated—by the legal systems that claim to protect it. Full article

The European Union has mandated digital reporting of cross-border VAT transactions from 2030, yet quasi-experimental evidence on the official compliance gap remains limited and does not cover the full range of national transaction-reporting architectures. This paper estimates their effect on that gap in 24 member states over 2000 to 2023, coding twelve mandates from the underlying legal instruments and applying the Callaway and Sant’Anna framework with never-treated comparisons. The baseline staggered estimate indicates a 4.23 percentage point reduction (95% CI [−6.45, −1.83]), remaining between 3.73 and 5.43 points across nineteen specifications including an imputation estimator and a neighbour-excluding comparison, and 2.76 under the most conservative identification check. Point estimates more than triple over five years. Pre-adoption coefficients are individually indistinguishable from zero though jointly significant, and formal sensitivity analysis shows the adoption-year and average post-adoption effects withstand modest though not large parallel-trend violations. The results do not show continuous reporting outperforms periodic reporting, and exploratory analysis detects no capacity moderation. What orders the cohort estimates is the completeness of the obligation, since the three mandates reaching one side of the transaction or part of the taxpayer population produce the three weakest effects. Findings support the fiscal premise of the VAT in the Digital Age reform and counsel patient evaluation of the rollout. Full article

Background: Transport remains one of the hardest sectors to decarbonize in the European Union, and the effectiveness of environmental taxation as a “polluter pays” instrument remains contested for the institutionally distinct Visegrad Four (V4) countries. Methods: Using a balanced panel of four V4 countries over 2000–2024 (n = 100 observations) from Eurostat, we estimate fixed-effects models with Driscoll–Kraay standard errors, complemented by two-way fixed effects, lag, interaction, and robustness specifications, including a sensitivity test for mechanical endogeneity. Results: GDP per capita and freight transport volume are positively associated with emissions (elasticities 0.244 and 0.230, both p < 0.001), while renewable energy share is negatively associated (−2.93%, p < 0.001). Environmental taxes show no significant association at any lag, and their positive association is strongest where highway infrastructure is least developed, disappearing where it is most developed. Freight transport remains the only robust driver once year effects are controlled for; a tax-to-freight intensity indicator reveals a significant three-year lag effect. Conclusions: Environmental taxation alone is not robustly associated with lower transport emissions in the V4; its association is conditional on infrastructure development and best complemented by renewable-energy investment. Findings should be read as descriptive associations rather than causal effects. Full article

This article examines the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) as a regulatory instrument of the European Union, situated at the intersection of international trade law, customs law and environmental protection. The primary objective of the study is to assess the legal nature of the CBAM, evaluate its compatibility with World Trade Organisation (WTO) law and analyse its implications for sustainable global trade governance and climate policy. Particular attention is paid to Articles I, III and XX of the GATT, as well as relevant WTO case law, including the cases of United States—Gasoline, United States—Shrimp, European Communities—Asbestos and Brazil—Retreaded Tyres. The study further examines the procedural transformation of customs authorities, particularly in relation to the verification of emissions, the burden of proof and administrative enforcement. The article also assesses the environmental effectiveness of the CBAM in preventing carbon leakage and in enforcing higher environmental standards in third countries, addressing the legal and economic issues of discrimination, proportionality, administrative complexity and potential impact on developing economies. The research is based on doctrinal legal analysis, comparative legal methodology and a review of relevant international and European legal sources, including WTO case law and Regulation (EU) 2023/956. The authors demonstrate that the CBAM represents a hybrid regulatory mechanism combining elements of environmental taxation, regulatory charges and trade policy instruments implemented through customs procedures. The originality of the article lies in its integrated and comprehensive analysis of the CBAM from the perspective of customs law, international trade law and environmental regulation with a focus on sustainability. In contrast to existing studies focusing primarily on trade or climate aspects, the article highlights the evolving regulatory role of customs authorities in the framework of European Union climate governance. The findings suggest that the CBAM is generally compatible with WTO law, provided that it is implemented in a transparent, proportionate, flexible and non-discriminatory manner. The authors conclude that the CBAM can become an important model for the future development of sustainable international economic regulation and climate-related trade governance. Full article

