We apply nonlinear Autoregressive-Distributed Lag (ARDL)-based methodologies to examine the nature of the effects of changes in R&D (intensity) on the employment rates of ‘high-skill’, ‘medium-skill’ and ‘low-skill’ labour and also whether or not these effects are symmetric. The empirical results based on the annual data for the period of 1991–2017 have suggested that while increased R&D has favourable effects on the employment rate of ‘high-skill’ labour in France, it has a negative impact on this type of labour in the UK. On the other hand, while the given increase in R&D has been found to be negatively affecting the employment rates of both ‘low-skill’ and ‘medium-skill’ labour in France, it has no impact on the employment rates of these two types of labour in the UK. These results may suggest that the dominant form of technological change in France is possibly a combination of ‘low-skill automation’ and ‘task-based’ whereby new technologies are simultaneously leading to replacement of ‘low-skill’ and ‘medium-skill’ labour by machines and the creation of new tasks (jobs) in which ‘high-skill’ labour has a comparative advantage. In the UK, the dominant form of new technologies resulting from additional R&D efforts seems to be in the form of ‘high-skill automation’ whereby ‘Robotics and Artificial Intelligence’ kind of new technologies might be causing replacement of ‘high-skill’ labour with machines. These results suggest that new technologies might be exerting adverse effects on income distribution in different ways in the UK and France.

This study sheds new light on the different characteristics of social networks for COVID-19 in European regions. This study explores six countries (the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, Germany, France, and Sweden) by employing social network analysis for Twitter. First, this study finds that European countries show different characteristics for social networks with regard to COVID-19. For example, the UK has only national key players, France shows a majority of national key players, and other countries have all global key players. Donald Trump played an important role in the social networks of Italy, Germany and Sweden while he was the US president. Second, European countries demonstrate different social networks for groups. For example, the UK shows the most active communications across groups, whereas Germany shows the least communication networks across groups. Lastly, European countries reveal highly different interests regarding COVID-19. For example, the UK is more interested in the epidemic and vaccines, Germany focuses on schools and studies, and Sweden cares more about herd immunity and lockdown.

This article introduces a collection of essays about the construction of a cultural landscape in Eastern and Central Europe. This part of the world has been subjected to violent changes over the past hundred years that have also left their marks on the landscape, especially in the wake of the Second World War and after the fall of the Iron Curtain. It is suggested that the cultural dimension of these changes will be approached as a multimodal palimpsest, where old layers have partially been erased and overwritten by new layers of landscape text, with the old text still being more or less readable to the researcher. In addition, it is emphasized that this process of rewriting is still ongoing, in attempts to inscribe landscapes within ethnocentric frameworks.

The European Union has faced many crises, such as populism, xenophobia, economic and political challenges, to name a few. This has resulted in some questioning whether the EU will survive. Herein, the neo-institutionalist perspective on crises in EU integration frames an original and timely inquiry into the role of a new EU initiative – the European Education Area – in supporting EU integration in these challenging times. This inquiry relies on a thematic analysis of relevant key policy materials. The findings highlight that while it is not surprising that the EEA is an example of an education convergence project in the EU, the novelty of other findings is striking. It appears that the crises in the EU inspired the authors of the EEA to utilize its education as a tool for EU deepening, which is an aspect of EU integration related to the strengthening of the relationships amongst its Member States. Specifically, the EEA has been a driver in the development of a common European identity and European economy, the EU as a socially-just society and the continent of progress. These findings address important gaps of our knowledge about the role of education in driving EU integration.

Since 2015, consumer loans have been rising fast in France, Germany, Spain and Italy. This article aims to provide broad evidence of the differences across countries in light of the recent consumer credit growth, exploring demand and supply factors typically related to this type of loan, and assessing the building up of financial risks. The expansion was connected in all countries with the increasing credit demand, specifically for consumer durables, and – for Italy and Spain, which experienced stronger credit tightening during the past crises – also with the easing of supply conditions. Risks stemming from the growth of consumer credit are mitigated by its lower incidence, compared with mortgages, on households’ total debt and income; exposure to interest rate risk is also decreasing owing to the high share of fixed-rate contracts. There is wide risk heterogeneity across countries, with Italy and Spain having the highest share of delinquent households (even for fewer than 90 days). In Italy, however, debt is increasingly concentrated among more affluent households, which are better able to withstand negative economic shocks. This trend is sustaining the drop in the ratio of new non-performing consumer loans.

