Oxford currently finds itself in the process of an upheaval, provoked by the need to respond to the inroads made by globalising forces, which require all British universities to take on some of the characteristics of business organisations. Its distinguished academic reputation can no longer be entrusted to word of mouth, but instead the university must compete with other similar institutions through advertising and an energetic policy of rebranding. The principal communicative genre involved in this rebranding is the website, and this article explores the semiotic construction of webpages relating to Oxford’s ‘international mission’ in which, it is suggested, a covert attempt to attract foreign students is presented in the guise of a text whose ostensible purpose is to provide information.

Based on two studies carried out in the school years 2003/2004 and 2016/2017, this article looks into what knowledge and research experience young Poles have concerning education and the social participation of Polish youngsters. Referring to Robert Havighurst’s concept of developmental tasks and Jerzy Modrzewski’s concept of social participation, the author of the current paper shows Polish youth to be deficient in knowledge of how to fulfil life’s tasks and participate in society, and of the duties of education in the field of shaping and activating social and public engagement. These deficiencies show that the Polish school system is dominated by education detached from practice and that learners are not prepared for undertaking adult social roles through active participation in public life. This lack results from a process of legitimizing, which ensures ‘the loyalty of the masses’ and perpetuates existing cultural patterns without co-participation in social or public life. The ensuing analysis provides educators with knowledge of the developmental needs of Polish youth, makes the numerous determinants of developmental tasks more transparent, and allows for specifying the results of socialization processes (including educational socialization).

Along with the rapid development and proliferation of autonomous robotic weapons, machines are beginning to replace people on battlefields. The use by the USA of Predators or Reapers and other unmanned aerial vehicles in Afghanistan, Pakistan and other places in the world clearly signals a distancing of soldiers from their targets. In this article I concentrate on fully autonomous weapons. The theses of the article are as follows: the use of autonomous weapons would be contrary to the basic and fundamental principles of international humanitarian law, such as the principles of distinction and proportionality, and thus illegal. As such, their use would threaten the wellbeing, life and health of civilians and civilian populations. Their use would undermine the whole concept of the rules of war. Still, there are scholars who are of the opinion that prohibiting the use of autonomous weapons would make no sense at all and that the development of such weapons is inevitable and will take place gradually. Their use would be an expression of the technological dimension of international security. As this article will attempt to demonstrate, the drawbacks of the use of autonomous weapons are of such magnitude that they exclude the legality of such devices.

The murder of Johann Joachim Winckelmann, for many the ‘founder of archaeology’, in 1768 in a Trieste inn, did not mean the end for his work, which could be said to have been the key to understanding ancient Greece, which Europe was re-discovering at the time. In the late Enlightenment, Neoclassicism, followed by Romanticism, elevated classical, Hellenistic and Roman antiquity, and archaeological research, to the centre of academic quests, while the inclusion of archaeological sites in the era’s Grand Tours fed into a belief in the ‘Regeneration’/‘Wiedergeburt’ of Greece. The Modern Greek Enlightenment flourished during this same period, the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, with a concomitant classicizing turn. Ancient Greek texts were republished by Greek scholars, especially in the European centres of the Greek diaspora. An admiration for antiquity was intertwined into the Neohellenic national identity, and the first rulers of the free Greek State undertook to take care of the nation’s archaeological monuments. In 1837, under ‘Bavarian rule’, the first Greek University and the ‘Archaeological Society of Greece in Athens’ were set up. Archaeologists flocked to Greece and those parts of the ancient Greek world that were still part of the Ottoman Empire. The showcasing of classical monuments, at the expense of the Byzantine past, would remain the rule until the latter half of the nineteenth century. Modern Greek national identity was primarily underpinned by admiration for antiquity, which was viewed as a source of modern Hellenism, and for ‘enlightened, savant, good-governed Europe’. Today, the ‘new archaeology’ is striving to call these foundations into question.

The transition from secondary education to tertiary education is challenging in Finland. Some of the key challenges are related to the competition rates in upper secondary education, gap years, low motivation towards STEM fields and a highly selective admission system to tertiary education; many opt out of STEM fields. In the current article, I approach these challenges in the context of expectancy-value-cost theory taking both a variable and person-oriented approach. Taking a variable-oriented approach we have identified that students’ interest in STEM subjects decreases during secondary education. Taking a person-oriented approach, we can identify three different subgroups. The person-oriented approach reveals that 50% of the students show a decreasing interest in all subjects during secondary education. Additionally, we can identify two gendered pathways. One trajectory is more typical among males; for this group the interest in mathematics increases during secondary education. The other trajectory is more typical for females; with them, interest in mathematics decreases during secondary education while at the same time their interest in languages increases. When these groups are followed later on we can identify that those in the group in which interest in mathematics increases are more likely to pursue studies and to find employment in STEM fields compared with those in the group in which interest towards languages increased. In addition, we could identify four gendered motivational orientations towards work and education after the transition from secondary education: those interested in income (more males), those looking for future prospects, those combining work and family (more females), and those interested in society (more females). Recently, we have developed an intervention programme to promote interest and pathways towards STEM, which I will present as a way to bridge the transition from secondary to further education in STEM.

