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The EU regulation of public procurement strives to create a set of rules that would enable the contracting authority to choose the best bid. In order to do so, it also tries to widen the circle of potential bidders by enabling their horizontal (consortia) as well as vertical (subcontracting) cooperation. Such cooperation may enable the participation of undertakings that would not be otherwise in position to bid on their own, thus increasing the number of bidders and promoting competition among them. At the same time, such arrangements may be contrary to competition law which prohibits coordination of competitors. Joint tendering is ubiquitous within the European Economic Area, and yet the case-law on its compliance with competition law is strikingly divergent. This article provides an overview of the current state of play and some suggestions for future practice.

The paper deals with the implementation of a modified FMEA methodology according to the EU Commission Regulation no. 402/13 on a common safety method for risk assessment and evaluation in the railway sector. The basic goal is to create a methodology for risk identification regarding the safety of services in railway transport concerning railway crossings. Reason for this research was the fact that the manager of the railway infrastructure in Slovakia has problems related to accidents at railway crossings including problems with the quality of services when trains are delayed. Based on previous research, this area has been defined as a priority for risk identification. Accidents at level crossings are often the result of complex interactions between several factors. The results of the authors’ long-term research bring direct impact on the safety and quality of rail transport services. The first effect of the research is a detailed investigation of the causes of accidents, on which the new methodology is based. This is important because understanding the causes of accidents is the first step in eliminating them. The proposed new framework of the methodology provides guidance to the railway infrastructure manager on how to identify, analyze, evaluate and eliminate the risks of their effects.

Even though the discussion on migration has in the last years been overshadowed by its illegal form and concentrated in particular on potential tools to mitigate it, legal migration rightfully remains a crucial consideration for a comprehensive migration policy. Given the significance of services in today’s economy, it might be surprising that the focus has been on migration of workers, rather than self-employed persons. In this article, we shall review the current legislation on this matter and explore its potential further developments.

This study compares publication pattern dynamics in the social sciences and humanities in five European countries. Three are Central and Eastern European countries that share a similar cultural and political heritage (the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Poland). The other two are Flanders (Belgium) and Norway, representing Western Europe and the Nordics, respectively. We analysed 449,409 publications from 2013–2016 and found that, despite persisting differences between the two groups of countries across all disciplines, publication patterns in the Central and Eastern European countries are becoming more similar to those in their Western and Nordic counterparts. Articles from the Central and Eastern European countries are increasingly published in journals indexed in Web of Science and also in journals with the highest citation impacts. There are, however, clear differences between social science and humanities disciplines, which need to be considered in research evaluation and science policy.

Information and communication technologies are becoming an increasingly important part of everyday life, as they facilitate many activities, mainly in the world of work, but also in scientific research and education. At present, informatics is one of the fastest growing sectors of the national economy. This development has had a significant impact on improving the quality of transport and transportation processes. The article is focused on the railway transport. It deals with the possibilities of planning the shifts of the train personnel and circulation of the vehicles. It describes the background of the topic. The scientific acquittance lies on the methodology proposed by authors. It presents a new idea of creating the shifts and circulations while being based on the current state and mathematical methods.

The provision of quality transport services is a prerequisite for the creation of an efficient organization that can meet the expectations and requirements of both the enterprise itself and its customers. From the railway enterprise's point of view, it is necessary to pay attention to the increasingly demanding requirements of its customers in railway passenger transport. This article focuses on identifying defects in rail transport processes that negatively affect ordinary operations. One of the most serious bottlenecks affecting railway transport reliability is the train delay, which fundamentally affects the perception of railway transport. At the same time, it emphasizes the need to apply individual tools according to the DMAIC cycle in order to achieve continuous improvement. The aim of the implemented Six Sigma methodology in railway enterprise is disciplined application of statistical problem-solving tools to recognize the gaps in the transport process and set out individual steps for their gradual removal.

Background and study aim. Research on value orientation, whether general or focused on a population of university students, is a complex issue involving philosophical, psychological, sociological and educational dimensions. The fundamental question of our research was whether it is possible to influence the value preferences of students in subjects and discourses other than philosophy, ethics and the humanities and social sciences in the broader sense. Methods. For the purposes of this exploratory research, a winter expedition course (snow shoeing and camping), part of the curriculum at the Faculty of Physical Culture, Palacky University Olomouc, Czech Republic was chosen. To determine any changes in the perception of values in the research group (n = 27), the Q-sorting method with forced selection of 18 items (values) was applied. Data was collected twice; a month prior to the course and immediately after the completion of the course. Results and conclusions. The research suggested that the greatest shift towards higher importance was in the category “a Peaceful world”. This could be particularly explained by the programme’s focus and the geographical-cultural environment of the expedition (references to World War II events in the terrain). On the opposite end of the scale, less important items after the course included “Happiness” and “a Comfortable life”, which might be associated with the need to overcome discomfort and pain while hiking through a winter landscape, with its natural impact on self-reflection and ideas about one’s own life path.

The role of values in climate-related decision-making is a prominent theme of climate communication research. The present study examines whether forest professionals are more driven by values than scientists are, and if this results in value polarization. A questionnaire was designed to elicit and assess the values assigned to expected effects of climate change by forest professionals and scientists working on forests and climate change in Europe. The countries involved covered a north-to-south and west-to-east gradient across Europe, representing a wide range of bio-climatic conditions and a mix of economic–social–political structures. We show that European forest professionals and scientists do not exhibit polarized expectations about the values of specific impacts of climate change on forests in their countries. In fact, few differences between forest professionals and scientists were found. However, there are interesting differences in the expected values of forest professionals with regard to climate change impacts across European countries. In Northern European countries, the aggregated values of the expected effects are more neutral than they are in Southern Europe, where they are more negative. Expectations about impacts on timber production, economic returns, and regulatory ecosystem services are mostly negative, while expectations about biodiversity and energy production are mostly positive.

The ecosystem services framework has now been embodied in policy and practice, creating the need for governance structures that allow science, policy and practice to come together and facilitate shared learning. We describe five years of progress in developing an Ecosystem Services Community of Practice in Scotland, which brings together over 600 individuals from diverse constituencies to share experiences and learn from each other. We consider the ‘community’ and ‘practice’ aspects to demonstrate the benefits of establishing an Ecosystem Services Community (ESCom). We also demonstrate how the journey involved in the creation and continuing evolution of ESCom has proved valuable to researchers, policy-makers, practitioners and students and as such has contributed to social learning. We reflect on challenges, given the voluntary nature, absence of formal institutional support and emergence of initiatives focusing on overlapping topics. Based on our experience, we provide ten recommendations to help future ecosystem services communities of practice.

The paper is focused on the comprehensive analysis of the railway noise issues. Not only does it deal with the influence on the environment, but also with the Czech laws in this field. Moreover, it presents all the options how the noise from the railway transport might be reduced and several proposals how to increase effectiveness of noise protection. In conclusion, the theoretical part is complemented by a practical one in the form of measuring and subsequent analysis.