The article is a review of the European approach to economic policy, taking into account the feature of gender, so-called gender mainstreaming. It analyses the legislative achievements of the European Union in this area and domestic solutions. There is also compared the situation of women and men in the European labor market, with particular emphasis on Danish and Polish examples, and the causes and consequences of gender inequality in economic decision-making. Identification of barriers to the implementation of gender equality in the social, economic and political aspects as well as possibile ways of their elimination is also attempted.

Health care is one of the determinants of the entire policy of the European Union. In this regard, the EU has a well-developed legislation and institutions designed to protect the environment. One of the areas of protection of human health is the natural environment. Also in this range, the EU has a fairly well developed system of laws and institutions. The aim of the study is to show the influence of EU policy on health and the environment on the health status of EU’s citizens.

Among the axiological foundations of European integration, security was undoubtedly the most important of them. The inclusion of post-war Germany in the bloodstream of Western European economic and social ties, on the one hand, and, on the other, fears of the Soviet Union growing in strength and hostile to Western values, were the reasons behind the projects to strengthen cooperation between the countries west of the Elbe. Understandably, integration processes progressed fastest in the sphere of economic exchange and regulation of its rules, and slower in areas related to the very tissue that creates the sovereignty of each state, i.e. security and defense. The aim of the article is to present the shaping of a common European policy on this last issue. For its purposes, three different dimensions of the integration processes were adopted, which complemented each other and led to the present institutional order of the Common Security and Defense Policy. The first of them, which can be called a kind of laboratory of formal structures of cooperation of Western European states in the field of security and military, covered the creation and evolution of the Western European Union. The second perspective is the development of the idea of political and defense integration through the formulation of various initiatives, reports and analyzes by actors of the political life of the Member States, which often informally constituted a strong impulse to accelerate the integration processes. The last area of analysis is the provisions of the treaty, which organized and reformed the functioning mechanisms of the community elements of the European security and defense space.

The European Union Media Freedom Act in the Context of Organizations’ Activities to Improve the Quality of Democracy

The European Union’s activity in the area of media, which has been undertaken for the past four decades, demonstrates a growing interest in the problems of the sector od media services, not only in economic terms but also in establishing regulations to strengthen their independence, pluralism and the quality of their contene. Axiological aspects, expressing the values on which the EU was built, are reflected in an important piece of legislation that was presented by the European Commission in September 2022. The European Media Freedom Act proves that issues of freedom and pluralism have become a sensitive area for the Union. The document highlights the dual nature of the media – economic players in the market and an important actor in the social areas, meant to create a sphere of civic society activities and a space for promoting the standards of liberal democracy: economic freedoms and individual liberties.

The real system of government in Poland after the country’s accession to the European Union

The subject of research presented in the article is the system of government in Poland. The considerations concern the relationship between the normative solutions defined in the Constitution of the Republic of Poland of 1997 and the influence of the EU on the modification of political solutions in Poland. It was hypothesized that after Poland’s accession to the EU, the system of government in Poland changed in terms of political practice. It has been shown that functioning in the EU resulted in a departure from the characteristic rationalization of the system of government and bringing it closer to the parliamentary model. The prediction presents possible further directions of modification of the system of governance depending on the evolution of the EU. The research was based on the following methods: institutional-legal, systemic and comparative.

The international and domestic efforts directed toward establishing effective regulations of multinational enterprises (MNEs) activity in the human rights and environmental realms are currently entering an intriguing phase. The trend toward setting forth legally binding obligations applicable across their complex, transnational structures is gaining momentum, and the upcoming EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) may significantly contribute to this process. The research aim of this study is to examine how the draft CSDDD is woven into the present regulatory landscape, and what impact it may potentially have. Due to multicentricity of the legal sources’ systems in the member states, the EU law underway will also affect their constitutional orders. To tackle the research task, it is crucial to delineate the broader context of the challenges surrounding the enforcement of social and environmental accountability throughout global value chains, which arise at the intersection of the existing governance mechanisms’ quality, and the legal as well as organisational MNEs’ logics. These interconnected issues are addressed in the first section of the paper. The second section covers CSDDD as reflecting and potentially accelerating regulatory trends.

Wojciech Bogumił Jastrzębowski’s draft of a Constitution for Europe is a vision of an ideal European social order, whose foundation is to be found, inter alia, in the citizen’s universal right to freedom and independence, to diversity and individual identity, as well as the right to live in peace. It is thus highly apparent that a number of parallels exist between the alliance of nations postulated by Jastrzębowski and later forms of integration existing and still being developed in contemporary Europe. The aim of this article is to analyse and characterize the existing similarities, and also the most significant differences, between the monarchist vision of the European alliance of nations, as presented by the author of the Constitution for Europe, and the contemporary realisation of the idea of the unity of the continent.

