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Diploma thesis " Democratic deficit of the EU: options of evolvement" deals with democracy and democratic legitimacy of the European Union. It represents a particular concept of the EU's democratic deficit, which is ambiguous term, but generally indicates a lack of democracy- particularly the lack of popular participation in the governance or a lack of democratic legitimacy of EU institutions and decision-making. The aim of my work was, according to the hypotheses to determine what is causing the EU's democratic deficit, whether it is a serious problem that should be addressed at European level, and if so, what are the possibilities for minimizing or further evolvement. To explore this issue further, I examine the theory of democratic legitimacy in the introduction and divide it into the "input and output" legitimacy. Subsequently, I also introduced methodology and the current debate on democratic deficit in the leading periodicals, dealing with the EU and think tanks. The second part deals with the history of the democratic deficit and its various definitions, follows with a presentation of my two hypotheses dealing with the question whether or not the EU's democratic deficit is a problem. In the third part, my two hypotheses are tested on the project of the Single European Sky, which aims to...

Diploma thesis " EU Energy Policy - Theory and Practice" deals with the major issues facing the European energy policy: the liberalisation of energy markets, security of supply and combating the climate change. After a short description of the history of this policy comes the explanation why the energy issues have become so important for the EU in recent years (oil thirst of the emerging markets, rise of Putin's Russia, climate change). The next chapter focuses on EU's response to these challenges, focusing on Barroso's Commision agenda. Apart from this, there is an analysis of major stakeholders' reactions concerning the recent legislation (Energy packages). However, the main part of the thesis tries to point at the discrepancies between the "official" policy as pronounced at the EU summits and the actual state of things. Major lagging behind can be found in areas such as the extent to which the external energy policy is successful (relations with Russia), the questionable impacts of subsidising biofuels or the slow implementation of energy market directives.

The diploma thesis "Comparison of the Battlegroup and the NATO Response Force in the new security environment" describes the political and military environment after the Cold War on the background of regional organizations EU and NATO and their responses on the new threats. In the theoretical part it introduces the new security environment with all its actors and threats and it comes to the answer of the organizations on this situation which is the rapid response forces. The second part consists of the comparison of these forces in the empirical research. The main goal is to confirm if the forces of EU and NATO, as the same answers on the same threats, are identical

This master thesis analyses factors determining success of civil society organisations lobbying for the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights. The research focuses on the reform of the instrument between 2006 and 2007 which took place within the overall reform of EU's external action instruments. The EIDHR is delivered mainly through civil society and is thus an important source of funding for civil society organisations. Additionally, due to the central position of NGOs in the instrument's delivery, their input is crucial for ensuring strategic quality of the instrument. In order to exert influence, the organisations have to penetrate the complex decision-making system. This thesis scrutinises their strategies as well as analyses the institutional framework and its impact on the civil society organisations. The research builds on several complementary theoretical approaches including theory of lobbying, political opportunity structures or new institutionalism. Using the process-tracing method, this thesis analyses causal mechanisms linking interests of civil society groups and changes in the EIDHR programming documents. In order to test the hypotheses it looks into three sub-cases studies focusing on three different areas of EIDHR: democracy promotion, peacebuilding and human rights defenders.

The theme of this thesis is the EU energy policy with emphasis on nuclear energy. The goal is primarily to introduce an energy policy, its priorities and the current situation, because this issue is important for the European Union status and high priority for the future. There are also introduced different sources of energy - fossil fuels, renewable sources and nuclear energy, which is described in detail. Evaluation of safety of nuclear energy, its advantages and disadvantages and opinion of important positions of the European Union to this source of energy or environmental impact is a basis for finding answers to the question that follows from the title of the paper. Nuclear energy can be considered reliable and environmentally friendly source of energy. Fear of nuclear accidents is nowadays already unfounded and if there are respected all safety measures and controlled both equipment and human factors, the risk of accidents in nuclear power plant is minimal and nuclear energy can find more supporters. Nuclear energy can help the EU solve many problems in the energy field, whether it be environmental protection, energy security and reducing dependence on energy imports.