Much of the discourse around FinTech regulation focuses on whether legal frameworks adequately facilitate private-sector innovation. This article argues that the more consequential and underexamined question is whether enacted frameworks are operationally adequate, sufficiently coherent, specific, and institutionally supported to govern the commercial realities of a mature FinTech sector. Using Saudi Arabia as its primary case, this study applies doctrinal legal analysis and thematic document analysis across six regulatory domains: licensing and sandbox governance, data protection, cybersecurity, consumer protection, Shariah compliance, and cross-border regulatory alignment, benchmarked against standards from the United Kingdom, United States, European Union, and United Arab Emirates. These jurisdictions are treated as sources of regulatory technique rather than as demonstrations of regulatory success. The analysis finds significant implementation gaps across all six domains: formal instruments have been enacted, but the transition pathways, proportionate calibrations, inter-agency coordination, and technology-specific rules necessary for operational adequacy remain underdeveloped. Drawing on Amstad’s regulatory objectives-principles-practices taxonomy, regulatory lifecycle theory, and institutional isomorphism, this study advances six targeted reform recommendations. The study concludes that regulatory maturation in emerging FinTech markets requires a deliberate transition from instrument adoption to implementation depth, from duck typing inherited frameworks to selectively coding the genuinely new governance that algorithmic finance demands. Full article

The European Union’s REPowerEU Plan (2022) targets 10 million tonnes of renewable hydrogen imports by 2030, catalyzing an unprecedented cascade of bilateral green hydrogen partnerships with countries across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Despite the strategic and developmental significance of these partnerships, the literature has treated hydrogen largely as a techno-economic or single-country problem, leaving the diplomatic architecture and equity dimensions of EU–MENA–SSA hydrogen diplomacy under-theorized and unmeasured. This study addresses these gaps by integrating energy-security realism, regime-complex theory, and critical political ecology into a synthetic framework, and by introducing two novel empirical instruments: a hand-coded dataset of 26 in-scope bilateral hydrogen agreements (2020–2024) and a fully specified protocol for a Green Hydrogen Diplomacy Equity Index (GHD-EI). A longitudinal dyad-year panel skeleton (27 EU importers × 36 MENA/SSA exporters, 2015–2026, 11,664 dyad-year cells) has been constructed to host a planned multi-method quantitative sequence, structural gravity PPML, staggered difference-in-differences, synthetic control, exponential random graph models, and causal forests whose execution against fully populated covariates is reserved for a subsequent paper. This paper is accordingly framed as a data descriptor and specified analytical protocol, reporting descriptive and structural findings from the 26 in-scope agreements: a 2022 inflection synchronized with REPowerEU and COP27; importer-side concentration on Germany (34.6% of agreements) and EU-level framework partnerships (34.6%)—two distinct actors jointly accounting for 69.2%—and a small, statistically non-significant difference in mean partnership depth between MENA (n = 18, M = 3.22) and SSA (n = 8, M = 3.25) exporters (Welch t = −0.08, p = 0.94; Cohen’s d = −0.04). The comparison is likely under-powered (power ≈ 0.20–0.44) given the small SSA cell and reported here as a tentative pattern. At this stage, the study contributes a cross-regional agreement dataset, a fully specified equity-indicator protocol, and a theoretical framework for subsequently evaluating whether the green hydrogen transition advances just internationalism or reproduces green-extractivist patterns. Full article

Anthropogenic greenhouse gases (GHGs) and emissions from maritime transport represent a significant challenge for atmospheric monitoring and control. The Istanbul Strait, characterized by its narrow, winding geography and high traffic density, presents a unique chokepoint where these emissions directly impact local air quality. This study proposes a gas-focused integrated framework that combines Sentinel-5 Precursor (Sentinel-5P) TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) satellite observations with Automatic Identification System (AIS) data to analyze atmospheric trace pollutant time series in the Istanbul Strait during 2025. A bottom-up emission methodology based on the IMO 4th GHG Study was employed, yielding annual gaseous pollutant totals of 213,678 tons of carbon dioxide (CO₂), 5970 tons of nitrogen oxides (NO_x), and 686 tons of sulfur oxides (SO_x). Time-series and cross-correlation analyses demonstrated a quantifiable relationship between AIS-derived NO_x estimates and TROPOMI NO₂ tropospheric column densities (r = 0.76, p < 0.05, n = 12), validating the use of satellite sensors for marine atmospheric monitoring. A decision support system (DSS) proof of concept (PoC) was developed to evaluate emission control scenarios through speed optimization. The results indicate that implementing a 10% speed reduction strategy could reduce CO₂ emissions by 18% (38,462 tons) and generate net economic savings of EUR 3.07 million under the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) carbon pricing framework. Furthermore, a scenario with a 20% speed reduction resulted in a 35% decrease in CO₂ emissions. The findings underscore the potential of integrating satellite-based gas remote sensing with AIS data, thereby facilitating real-time atmospheric monitoring and strengthening emission control policy enforcement in maritime chokepoints. Full article