Legitimization Of The European Union’s Supranational Political Power In The Perspective Of Selected Theories Of European Integration

The aim of this paper is to seek a theoretical framework for explaining the sources of legitimacy of EU political power. The research problem concerns the establishing of the sources of legitimacy of the EU political system, depending on the implemented theories of European integration. The research process uses selected theories of European integration: intergovernmental theory, neo-functionalism and constructivism, which point to diverse sources of legitimacy of supranational political power. These include: the will and interests of sovereign states, the high efficiency and effectiveness of supranational political power in achieving the goals of various interest groups, and social norms and values. The analysis carried out enabled a positive verification of the research hypothesis on the diverse origins of the legitimacy of EU supranational power, justified within the framework of selected theories of European integration.

The main focus of the article is the analysis of the concept of European Union consumer policy in the context of specific policy, economic policy and public policy. The scope of EU consumer policy is examined in terms of its subject matter and actors. The subject matter of EU consumer policy is a set of legal and organisational activities undertaken by EU institutions and international consumer NGOs in accordance with consumer policy programmes for a given period of time. One overarching subject, the consumer, is identified in the subjective context. The definition of the ‘consumer’ in a socio-legal context is analysed.

The aim of the paper is to study the European Union’s geoeconomics policy for cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region. In recent times, the Indo-Pacific has been gaining attention of the global economic powers. On this issue, the EU has launched a cooperation policy in the IndoPacific. This study examines the EU’s comprehensive strategy for the expansion of its presence in the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea. The EU wants economic and security partnerships among the Indo-Pacific countries. Among the EU member states, the French government is much enthusiastic about strategic cooperation in the Indo-Pacific. The European Union’s policy has been operating in the regions as an instrument of soft and hard power. The research highlighted that the EU implies the construction of structural strategic networks to intensify the high capacities in the projection of power. The EU uses the key approaches of hard and soft power to achieve transatlantic goals. The comparative case study method is useful to know the objectives and results of the research. In conclusion, the EU needs to establish a much stronger relationship among the pacific countries to counter the Chinese aggression and expansion in maritime diplomacy.

Public opinion was outraged by information that Pegasus technology, intended to combat terrorism and organized crime, was also used to combat the opposition, surveil political opponents, and influence the outcome of elections in some member states of the Council of Europe and the European Union. These organizations have undertaken studies of these situations and have formulated a number of recommendations to Member States, including Poland. The author analyzed these documents and suggests that even if they are only the so-called “soft law”, the dispositions contained therein should be consistently implemented in accordance with the values of democracy, the rule of law and the protection of human rights. Full implementation of these recommendations by Poland is necessary to improve its image among democratic European countries.

European standards towards LGBT social movement in some countries inside and outside European Union. Comparative analysis

In this article author compares LGBT’s human rights standards in Poland, Germany, Ukraine, Russia and some Middle Eastern states. Members of the LGBT community have not equal rights in Europe, even in a European Union member states, which have to respect rights of any minority. In a case of Germany society sooner tend to accept LGBT people than this was reflected in a law system. It is interesting, that Poland has been decriminalizing homosexual activity in 1932, but this does not changed social atitudes, even now in this country LGBT sa socially excluded in many ways. Situation in post-Soviet states in even worse – in both Ukraine and Russia societies permits LGBT’s persons exclusion from the social and political sphere.

Functions of the President of the Republic of Poland in Connection with Poland’s Membership in the European Union

The article aims to analyze the functions of the President of the Republic of Poland in connection with Poland’s membership in the EU. The discussed issues are important due to the dynamic nature of this process and the federalist tendencies in the EU. They cause that the issues of compliance of the deepening of the European integration process with the constitution and issues related to the increasingly significant scope of the integration process in the context of the sovereignty of nation states become particularly important. Therefore, the role of the President of the Republic of Poland in this process, as the guardian of the constitution and state sovereignty, requires analysis. The Republic of Poland’s membership in the European Union makes it necessary to take a new look not only at the system of government but also at the tasks of the executive branch.

The subject of research presented in the article is the system of government in Poland. The considerations concern the relationship between the normative solutions defined in the Constitution of the Republic of Poland of 1997 and the influence of the EU on the modification of political solutions in Poland. It was hypothesized that after Poland’s accession to the EU, the system of government in Poland changed in terms of political practice. It has been shown that functioning in the EU resulted in a departure from the characteristic rationalization of the system of government and brought it closer to the parliamentary model. The research was based on the following methods: institutional-law, systemic and comparative.

