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The Article offers a critical assessment of Art. 2 TEU, from its genesis to its implementation so far. It examines the enforcement of the Union's foundational values both in the accession stage and during EU membership. Two main weaknesses related to Art. 2 TEU are highlighted in connection with the theme of this Special Section. First, there is an asymmetry between the nature of Art. 2 TEU's values, which are foundational for the whole EU project and architecture, and the limited competences conferred upon the Union to legislate with regard to these values and to enforce their respect. Second, the EU and the Commission in particular have followed a legalistic-technocratic assessment of compliance with rule of law principles rather than endorsing a broader view of Art. 2 that combines all of its values. Under such broader view, other values like democracy, justice and solidarity could be given the same rank as the rule of law, at the time of the accession process and once membership is acquired. It is submitted that this would help the Union to connect more strongly with the citizens of the acceding countries and to reconnect with those of the Member States.

This thesis seeks to investigate how Brexit has affected the management consulting industry for United Kingdom and European Union firms. The topic is of importance to the EU/UK management consulting community since Brexit caused disruption which in turn created an opportunity to analyze how this created costs and opportunity for firms. The study examines the relationship by first summarizing the events of Brexit through an annual order to identify which years presented the most change. The hypotheses of this study states that Brexit will have a negative effect on management consulting firm’s operations. It also states that there may be a positive effect for some firms that could profit from Brexit as a business, such as opportunity for new clientele. These changes are then identified through a close examination of secondary resources including papers, articles, and scholarly resources. There is also an analysis of primary source interviews conducted through the course of 2020-2021. The findings of this research were overshadowed by COVID-19’s negative effects on the management consulting industry in the UK. However, I do find evidence of both negative and positive effects; the results of the interviews shed light on the mechanisms. Specifically, I found that some firms were able to profit from Brexit by absorbing new clientele in need of Brexit specialists, and that there was a drive towards a need for new technology, specifically in the financial services sector.

This introduction summarizes the pathways up to and the experience of membership of the European Union of five recent member countries: Hungary, Romania, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia, all of which acceded in 2004 or, in the case of, Romania, in 2007. Key economic and domestic political developments as well as changes in public attitude to European integration are addressed using a comparative pattern; in addition, future research priorities are outlined in the hope of encouraging further academic and policy-oriented study both in the respective member countries and on the European scale.

Michael McGilligan, BVA Policy Officer, attended a meeting with Veterinary Ireland to discuss issues around Brexit.Michael McGilligan, BVA Policy Officer, attended a meeting with Veterinary Ireland to discuss issues around Brexit.

This introductory article lays out the stakes of thinking through the temporalities of Brexit history across multiple fields of vision. It makes the case for books as one archive of Brexit subjects and feelings, and it glosses all the articles in the special issue.

The British party system is known for its discipline and cohesion, but it remains wedged on one issue: European integration. We offer a methodology using social network analysis that considers the individual interactions of MPs in the voting process. Using public Parliamentary records, we scraped votes of individual MPs in the 57th parliament (June 2017 to April 2019), computed pairwise similarity scores and calculated rebellion metrics based on eigenvector centralities. Comparing the networks of Brexit- and non-Brexit divisions, our methodology was able to detect a significant difference in eurosceptic behaviour for the former, and using a rebellion metric we predicted how MPs would vote in a forthcoming Brexit deal with over 90% accuracy.

Despite the great theoretical and practical significance, in Bulgaria there are no comprehensive analysis of the state and evolution of the system of agricultural information, training and advices in Bulgaria. The goal of this paper is to analyze the state and evolution of the system of agricultural information, training and advices in Bulgaria during the period after country’s EU accession, identify major trends in that area, make a comparison with other EU states, specify main problems, and suggest conclusions for improvement of policies during next programing period. The analysis has found out that in years after accession of the country to EU the number of the farm managers who undertook full agricultural training increases, but despite that almost 93% of them are still with practical experiences and without any agricultural training. The extent of participation of rural areas rests weak and constantly decreasing, and Bulgaria is among the last in EU in hours of formal and informal education and training. In years of EU membership the number of provided consultations is doubled and in recent years 17% of all registered agricultural producers and each tenth farmer in the country are consulted while the subjects of provided consultation widened. Also hundreds of events associated with knowledge and innovation transfer and sharing are organized as most of them are jointly organized by the National Advisory Service with the institutes of Agricultural Academy, agrarian and other universities, research and development organizations. The number of organized events, the overall number of participants, and the average number of participant per event tend to decrease.

A fantastic turnout of BVA Welsh Branch Council members welcomed Assembly Members from across the main political parties in Wales to a briefing at the National Assembly for Wales Tŷ Hywel building on 14 May. Helena Cotton, BVA Public Affairs Manager, reports.