Assuring the Quality of Health Care in the European Union


Book Description

People have always travelled within Europe for work and leisure, although never before with the current intensity. Now, however, they are travelling for many other reasons, including the quest for key services such as health care. Whatever the reason for travelling, one question they ask is "If I fall ill, will the health care I receive be of a high standard?" This book examines, for the first time, the systems that have been put in place in all of the European Union's 27 Member States. The picture it paints is mixed. Some have well developed systems, setting standards based on the best available evidence, monitoring the care provided, and taking action where it falls short. Others need to overcome significant obstacles.




The European Commission, Expert Groups, and the Policy Process


Book Description

This book challenges the assumption that policy makers' work with advisory committees is emblematic of technocratic governance. Analyzing how and why the European Commission uses expert groups in the policy process, it shows that experts not only solve technical problems, but also function as political devices and negotiators in modern governance.




The Contestation of Expertise in the European Union


Book Description

This book examines the position and role of expertise in European policy-making and governance. At a time when the very notion of expertise and expert advice is increasingly losing authority, the book addresses these challenges by empirically examining specific administrative processes and institutional designs in the European Union. The first part of the volume theorizes expertise and its contestation by examining accounts of the legitimate institutional design of knowledge production processes and exploring the theoretical links of Europeanisation and expertise. The second part of the book delves into empirical institutionalist accounts of expertise and maps the role of experts in a variety of EU institutions but also explains the implications when EU bodies themselves are in an ‘expert’ position, such as agencies. The book offers insights into how individual experts deal with the challenge of producing reports that will be heard by policy-makers, while at the same time preserving their independence. Broadening its scope, the book then expands the analysis to the role of advisory committees in light of the shift from a reliance primarily on in-house expertise to including more external experts in advisory groups in the European Commission and European Parliament as well as at the European External Action. In the third part, the book opens the lens to developments beyond the EU by taking into account two highly pertinent fields: climate change and trade. These fields are highly complex, fast-developing, and politicised issues, and the book engages with them in order to provide an outside-in perspective on expertise. Chapter 6 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.




Which Policy for Europe?


Book Description

The European Commission is at the center of the European Union's political system. Within its five-year terms each Commission proposes up to 2000 binding legal acts and therefore crucially shapes EU policy, which in turn impacts on the daily lives of more than 500 million European citizens. However, despite the Commissions key role in setting the agenda for European decision making, little is known about its internal dynamics when preparing legislation. This book provides a problem-driven, theoretically-founded, and empirically rich treatment of the so far still understudied process of position-formation inside the European Commission. It reveals that various internal political positions prevail and that the role of power and conflict inside the European Commission is essential to understanding its policy proposals. Opening the 'black box' of the Commission, the book identifies three ideal types of internal position-formation. The Commission is motivated by technocratic problem-solving, by competence-seeking utility maximization or ideologically-motivated policyseeking. Specifying conditions that favor one logic over the others, the typology furthers understanding of how the EU system functions and provides novel explanations of EU policies with substantial societal implications.







The Assessment List for Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence (ALTAI)


Book Description

On the 17 of July 2020, the High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence (AI HLEG) presented their final Assessment List for Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence. Following a piloting process where over 350 stakeholders participated, an earlier prototype of the list was revised and translated into a tool to support AI developers and deployers in developing Trustworthy AI. The tool supports the actionability the key requirements outlined by the Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence (AI), presented by the High-Level Expert Group on AI (AI HLEG) presented to the European Commission, in April 2019. The Ethics Guidelines introduced the concept of Trustworthy AI, based on seven key requirements: human agency and oversight technical robustness and safety privacy and data governance transparency diversity, non-discrimination and fairness environmental and societal well-being and accountability Through the Assessment List for Trustworthy AI (ALTAI), AI principles are translated into an accessible and dynamic checklist that guides developers and deployers of AI in implementing such principles in practice. ALTAI will help to ensure that users benefit from AI without being exposed to unnecessary risks by indicating a set of concrete steps for self-assessment. Download the Assessment List for Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence (ALTAI) (.pdf) The ALTAI is also available in a web-based tool version. More on the ALTAI web-based tool: https://futurium.ec.europa.eu/en/european-ai-alliance/pages/altai-assessment-list-trustworthy-artificial-intelligence




Law, Legal Expertise and EU Policy-Making


Book Description

This edited collection examines the changing role of the legal profession as experts in the context of European Union policy-making. Drawing on theoretical and empirical research and the idea of law as a social and political practice, this socio-legal work brings together a group of legal scholars and political scientists to investigate how lawyers, through the deployment of their expertise and knowledge, act as experts in matters of EU related policy-making at the national, European and international levels. It provides new theoretical viewpoints and untold stories from legal experts themselves, promotes an evolving definition of what constitutes legal expertise and what shapes legal experts in a time when experts are in equal measure both revered and ignored, and introduces new critical voices in the field of EU socio-legal studies.




The European Commission of the Twenty-First Century


Book Description

Co-authored by an international team of researchers and drawing on interviews with senior officials, The European Commission of the Twenty-First Century tests, challenges and refutes many widely held myths about the Commission and the people who work for it.




Science Education Now


Book Description

Recoge: 1. Background analysis - 2. Mandate-work carried out - 3. Findings - 4. Recommendations - 5. Conclusion - 6. Appendices.




Insiders Versus Outsiders


Book Description

What explains differences in the lobbying behaviour of interest groups? And what consequences do these differences have for the access that interest groups can gain to decision-makers and the influence that they can exert on policy outcomes? Building on an unprecedented amount of empirical evidence on lobbying in Europe, this book puts forward a distinction between lobbying insiders and lobbying outsiders. Lobbying insiders, most prominently business interests, try to establish direct contacts with decision-makers, enjoy good access to executive institutions, and manage to shape policy outcomes when mobilizing the public on an issue is difficult. Lobbying outsiders, in particular citizen groups such as consumer, environmental or health non-governmental organizations, put greater emphasis on mobilizing the public or changing public attitudes, find it easier to gain access to legislative decision-makers, and have the greatest impact on outcomes on issues that are amenable to an outside lobbying campaign. The book shows that a single argument, building on group type as the main variable, can explain variation across interest groups in their choice of strategy, their access to decision-makers, and the conditions under which they can exert influence. The existence of lobbying insiders and lobbying outsiders has important implications for both our understanding of political decision-making and the normative appraisal of contemporary democracy.