EU trade agreements with Indo-Pacific partners in the light of the provisions of the EU strategy for cooperation in the region

The article contains considerations on the regional trade agreements (RTAs) negotiated and concluded by the EU with its Indo-Pacific partners. The agreements were characterized in the context of the provisions of the strategy adopted in 2021 for this region, the aim of which is to increase the EU’s involvement in the Indo-Pacific, also by strengthening and deepening trade relations through RTAs. The analysis presented in the study showed that, in view of the huge potential and growing importance of this area in the global economy, these relations are of key importance for the EU’s economic interests, and the trade agreements negotiated, concluded and enforced constitute an important tool for implementing the Indo-Pacific strategy and pave the way towards strengthening the position of the EU there.

The Scope of Competences of the President of the Republic of Poland in Matters Related to Poland’s Membership in the European Union

The amendment to the so-called the Cooperation Act granted the President a number of powers related to Poland’s membership in the European Union. In particular, the President was given the opportunity to give binding opinions on candidacies for key positions in the European Union submitted by the Council of Ministers. The article analyzes the provisions of the Constitution regarding the powers of the President and the Council of Ministers in the field of foreign affairs. An attempt was made to answer the question whether the amending act only clarified the provisions of the Constitution regarding the President’s prerogatives or whether it granted him new powers going beyond powers of the head of state, specified in the provisions of the Constitution.

In recent years, the United Kingdom has seen a growing doctrinal discourse around competing models of legal and political constitutionalism. The situation has been exacerbated by ongoing changes in both theory and practice, which have engendered a strong conviction that the UK is now departing from the political constitutionalism associated with the traditional model of parliamentary sovereignty, in which Parliament’s legislative power is unlimited by law and the courts have no right to question the validity of laws on substantive grounds. From a theoretical point of view, legal constitutionalists contributed to provoking this change while desiring to continue to promote it by moving almost completely and exclusively towards legal constitutionalism, thus supplanting its political formula. From a practical point of view, however, one should bear in mind that the events that led to a specific change in thinking about British constitutionalism encompass, in particular, the legal consequences resulting from the UK’s membership in the European Union, including the phenomenon of the so-called judicial activism. Nevertheless, these events were also induced by the expansion and strengthening of judicial review of administrative actions, judicial shaping of the principle of legality, as well as by the enactment and application of the Human Rights Act 1998.

The central claim of the paper is that the European Union, understood through the concept of Normative Power Europe, is a sui generis global actor that will not be successful in achieving its international goals unless it upholds its foundational values at home. Internal disputes among Member States over fundamental and core values weaken the organisation’s international standing, which may lead to the risk of the European Union losing its comparative strength that differentiates it from other global powers and that gives it a unique place in international politics. This is particularly important in the times of constant change in global politics and new security, political and economic challenges, such as the role of China, democratic backsliding in the Global South countries and the Russian aggression against Ukraine. All these call for a strong and effective European Union, which, we argue, will not be possible, unless the organisation is able to keep internal disputes at check by ensuring compliance with the values it is based on. Based the case study of Poland, the paper demonstrates that it may be difficult, if not impossible, for the European Union to effectively uphold the respect for its fundamental norms, principles and standards among its members. This in turn will impede the Normative Power Europe status.

The fight against disinformation in the European Union, using the example of the war in Ukraine

Disinformation, meaning false information disseminated to mislead or deceive the audience, is gaining prominence in social and political life. This article aims to analyze the Russian disinformation narrative regarding the war in Ukraine and to present the European Union’s response to this false narrative. The study was carried out based on literature on the subject, source documents, and content posted on the EUdisinfo.eu. The analysis shows how dangerous the Russian disinformation narrative is for international relations and how important it is to constantly analyze content published on the Internet and expose irregularities.

Summer 2024 – the background and course of the Polish-Ukrainian crisis

Polish-Ukrainian relations have a long history, and the official interstate ones since 1991, the independence of Ukraine. Most of the time they were orders, particularly during Petro Proshenka’s presidency, when the tone was set by Bandera nationalists, while the Law and Justice Party (PiS) was in power. The main bone of contention was the different treatment of each other’s history. After the onslaught of the Russian Federation and the start of a full-scale war with Ukraine, Poland took in a huge number of Ukrainian refugees, made available huge support in armaments and in the political area. It was estimated that this lasted until the autumn of 2022, i.e., the so-called case of the explosion of the rocket in Przewodovo and the strenuous telling of President Zelensky, contrary to the findings of US intelligence, that it was an accidental Ukrainian rocket. In the summer of 2023, the “grain crisis” and the accompanying “transportation crisis” erupted. In the fall of the aforementioned year, during a session of the UN General Assembly, Zelenski canceled an agreed-upon meeting with President Duda and sharply attacked Poland in that international forum and practiced destruction in talks with leaders of leading countries. He was counting on Donald Tusk’s team to take power. The latest event deepening the crisis was the atypical statement in Poland by Minister Dmytro Kuleba and the continuation of the growing crisis. The chance of overcoming it is slim.