Digitalisation is increasingly viewed as an instrument for narrowing the VAT gap in the European Union, yet the relative relevance of voluntary business digitalisation and mandatory administrative reporting remains unclear. This study distinguishes cloud accounting from mandatory transaction reporting and analyses an unbalanced EU-27 panel for 2013–2024, with estimations limited to 2013–2023. Sequential pooled OLS, two-way fixed-effects models and robustness checks are applied to European Commission, Eurostat and World Bank data. The initially negative association between cloud accounting and the VAT gap disappears after controlling for income and government effectiveness. Mandatory digital reporting is associated with a VAT gap of about 3–4 percentage points lower, although the small number of adopters and pre-adoption trends preclude causal claims. Theoretically, first, the findings distinguish firm-level digital capability from information directly accessible to tax administrations; second, they show that technology adoption and institutional capacity must be analysed separately. Practically, first, the results support interoperable systems providing timely, structured and verifiable transaction data; second, they indicate that cloud accounting should complement, rather than replace, mandatory reporting infrastructure. Full article

This study examines the effects of the Market Stability Reserve (MSR) policy on carbon emission prices within the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS), focusing on both price levels and volatility. Employing the Synthetic Control Method (SCM), the analysis constructs a counterfactual scenario using data from Korea, New Zealand, and China—countries that have not adopted the MSR. The validity of this donor pool is verified through cointegration tests and a Vector Error Correction Model, which confirm both long-run equilibrium relationships and short-run causal interactions with the EU ETS. The empirical analysis reveals that all four MSR implementations between 2020 and 2023 significantly increased the average price of EU allowances, thereby validating the policy’s effectiveness in addressing oversupply. Additionally, MSR2 (2021) and MSR3 (2022) are found to have significantly reduced price volatility, indicating the MSR’s partial success in stabilizing market expectations. Robustness checks, including placebo tests, support the credibility of the estimated effects. The findings affirm the MSR’s role as an effective market-based instrument for enhancing price stability, sustaining investment incentives in emissions reduction, and ensuring the long-term credibility of the EU ETS. Full article

Background: Rugby union and rugby league are among the most physically demanding contact team sports, in which playing positions impose distinct physical requirements. The aim of the review was to collect and synthesize available data on positional differences in physical fitness between forwards and backs in adult male rugby players. Methods: The systematic review was conducted in accordance with PRISMA 2020 and SWiM guidelines and was prospectively registered in the OSF database (10.17605/OSF.IO/E4Y37). Four electronic databases were searched: PubMed, SPORTDiscus, Web of Science, and Scopus up to June 2026. The search identified 3058 records, which were reduced to 1343 after language and document-type limits and then screened. Eligibility criteria were applied within the PICOs framework. Methodological quality was assessed using JBI Critical Appraisal Checklists and the AXIS tool as a validation instrument. Due to considerable methodological heterogeneity, narrative synthesis with directional meta-synthesis was applied. Results: Thirty-seven studies were included (n > 2000 players; 15 countries; 1996–2025). Forwards achieved higher values of absolute muscular strength and power, body mass, and sprint momentum, whereas backs performed better in sprint tests (10–50 m), maximum sprint velocity, aerobic fitness (VO₂max, Yo-Yo IRTL1), CMJ height, and relative power. Following normalization to body mass, positional differences in strength and power were attenuated or reversed. In the only study that isolated the change in direction deficit, no clear positional difference was observed. Conclusions: Body mass appears to be the principal explanatory factor underlying positional differences in absolute strength and power. Position-specific fitness profiles are observable as early as the U20 category and become more pronounced with increasing competitive level. Strength and conditioning coaches should compare positional groups using body mass normalized ratio or, where justified, allometrically scaled measures rather than absolute values. Full article

This study deploys a scalable machine learning pipeline: combining a transformer-based classifier applied to 2.01 million English-language AI-related news headlines (July 2022–July 2024) with large-language-model and human-annotator validation (three annotators, Fleiss’ $\kappa =0.80$) on stratified subsamples, to extract six interpretable, bias-linked discourse indicators computed at the AI-domain level: evaluative orientation (valence), loss salience, narrative drift, exposure-adjusted sentiment, cross-source divergence, and novelty-phase framing. Each operationalizes an established cognitive-psychology construct as a computable property of the information environment associated with biased risk–benefit reasoning. Results show systematic variation across domains: technical and methodological areas such as deep learning and natural language processing exhibit gain-salient framing, while safety-critical topics such as deepfakes (loss-to-gain headline ratio = 3.17) and facial recognition show strongly loss-salient profiles. Cross-model validation using an LLM on a stratified sample of 1000 headlines confirms that domain-level indicator rankings are robust to classifier choice (Spearman $\rho =0.83$; $p<0.001$), establishing the rank stability of pipeline outputs independently of the specific classification architecture. As a contextual application, domain-level profiles are mapped to European Union AI governance instruments, documenting parallels between discourse patterns and regulatory risk tiers. The framework provides a scalable, reproducible methodology for monitoring evaluative conditions in technology news across domains, sources, and time. Full article