This article explores the integration of the European Union (EU) as an institution after the 2015–2016 migrant crisis. Qualitative data from elite interviews in Brussels and policy analysis, in the framework of a bigger project about the impact of the migrant crisis on European integration, highlight EU learning about new integration modes as a key theme following the crisis. The article focuses on this theme and argues that EU integration has been happening through intensive learning after the migrant crisis, whereby the EU has been exploring a combination of certain integration modes: shaping the relationships with candidate countries by restraining from enlargement; shaping the relationships with (prospectively) exiting Member States by considering fuzziness at the borders; and exploring differentiation among the existing Member States, possibly through promoting a two-tier EU, instead of universal deepening. A key contribution lies in applying the notion ‘learning’ to understanding EU integration modes specifically after the migrant crisis.

This article, the second of two, continues an analysis of the developments which led to the Gezi Uprisings that, starting at the end of May 2013, spread to almost all of Turkey in the following months. The uprisings are seen as massive popular reactions, embracing almost all anti-Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) strata in Turkey, to the AKP’s authoritarianism, its anti-secular, anti-republican and anti-democratic discourse and policies, and its attempts to intervene in private life. The article likens the protests to a sort of firedamp explosion and argues that the explosives had been produced by the AKP government itself. The article also briefly presents the developments which have taken place since 2013 up to July 2019 and implies that the possibility of a real decline of the AKP governmental power can be seen in its problematic relation with the Kurdish masses, with the extreme right-MHP, and with the rise of the CHP, a sign of which was seen in the local elections held in March and June 2019.

The concept of a creative class was introduced by Richard Florida in 2002 in his book The Rise of the Creative Class. The creative class consists of people involved in occupations recognised as inventive. This study is designed to identify capacities for the development of creative capital in the counties of Lithuania. Florida’s methodology for his creative model refers to the three powers of talent, technology and tolerance, which are determinants of development. The present assessment is based on generally available data acquired from the Statistical Yearbook of Lithuania. It takes into account information related to all the counties of the Republic of Lithuania. The accumulated data described are, at a relative level, the areas of talent, tolerance, technology and cultural amenities.

This article was inspired by Atkinson and Brandolini’s work on the economic middle classes and deals with the evolution of the income share of the middle class compared with that of the extreme classes in the EU-15 (the EU’s first 15 member states) over the last two decades. Our research draws on the paradox of the EU officially assuming dominant ideas about rising inequalities and the squeezing of middle-class income produced by globalization and technological change while at the same time producing and disseminating empirical evidence contrary to this view. We first synthesize this evidence, also contributing some additional analyses of Eurostat data, confirming that the income share of the middle class has not changed in the past two decades, as could be expected from the invariance in income inequality. We finally put forward some considerations about the theoretical implications of these empirical results and the interaction between ideas and empirical evidence in political societies and organizations.

Our rapidly changing society needs highly-qualified STEM professionals (experts in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) to develop solutions to the problems it is facing. Many of the students who graduate from a STEM programme in secondary education, however, opt out of STEM when enrolling in higher education, often due to a loss of interest. To ensure sufficiently high and qualified enrolment in higher STEM education, we need to bridge this gap between secondary and higher STEM education by showing our youngsters the relevance of science and technology to their personal life and environment. To this end, the project STEM@school promoted and studied the idea of integrated STEM in secondary education in Flanders, Belgium. In integrated STEM education, learning contents from the separate STEM courses are linked in an authentic way, as they often are in our environmental challenges. This approach encourages students as well as their teachers to acquire a robust understanding of STEM concepts, and a creative, inquisitive, and collaborative mindset. For the design of integrated STEM curricula, STEM@school united secondary-school STEM teachers and university researchers. This article elaborates on the principles, opportunities and challenges of the design and implementation of these curricula and discusses their promising effects on students’ conceptual understanding and attitudes towards STEM subjects. The article concludes with tips and tricks to get started with integrated STEM education in secondary schools.

Public authorities in Europe are faced with increasing demands to accommodate religious diversity. This article traces some key issues concerning the limits of the secular State in Europe to accept and accommodate those ethno-religious minorities that are perceived to be partially different entities and claim some jurisdiction, without thereby rejecting guarantees from the receiving legal system. This multicultural challenge that minorities pose to institutionalized secularism is amongst the most complex political and long-term issues European states have to face. Such a challenge has not only to do with socio-economic disadvantage and discrimination in the labour markets but also with the constitutional status or corporate relationship with the State. On the other hand, European anxieties question whether or not Muslims can be and are willing to be integrated into European society and its political values; in particular, values of freedom, tolerance, democracy, sexual equality and secularism. Across Europe, multiculturalism seems to be in retreat and ‘integration’ is once again the watchword.

