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Chitosan (Ch), a natural polysaccharide, is known for its biocompatibility, biodegradability, and various beneficial properties, including antioxidant and antibacterial activities. The objective of this study is to investigate the functionalization of zinc oxide (ZnO) with chitosan to develop a novel ZnO@Ch adduct for use in cosmetic formulations, specifically as a sun protection agent. The functionalization was achieved through ionotropic gelation, which enhanced the stability and reduced the photocatalytic activity of ZnO, thereby improving its safety profile for skin applications. FTIR spectroscopy confirmed the successful functionalization, while TGA and DSC characterized the thermal properties and stability. The Zeta potential and particle size analyses demonstrated improved stability of ZnO@Ch across various pH levels compared to uncoated ZnO. The structure of the obtained adduct was also confirmed by SEM analysis. The ZnO@Ch adduct exhibited enhanced stability at neutral and slightly alkaline pH values, reduced photocatalytic activity compared to pure ZnO, and had lower cytotoxicity in 3T3 cells compared to pure ZnO, particularly at higher concentrations. The ZnO@Ch adduct provided a higher Sun Protection Factor (SPF) and UVA Protection Factor (UVA-PF) than pure ZnO, indicating enhanced UV protection. The adduct's ability to provide higher SPF at lower ZnO concentrations offers economic and environmental benefits, aligning with sustainable product design principles. Future studies will focus on optimizing the formulation and testing the efficacy and safety at higher concentrations to fully realize its potential as a natural, eco-friendly sunscreen ingredient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2016, the EU has widely been considered to be in a state of 'polycrisis', where simultaneous, mutually reinforcing challenges threaten the Union's cohesion and legitimacy. Such polycrises may fracture Europe's political space, creating cross-cutting 'polycleavages' that polarise member states and their citizens asymmetrically, thereby constraining the EU's capacity to forge effective compromises on key policy issues. In so doing, they exacerbate the risk of the EU's falling into a multi-level 'politics trap', where negative politicisation of European issues inhibits national leaders from agreeing ambitious solutions in intergovernmental negotiations, while the ensuing deadlock in turn saps the Union's output-based legitimacy and fuels a Eurosceptic 'constraining dissensus'. In this introductory article, we develop an analytical framework elaborating the concepts of polycrises, polycleavages, and politics traps, which we then use to present and interpret the main findings of the contributions to this collection, focused on the Covid-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The most important takeaway from the contributions to this collection is that – consistent with our framework – the EU has clearly proved more resilient to the potential negative consequences of politicisation than many commentators had expected at the beginning of this long polycrisis decade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do crises bring us closer together? Many have observed how, during the Covid-19 pandemic, several European societies experienced a 'rally around the flag' effect. While this certainly took the form of support for incumbent governments, anecdotal evidence suggests that individuals' European identification may have been affected as well. In this paper, we exploit the unique timing and panel nature of a survey, whose respondents were interviewed in March/beginning of April 2020, again in July 2020, and finally in November 2022 to analyze whether a change in attachment to Europe occurred between the first and the second wave of the pandemic and with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Our results show that the emotive dimension of EU attachment changed over the course of these crises, increasing both during the Covid pandemic and after the invasion of Ukraine. Our results support the view that symmetric crises tend to bring people closer together, suggesting that far-reaching EU-level actions in case of crises create, rather than require, a perception of belonging to an EU-level community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

European fiscal integration is highly controversial and is assumed to lead to a Eurosceptic backlash among the public. Yet, in a historical decision in July 2020, European governments agreed on the ambitious recovery package 'Next Generation EU', establishing an unprecedented fiscal stabilisation capacity to address the economic and healthcare challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. We study the mass politics of European fiscal integration in a survey experiment on public support for a European Pandemic Recovery Fund (PRF) in five European countries in 2020. We find remarkably high support for a joint European fiscal instrument, which, however, is sensitive to policy design. While cross-country differences reflect collective self-interest, citizens' left-right orientations, their EU positions, and perceived economic risk from COVID-19 structure differences within countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is not only the states of the European Union (EU) that are heterogeneous in many respects, but also the regions existing within them. In this paper, we make use of a conjoint experiment on a particular type of technocratic solidarity – joint procurement of medical countermeasures (JPMC) – to explore how old and new regional-level heterogeneities affect public support for such type of solidarity. To this end, we exploit an experimental dataset, covering five EU countries at different phases of the Covid-19 pandemic in spring 2020. Our experimental results show that a broad policy scope, allocation based on need and EU governance all raise support for JPMC. Moreover, economically weaker regions and areas more severely hit by the pandemic exhibit stronger public backing for JPMC. Turning to the link between regional heterogeneities and specific design features of JPMC, evidence suggests that wealthier regions display greater public backing for a broader scope of the policy. Thus, our results suggest that public preferences for technocratic solidarity are generally strong, but also depend to some extent on regional collective rationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Criticism of European solidarity relies on three cornerstone arguments with mythological features. First is the “Myth of the Beggar”: it is believed that supranational solidarity is self-defeating, as it produces a moral-hazard scheme where endogenous incentives to reform (otherwise known as “market pressure”) are artificially removed. Second stands the “Myth of the Efficient Markets”: it is believed that solidarity, through its market-distortive effects, artificially allocates resources into less productive activities, thus decreasing the overall growth rate of the economy. Third is the “Myth of the Demos”: it is believed that democracy- and thus redistribution- can endure only within a single Demos, and thus no solidarity can exist outside of a Demos. This paper aims to challenge the view that any scheme of solidarity is self-defeating, inefficient and illegitimate, developing a notion of “federative solidarity” providing a solution to the three “myths”.