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The European Court of Auditors has published its annual reports on the EU budget for 2020. No significant errors were found in the financial statements of the agencies, joint undertakings, and European schools. Special reports on various topics such as electric vehicle charging infrastructure, passenger rights in air travel, and gender mainstreaming were also published. The Court of Auditors has made progress in implementing its new strategy for 2021-2025 and has developed an action plan to combat fraud. The work program for 2022 and beyond focuses on responding to the Covid-19 pandemic, increasing economic competitiveness, and ensuring the security of the EU. The Court of Auditors recommends that the Commission take measures to improve control and auditing of expenditures. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses various presentations made at a conference on the postwar consensus and revolution in Germany in the 20th century. Topics discussed at the conference included competition among corporations, which depended on the welfare of male industrial workers; the role of corporatism and cartels that restricted competition in Germany; and development of the welfare state in Germany since the 1970s.

University rankings are an important source of information for those interested in academic education, personnel managers and Third-Party donors in order to be able to compare easily the performance of universities. Such rankings increasingly represent an important means of observing the achieving of targets in efficiency and effectiveness, compared with other universities. It is important for libraries to be able to correctly assess their role in such rankings and to know with which indicators the performance of libraries is measured in university rankings. Based on these findings, target systems and budget negotiations can be optimised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The still-open question if and how public competition of libraries is possible and makes sense shall be separated from the discussion about the lacking acceptance of the library index. The differentiation between functional and competition-orientated benchmarking recommends for both systems different tools which are methodically improperly connected in BIX. The question whether it is possible at all to generally assess library performance using indices is also critically examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of the control model of New Public Management, universities increasingly take over organisational action, controlling their development and therefore being in need of suitable instruments. In this field, much is expected of performance competition, and the partly wide distribution of comparative methods seems to prove its effectiveness. This article examines the strengths and weaknesses of several instruments regarding their supporting of control action at universities, and compares them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the future of digitized learning materials at German libraries. The digitization of books and other resources by libraries is described, the advantages of electronic textbooks and study materials for students and teachers are listed, and competition between textbook publishing companies is analyzed. Information is offered on the interactive aspect of digitized learning materials.

To some superiors in library management, relationship-oriented personnel management may pose no great challenge. Thus it comes as no surprise that in literature on library management leadership issues are often discussed at a task-related level. However, it is the non-task-oriented leadership issues that are particularly challenging. Those who believe they can promote their employees' further development without first understanding the civil service culture are often astonished at how varied the defence mechanisms can be. In that case employees often start to speak of demotivation and decreased efficiency. And anyone who believes they can carry out far-reaching changes and go ahead with organisational development without taking the rules of the civil service into consideration will be taken aback by the tenacity of the most persistent of employees who, for example, stubbornly stick to tradition. How does the civil service work and how can personnel management succeed in a monopolistic administrative culture characterized by a lack of competition? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a commentary on several articles, also published in this issue of the journal, about socioeconomic aspects of Jewish-Christian relations in Europe in the late Middle Ages and the early modern period. The author highlights the themes of Christian-Jewish competition and cooperation in the context of economic crises and famines, anti-Jewish propaganda and antisemitic stereotypes, and the role of Jews in the history of state formation in Europe. Brief, more general comments on the historiography of economic history are also offered.

The article reports on a conference on relations between Germany and Portugal, held in Lisbon, Portugal, from January 24-25, 2013. Topics of discussion included the European Economic and Monetary Union and the Eurozone crisis, international economic competitiveness, and the role of the two countries in the process of European integration.