Socio-economic development and the concept of the tourist function of areas are multidimensional socio-economic phenomena, the diagnosis of which is particularly important in various comparative studies regarding EU countries. Measurement based on GDP per capita, widely used in the assessment of the socio-economic level of development of countries, does not include many aspects of this development in its construction. Similarly, the level of development of the tourist function cannot be assessed by means of one universal measure. Both categories should be treated as complex phenomena, which are influenced by many different factors. The aim of this article is to compare and statistically assess two complex phenomena, i.e. level of socio-economic development and level of tourist function development in 28 European Union countries. Linear ordering of EU countries was carried out using the TOPSIS method on the basis of diagnostic variables determining individual complex phenomena in 2016. Values of the overall synthetic measure were also indicated, taking into account all diagnostic variables. Rankings of EU countries were built and four typological groups of countries with high, medium-high, medium-low and low level of development were created. Discriminant analysis indicated variables that have the greatest impact on the classification of EU countries in terms of the level of socio-economic development and level of tourism function development. A linear econometric model with synthetic variables was also constructed, and it was determined which of the synthetic measures is relatively more important in describing the shaping of the overall synthetic measure. The quality of the work is increased by the use of many different statistical and econometric methods, as well as methods from the field of Multidimensional Comparative Analysis. Thanks to this, it is possible not only to deepen the assessment of the studied phenomena, but also to obtain more objective results. Conclusions from the research may be a basis for proper management in the field of socio-economic development as well as for the development of the tourist function of EU countries. They can also be used for appropriate allocation of financial support for countries within the framework of the EU cohesion policy and in determining the tourist specialization of countries.

The article discusses uncommemorated sites of violence in the framework of landscape theories. In particular, it asks how the sites of past violence can be understood through the lens of the ‘dynamic’ theory of landscape offered by Tim Ingold in his seminal The Temporality of the Landscape (1993). The ‘dwelling perspective’ he proposes to understand sites as dynamic ‘taskscapes’ allows us to inscribe past violent actions and engagements of local users into today’s meanings of sites of trauma. This conceptualization is further operationalized in relation to George Chamayoux’ philosophical history of manhunts (or more broadly: cynegetic practices, 2012). In the article it has been asked: how can a landscape be ‘pregnant with the past’ – as it is claimed in Ingold’s approach – if the past actions involved tracking, hunting and killing people who tried to escape death in ghettos or camps? How can we ‘read the past’, ‘remember it’ or ‘call back an internal image’ of previous actions developed in the area, if the activity co-constituted an act of genocide? Are we able to read today the past threat of a perpetrator–predator searching for victims, and, if so, with what tools? Can environmental studies help us to understand the uncanny relation to landscapes that connote past manhunts, and violent deaths on killing sites? The author will propose the concept of cynegetic landscapes to approach landscapes of manhunts.

The article is concerned with analysing the key challenges afflicting the world order. The coronavirus pandemic has hit the entire world order, and only now is humankind beginning to realize its far-reaching consequences. An analysis of expert opinions allows us to conclude that, in the near future, not much of the global balance of power will change, although tensions will rise among the world powers regarding leadership and ‘survival’ in terms of the political and economic crisis of the world system caused by the pandemic. The research results can be used to reinforce the line of international and foreign policy activities, as well as be used in the development of scientific programmes in the field of challenges and alternatives to globalization.

Science has undergone remarkable changes both in scale, organization and influence over the last half century. It has changed the way we live and is more essential than ever before. Although the scientific effort today is more international than it was 50 years ago, only a small part of the world is fully engaged in this process. It is of course impossible in a single article to provide an overall balanced account of these developments and this is not an attempt to do so. Instead, certain trends are illustrated here, based solely on the personal experiences of an individual who – during a long career in the Life Sciences, and through work in many international science organizations – has been a witness and played a role in some of the changes that have occurred, often influenced by major political events.