Upper Silesia, historically shaped by hard-coal mining and coal-based energy production, is undergoing a critical phase of just transition under the European Union’s 2050 climate-neutrality objective. This study examines the legal, institutional, and spatial conditions shaping this process and assesses declared social acceptance in seven mining subregions of the Silesian Voivodeship comprising 64 municipalities. The research combines structured desk research on European Union, national, and regional policy and legal instruments with a CATI survey of electricity consumers in the transformation area (N = 602). Particular attention is given to regulatory barriers affecting the revitalization and redevelopment of post-mining and post-industrial land. The document analysis reveals fragmented institutional responsibilities, weak coordination between sectoral strategies, and insufficient integration of mine-closure, revitalization, and spatial-planning regulations. The survey findings indicate that public support for the energy transition is conditional rather than unconditional. Respondents generally acknowledge the need for change; however, they expect the principal financial burden to be borne by the state budget and energy companies, while direct household financing receives only marginal support. The results also show that the survey measured self-reported familiarity with the term “energy transition” rather than objectively tested knowledge. The study contributes an integrated analytical framework linking governance, legal-regulatory constraints, post-mining land regeneration, and declared social acceptance in a coal region undergoing structural transformation. Full article

The European Union Framework Programmes constitute one of the main instruments for promoting research and innovation at a supranational scale. Although their linkages with scientific and technological output are widely recognized, empirical evidence regarding the mechanisms connecting institutional participation, innovative performance, and territorial innovation dynamics remains limited. This study investigates these relationships using data from the 27 European Union member states and indicators associated with Horizon 2020. The analysis considers three dimensions of institutional participation—funding, projects, and participating organizations—and four innovative performance indicators related to traditional and green patents. The empirical strategy combines regression models, panel data models, feedback analyses, and spatial econometric diagnostics based on Moran’s I statistics and LM tests, using a collaboration matrix derived from Horizon 2020 project networks. The results indicate that project participation and organizational involvement show more consistent associations with innovative activity than funding volumes considered in isolation. However, the panel models reveal that these associations are concentrated in structural differences between countries rather than short-term temporal variations. The feedback analyses point to a bidirectional relationship between institutional participation and innovative performance, suggesting mutually reinforcing associations between technological performance and integration into research networks over time. The results also show that the observed associations are particularly relevant for green technologies. Finally, the spatial diagnostics indicate persistent patterns of relational concentration in both innovative capabilities and collaboration networks, though without robust evidence of residual spatial dependence in the estimated models. The study contributes to the literature on innovation systems and innovation policy by suggesting that supranational programmes operate less as direct mechanisms for resource transfer and more as institutional structures for coordination, integration, and the reinforcement of previously accumulated innovative capabilities. Full article

This article examines how intensifying geoeconomic rivalry reshapes European Union (EU) economic governance through the lens of economic security. In response to the fragmentation of the global economy and the politicisation of interdependence, the EU seeks to balance openness with the need to reduce strategic vulnerabilities. The study employs a concept-driven qualitative policy analysis based on the systematic examination of EU strategic and regulatory documents, complemented by interpretative analysis and analytically oriented comparison. Applying an original analytical framework, the study links systemic geoeconomic pressures, EU policy instruments and internal political-economy dynamics to explain the emergence of EU economic security as a hybrid governance model. The findings show that EU economic security does not emerge as a coherent doctrine but as a hybrid governance model combining the promotion of competitiveness, the protection of strategic assets and the development of partnerships. This model is shaped not only by external pressures but also by distributive effects, Member State preferences and institutional constraints. The analysis further identifies key trade-offs between efficiency and resilience, openness and control, and integration and fragmentation. The article concludes that EU economic security represents a structurally conditioned balancing process reflecting the adaptation of an open economic model to the conditions of increasing geoeconomic competition. In doing so, the article also contributes to debates on sustainable economic governance by showing how the EU’s pursuit of economic security affects long-term resilience, social cohesion and the normative foundations of its open economic model. Full article