French European policy has undergone a turning point since François Hollande has been elected the French president in May 2012. A European growth strategy is to ease and complement budgetary consolidation. Considering the public opinion and the fragile domestic power base, the article analyses the European policy leadership of this new executive, and its positioning and choices of strategy, particularly in terms of overcoming the Euro crisis. Leadership differences between France and Germany have increased, and Hollande tries to establish French assertiveness regarding European policies by narrowing the bilateral relations to Italy and Spain. A consistent French leadership in Europe and prolific French-German relations will be dependent on the successful reconstruction of economic competitiveness and fiscal sustainability of the French government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the legal developments contained in the Mercosur and the Andean Community of Nations CAN towards the creation of a South American Common Market SCM; the Mercosur law and Andean law, and the jurisdiction to the guarantee of the establishment of the Common Market. In this paper SCM means the two independent integration processes in South America i.e., Mercosur and CAN. Although within these organizations there are significant advances in the regulation for the construction of a common market, they are not sufficient to be able to speak of the existence of a Common Market. The article deals with the perspectives for an SCM with the adoption of the Treaty of Unasur. Finally, one takes the European Common Market as a comparative model for South American integration. In this sense, the analysis addresses the Common Market, the Common Fundamental Freedoms and the relationship between the Common Market and European Union law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sovereign debt crisis has made it clear that the economic coordination within the Eurozone is insufficient. While there are a wide range suggestions about how coordination could be improved at the European level, the reality of what is actually happening reveals a different picture. The economic and political elite of the European Union resemble a "dictatorship of creditors" in which economic competitiveness has become the key theme. This article challenges the current indicators used to assess competitiveness and poses the question of whether it is not actually the instability of the financial markets that is the Eurozone's real problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the relevance of a regional approach to explain electricity market integration in the EU. It describes obstacles to market integration and argues that 'regional integration' has helped to overcome these obstacles and is a guiding principle of EU Energy Policy with regard to creating the Single European Electricity Market. The paper identifies a strategic shift in EU energy policy towards the promotion of regional electricity markets. Overall, the analysis reveals that both formal EU policy instruments and initiatives triggered by informal sectoral governance networks stimulate regional integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the rapid development of the internet and the superior competition of Google and Wikipedia it is more and more important for libraries to be comprehensively part of the Net. In doing so it isn't enough to simply provide opening hours and an OPAC access on their own homepage. In fact, library services need to be transferred into the digital world as completely as possible. One approach is the virtual reading room, which concentrates a multitude of Information and provides a place of communication. It presents a three-dimensional platform, that can be accessed at home and that maintains most of the functions of the real reading room. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While Europe is commiting itself to operating its railway network more freely, the United States have been living since the beginning under competition in that branch. This situation brought about the development of hard working conditions for its employees at first. Yet, since the companies were compelled to operate on a high security level as well as to imperiously allow anybody to have access to this service, they were quickly subdued to stringent control restricting the way they were working and granting social advantages far beyond the rights of the employment law to their railroadmen. This set of rules was implemented by a specific federal organisation, the "Interstate Commerce Organisation", as well as by a special law, the "Railway Labor Act", building a tight frame when industrial disputes break out in that branch. The "Staggers Act", if loosening these rules, didn't aim at questioning them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the market for higher education the competitiveness and the strong position of British and Amercian universities seem to be superior to German universities. Which challenges German universities are accepting or picking up to little for improving their position on the national and international market place ? From the background of the increasing of costs the question has to be refered also to libraries, computer- and media-centers of German universities, because their ability to improve the conditions for learning and teaching is becoming more and more doubted. The Information-, Communication- and Media Center (IKMZ/ICMC) of the Brandenburg Technical University of Cottbus (BTU Cottbus) is given as an example to relieve the departments with integrated services for education and research substantially and to get the acceptance of the university stakeholders with better success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The report offers an overview and a preliminary estimate about developments in the field of electronic publishing. It presents initiatives and enterprises, which can be distinguished in four fields of action: „new business model", „self-organisation of the sciences", „new forms of cooperation" and „cost reduction through competition". Additionally new forms of peer review in the process of scientific communication are described. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the court case OVG NRW, ruling v. 11/21/2018 - 15 A 861/17, n.rkr. wherein statutory health insurance of defendants, discount agreement and pharmaceutical manufacturers. Topics include demand of pharmacists, prerequisites for entitlement and exclusive commercial knowledge available to the market competition.

The article reports on the conference of the Österreichischen Gesellschaft für Dokumentation und Information (ÖGDI), an Austrian documentation society, on May 19, 2011 in Vienna, Austria. The conference addressed issues such as the approach of competition, the future of the information and documentation sector, and job opportunities for new talent.