"I am here in a country that hardly resembles the rest of Europe," said the French philosopher Montesquieu in 1729. Europe, then known as the 'old continent', was an aggregate of great powers, which had no interest in any sort of unification. Nearly three centuries later, new na...

1 Introduction In the last decades the environmental status of our earth has been in the news frequently. The greenhouse impact, the depletion of natural resources, the diminishing biodiversity and the unprecedented rate of species extinction all point out that the status is not as healthy as it sh...

The eastward EU enlargement: effects, expectations and dangers Since May 1, 2004, ten countries in the Central and Eastern European region join the EU as new member states. Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovak Republic and Slovenia comprise these ten ...