Ian Morris’s Why the West Rules – for Now (2010) is a brilliant book, dealing with Eurasian history from the first civilisations to the present. It takes an intermediate position in the famous debate about Europe and the rest of the world and European dominance during the last few centuries. Morris uses all kinds of sources. However, his general approach is staunchly materialistic: the motors of history are fear, sloth and greed. Cultural differences do exist, but can be explained by the former factors. This is an attitude not confined to archaeologists, nor necessarily shared by all of them, but may nevertheless have something to do with Morris’s background in this field. One objection is that Morris may have underestimated the importance of institutional factors; he does not discuss the division of Europe into separate states, which has often been regarded as a central factor in ‘the Rise of the West’. This in turn raises the question of the ‘two hand-maidens’ and their relationship to the EU. If political division is an essential feature of Europe, what will happen if this division disappears?

It is a highly advocated view that a competition law with sanctions targeting individuals would achieve a greater deterrent impact than one that does not. Having introduced individual sanctions does not, however, guarantee that a market would have less anticompetitive conduct, because these sanctions are effective only insofar as they are severely implemented on wrongdoing individuals. UK competition law is one example of this issue because cases where individuals have been targeted and punished are significantly fewer than the authorities expected, in spite of it being more than 15 years since individual sanctions were introduced amidst high expectations. This article examines the individual sanctions of competition law in the UK and Turkey. It argues that Turkey is on the right path by departing from the way in which EU law enforces the rules of competition law, and is moving closer to UK law. However, it is argued that further steps should be cautiously considered to avoid the same issues which UK competition law is currently experiencing, as there are serious doubts that the latter has achieved the desired deterrent effect.

Since the establishment of the European Union, Member States do not have true free reign over their legislative activity. The influence from ‘Brussels’ on new national laws has become stronger with the passage of time. Over the years, the Contracting States and the Union legislature have established more and more obligations referring to national legislatures. The most common are the well-known duties to transpose directives into national law. These EU legal acts contain substantive law, rights and/or obligations for individuals, and thus encompass material provisions that can be subject to a transposition process. However, this is not the only way to influence national legal orders. There are also procedural obligations in EU law that do not contain any substantive requirements that national laws ought to foresee. This article deals with the kind of formal obligations that compel Member States to consult EU institutions on draft laws during their national legislative procedures (hereinafter: obligations to consult). These obligations are of a procedural nature, with the outcome of the consultation procedure resulting in substantive law. EU law has always contained provisions like the obligations of Member States to consult EU institutions on their own national legislative procedures. In this regard, EU law shapes national legislative procedures, and the EU institutions influence substantive national law. EU institutions have expertise concerning the impact of new national laws on the internal market, which they can estimate on a Europe-wide scale. A single Member State or its institutions cannot examine the effects of national law on other Member States’ legal orders or on Europe as a whole. That is why it is dependent on the know-how of EU institutions. Their expertise and ability to assess the Europe-wide effect of national law makes up the background of the great impact of those institutions on national draft laws. This article analyses the impact and possible consequences of a Member State’s violations of obligations to consult. It introduces new terms, such as obligations to consult EU institutions on national draft laws and the consultation act, that are necessary in order to reflect the great importance of this category. General comments on obligations to consult refer also to the new mechanism introduced by the Two-Pack Regulation.

The strong interdependence of Member States’ legal orders was the reason why Member States decided for coordination and for monitoring each other’s legislative activity. Over the years, the Contracting States and the Union legislature have established more and more obligations referring to national legislatures in this respect. The most common of these are the well-known duties to transpose directives into national law. These EU legal acts contain substantive law, rights and/or obligations for individuals, and thus encompass material provisions that can be subject to a transposition process. However, this EU-wide harmonization is not the only way to influence national legal orders. This article deals with the kind of formal obligations which compel Member States to consult EU institutions on draft laws during their national legislative procedures. These obligations are of a procedural nature, with the outcome of the consultation procedure resulting in substantive law. This article shows that in respect to the Information Directive, the Court applies different criteria of inapplicability than it does for ‘typical’ or harmonizing directives. The Court examines the breach of the obligation to notify contained in the Information Directive, particularly if the criterion constituting a ‘substantial procedural defect’ renders such technical regulations inapplicable so that they may not be enforced against individuals. The Information Directive used to enjoy great attention from legal scholars and national courts as well as the Court of Justice of the European Union. The latter confirmed the Information Directive’s direct applicability in several cases. Sometimes it did not heed opinions of the General Advocates and established settled case law in this regard. In other cases, however, it declined the enforcement of this directive in proceedings between private parties. The goal was to avoid disruptions of the internal market. It thus limited the impact of the unconditional procedural obligations resulting from the Information Directive to cases impacting the internal market only. This may have been necessary since obligations to consult constitute unconditional duties and all Member States’ draft laws are supposed to be notified with no difference as to whether they refer to the internal market or not. The wording of the obligations to consult EU institutions rules that the Member State issuing a new law may act and – if it so desires – enforce the new national law. However, the state is not completely free in doing so: it cannot conduct the legislative process from beginning to end.