Slightly metaphorically, this article deals with the subsequent waves of dramatically different ideologies and their impact on existing value-systems. The transition from one prevalent legal system to another, laden with central notions at variance with the previous one, destroys the old order to build up a new order. An example is taken from the modern history of Germany: starting from the Weimar Republic, through to the Third Reich with its Nazi-ideology, to the division into the democratic Federal Republic and the socialist-communist German Democratic Republic and their reunion in 1990. This article depicts the strategies put into place to accomplish and implement subsequent iconoclasms, and sketches successes and failures. Each iconoclasm finds its origins in the previous legal system and leaves its traces in the next one.

This article studies the mechanics through which the EU’s relations with China may harm its values and institutions, providing specific examples that precisely illustrate the Chinese Communist Party’s malign influence in Europe. It also intends to reflect on the extent to which the two distinct political and economic models are compatible with the preservation of a liberal international order. Accordingly, we aim to assess whether the EU has the capacity to counteract China’s sharp power, highlighting concrete policy actions that help strengthen the EU’s position while also identifying persisting shortcomings. It is argued that the EU has considerable economic deterrence to push China into respecting global defined rules and arrangements. Indeed, recent reforms, such as the investment screening mechanism and the global sanctions regime, were an important step towards the affirmation of an EU committed to its values. However, the unanimity requirement in the Common Foreign and Security Policy’s decision-making will likely remain a relevant obstacle for a coherent and efficient EU’s external action.

This article discusses the chryselephantine statue known as the Palaikastro Kouros, which was recovered in the excavations at Palaikastro in eastern Crete in the 1980s. The statue and the sanctuary building in which it had stood had been deliberately destroyed c. 1450 bc. It is probable that the motivation for the destruction was iconoclastic. This situates the fate of the Palaikastro Kouros within a broader context of iconoclasm in the ancient Near East and Mediterranean area.

Regulating and disciplining the urban environment, especially the sensory improprieties of a city, have always been a crucial means to demonstrate new political orders. This article examines how various authorities attempted to regulate and reshape the Old Town neighbourhood of the Polish city of Lublin during the first half of the twentieth century and how a continuous discourse on order and cleanliness reinforced ethnic, class and political prejudices. It shows how the sensory mapping of the city in pre-war times, including noisome odours, crowdedness and unsightly buildings related, more often than not, to the area’s ‘Jewishness’. The profound changing of the Old Town neighbourhood after the Second World War was a major symbolic act of the new communist regime to make a clean sweep of unpleasant legacies to create the ‘Lublin of the future’.

This article explains the causes of the Russia–Ukraine war starting in 2014 from the energy and energy markets perspective, based on resource dependency theory and the conceptual framework outlined by Jeffrey D. Colgan (2013). Our findings reveal that Russia is critically dependent on revenue from gas exports to Ukraine and the European Union, but also that Ukraine’s energy deposits and pipeline system have the potential to be a direct competitive threat to Russia’s energy exports. This paper argues that this was the underlying reason and main causal pathway leading to Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the subsequent war in eastern Ukraine.

This study aims to present the environmental performance of agriculture in Turkey, focusing on the post-2000 period, and to evaluate the agri-environmental support instruments in Turkey in light of the data obtained. According to the findings, it can be asserted that, in spite of several positive developments, Turkey’s agriculture seems to be far from sustainable. The number of farmers and the extent of the agricultural land aided by the support instruments account for very small portions of the total figures. At the same time, the amount of support provided to producers also has a very small share of the total agricultural support. Considering the findings about agri-environmental performance and agri-environmental support instruments together, we suggest that while the use of these support instruments is a positive step, the supports have not had an impact on inducing a green transition in agriculture yet. Uncertainties caused by legislative changes, amounts of support falling short of the cost of a green transition in agriculture, lack of knowledge and training activities regarding environment-friendly agricultural methods, and lack of effective organization of agricultural producers are thought to be among the reasons for this result.

The leading question raised by the rhetoricians of classical antiquity was how to speak with maximum persuasive force. You must find the means, they answered, to enable your readers to see what you are arguing. This initially gave rise to a preoccupation with visual metaphors and other so-called figures of speech. Much later, with the development of the printed book, this also led to the practice of inserting actual figures into books to provide visual summaries of their arguments. Here, one pioneer was Thomas Hobbes, and this article offers an interpretation of the frontispieces he included in his two main works of political philosophy, De cive and Leviathan. The moral Hobbes aims to convey is that we have no alternative but to submit to the protecting power of the sovereign state if we wish to live in security and peace.