Closer relations between EU and NATO have been desired for a long time. Inspite of the fact that European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP, created in 1998) was not meant to be a rival to NATO, the reality has been different. ESDP had its opponents, especially the USA, that were convinced that ESDP would weaken NATO. Turkey has also become "an obstacle", especially after the accession of the southern part of divided Cyprus into the EU in 2004. Turkey's counterpart has been France seeing ESDP and NATO as a "zero-sum game". However, some kind of limited cooperation has been achieved. The possible impuls for a change could be the reintegration of France into the NATO military structure. The main thesis is that the French reintegration into the NATO military structure might result in a new beginning of closer EU - NATO relations. In order to confirm or falsify this thesis, the study shall focus on empirical analyses of the changed context in relations between European Union and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation after the French reintegration into the NATO military strucutre. The element of comparison between France and the Unighted Kingdom shall therefore be used for them being the main European security actors. Their attitudes shall be examined with regards to the possible influence of the change on the two...

This essay deals with analysis of the phenomenon of EU's police missions as an integral part of civilian crisis management within European Security and Defense Policy. It outlined the development and evaluation of EU's operational civilian capabilities. The focus of the work is an analysis and comparison of selected police missions in terms of conditions that the EU can not influence to such an extent and that still deeply affect the course of implementation of the mission. The study also deals with the evaluation of concrete operations in terms of successful fulfillment of their mandates. Our research question relates to the external conditions of a total of five realized EU's police missions. Our presumption is the claim that socio-economic context of a country deeply influence the course of EU's action and therefore has an impact on the fulfillment of the mandate of police missions. Considerations to what extent is EU itself responsible for the success or failure of each mission and how external factors affect the mission objectives led us to the choice of topic.

Univerzita Karlova, Fakulta sociálních věd / Smetanovo nábřeží 6, 110 01 Praha 1 info@fsv.cuni.cz, tel: 222 112 111 www.fsv.cuni.cz Dle čl. 4 Opatření rektora č. 6/2010 o Zpřístupnění elektronické databáze závěrečných prací http://www.cuni.cz/UK-3470.html a čl. 1 Opatření děkana 29/2010 se z časového hlediska závěrečné práce dělí do tří skupin: a. "nové práce", tj. práce odevzdávané k obhajobě počínaje 29. 9. 2010, b. "starší práce", tj. práce odevzdané k obhajobě od 1. 1. 2006 do 28. 9. 2010, c. "práce před rokem 2006", tj. práce odevzdané k obhajobě před 1. 1. 2006. V tomto případě jde o "starší práci" odevzdanou k obhajobě od 1. 1. 2006 do 28. 9. 2010. Omlouváme se, ale dokument není v elektronické verzi k dispozici.

The thesis deals with the role of the European Union in conflict prevention and crisis management. The main objective of this thesis is to analyze the reasons why the EU plans for conflict prevention and resolution do not match with the reality. The thesis works with the hypothesis that the EU is more active in adoption of strategies and programs for conflict prevention and crisis management than in its implementation. The first part of the thesis provides an analysis of the ambitious goals in conflict prevention and resolution in Africa the EU has set and the limits in its implementation. It addresses the background of the development of the EU foreign politics concerning Africa and the way these politics are created. The implementation of this politics is analyzed on the case study of the crisis in Darfur. The second part of the thesis shows the results of the EU assistance to the crisis. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

RÉSUMÉ (ABSTRACT) 1. Judicial cooperation in civil matters is an important area of the European integration that reflects the necessity to provide cross-border private law relations within the EU with legal certainty and judicial protection. This cooperation solves in an efficient way problems that would otherwise result from the differences between the private law systems of the individual Member States and from the independence and territorial limitation of their judicial systems. Its solution consists in the unification and harmonization in the field of the international private law. This method enables to these difficulties to be solved without the necessity o f a deeper interference with the private law systems of the Member States. Currently the area covers an essential part of the subject of the international private law, namely all its key areas - international jurisdiction, recognition and enforcement offoreign judicial decisions, determination of applicable law and legal aid among the courts throughout the Union. A bigger uncovered space is left in the field of applicable law, but there already exist new projects. Altogether, this area seems to be an organic functional complex, which bridges the territorial limits of the nationaljudicial systems. 2. This area is a very dynamic one. The European...

With the end of the Cold War there was a widely shared view amongst scholars in Europe as well as in the USA to the effect that the victory of western style democracies was overwhelming and lasting. However, developments in the Balkan region in the last decade of the twentieth century tragically showed the significance of such an illusion. The question of capabilities came on the scene with the NATO bombing of Serbia in the Kosovo conflict. Over ninety-five percent of the bombs fired were from planes of the Unites States.1Once again Europeans were unable to deal with conflicts on their territory. This time it was even worse. The European Union was depicted as not only a political but also a military dwarf. The launching of the European Security and Defence Policy project in 1998 was a step towards independent European forces being able to cope with low-intensity conflicts without the help of the US. But European soldiers need weapons which are designed to combat the military challenges of the 21st century. This is hard to achieve in a situation where almost all European defence budgets are steadily decreasing. It is clear that European taxpayers are simply not prepared to pay the costs of their security. At this point, defence ministers had to count with less support which required more effective use of...

European Union participates recently in a great number of global affairs and its presence could be felt in many spheres of political and business life. It is thus often referred to as a global actor or global power, and its influence is widely praised. The goal of this paper is to determine, if the European Union in its current state really constitutes a global actor. This fact is examined in theoretical as well as in practical circumstances. This paper further aims to establish, whether this position is constant, or develops in time. As the European Union is neither a state, nor an international organisation, it is firstly set within the framework of the predominant international relations theories. Having taken this enlistment into consideration, it is then established, what kind of unit it actually is in the international system, and if it is hence in fact possible that such an entity could be a global actor. Subsequently, the leading actorness theories are applied to establish what kind of actorness it could perform. In the end of this part, it is assessed what kind of role the European Union actually plays in the theoretical field. Consequently, this allegation is examined in the practical terms. On the basis of facts, examples and actual events, it is thus evaluated, if the practical actions of the...

This thesis is dedicated to answer a question: How does the legislative and institutional answer of the EU on a challenge of new "superterrorism" look and are they different from traditional answers on "national terrorism"? The major problem of European anti-terrorism policy is the fact, that it is a relatively new issue. Efforts to organise on basis of existing integration a common coordinating policy in the 1970's and 1980's were only minor and unimportant. The impulse created in Maastricht Treaty on European union by establishing a pillar structure of the EU was important due to development of the third Pillar dedicated to Justice and Home affairs (JHA). Intergovernmental nature of this pillar has reduced possibilities of the central institutions to influence creation of the new policies. However, a new agency - EUROPOL. European police agency was to be established thanks to the Treaty. Combat with terrorism was only one of many targets of the newly created JHA policies throughout 1990's. Action Plan on JHA from Tampere (1999) focused primarily on migration issues. The EU is focusing on a multi- forged strategy to deal with terrorism. In comparison to example of the USA is the main focus of the E U laid on internal policies. The EU position can be described as responsive - although the latest development...

This paper deals with the issue of environmental policy within the European Union and the status it has been gaining since the early 1990s when the 5th environmental action programme was put in practice up until the end of the year 2005. The paper tries to show how the policy has been evolving over that period, how it has been gaining more and more significance being incorporated gradually into all other European policies within the process of environmental integration. It presents the amount and quality of information one can currently get on the state of the environment that we live in. The point of the paper is to demonstrate that even though the revision of the Lisabon strategy put the environmental policy one step back, it did not actually change the succesfull process of its development that was already started in the early 1990s.

EU AND THE KYOTO PROTOCOL: EU climate policy in the context of world-wide activities This thesis discusses the role of the European Union in the process of international negotiations on the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework convention on Climate Change, which sets the targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the ratifying countries. With these negotiations the world-wide climate policy was launched. The EU introduced itself as the world leader on the field of promoting high targets and a maximum range of domestic actions. In the international negotiation process, which was in run since 1992, EU had to urge other major emitters of greenhouse gases, above all the United States and Russia, on ratifying the Kyoto protocol. After the US had declined the Protocol, the EU put a great effort in bringing Russia to ratification of the Protocol so that it could enter into force. The EU was also the main initiator of further discussions on climate change strategy in the post-Kyoto period since 2012. As the process of the Protocol's ratification took almost six years, the EU has started its own climate policy with the aim of fulfilling its Kyoto targets. The examination of the EU climate policy domestic actions is the second and the main target of this thesis. In the conclusion I have discussed the...