Is it possible to revitalize Europe without external interference and a shift in the geopolitical situation outside the Continent? An answer to this question is here offered by Prof. Jan Zielonka, a political scientist analyzing change in Central and Eastern Europe and a lecturer at the European Studies Centre, St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford.

This article examines the process of the judicial Europeanization of the Polish Constitution. In Poland the judicial method of Europeanizing the Constitution is currently the primary way of adjusting constitutional norms to requirements resulting from EU law. The phenomenon of re-interpretation of constitutional provisions in light of the new and changing realities is a characteristic feature of contemporary constitutionalism. It has been a long time since most national constitutions have undergone significant textual changes. In Poland, the scope of judicial Europeanization of the Constitution is connected, to a great extent, with the inflexible procedure required for constitutional amendments. In this situation, these so-called “silent changes” of constitutional norms are the easiest and fastest way of reacting to requirements stemming from Poland’s EU membership. In the Polish case not only have the norms regarding the political system of the state changed, but also constitutional standards relating to the protection of fundamental rights and freedoms have undergone the process of the Europeanization. To some extent, these changes relate to procedural norms as well.

Dr. Agata Karska of the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń talks about the valuable time we get from ESO, visiting Chile without leaving home, and the opportunities for young scientists in Poland.

The article presents the EU legislative procedure and decision-making processes with a special emphasis on decisions regarding energy policy. It has been pointed out that most of the energy related legal acts, including the renewable energy directive and those aimed at the gradual reduction of emissions of harmful substances, are adopted according to the ordinary legislative procedure. However, special legislative procedures apply in the case of international agreements between the European Union and third countries. The trilogues, i.e. meetings of the European Commission, the European Parliament, and the Council, aimed at reaching a common position before the first reading in the EP, are of great importance in decision making. The article also discusses the problem of energy policy and its impact on the environment, recalling the relevant articles of the Treaty on the functioning of the European Union. The most important paths of influence of the Member States on new legal acts in the context of energy policy have also been shown. This is an extremely important issue from the investors’ point of view, since projects related to the energy industry have a very long payback period, so the stability and predictability of the Community’s energy policy is of paramount importance to them. The possibilities of shaping new laws related to energy at the stage of preparing a regulation are discussed later in the article. The work of parliamentary committees, especially those related to energy, i.e. the ITRE (The Committee on Industry, Research and Energy) Committee and ENVI (The Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety) has also been discussed. In addition, the article clearly shows different approaches of Western European countries and the Central and Eastern European countries (including Poland) towards energy issues.

The present article studies the properties of the phrase Como si no hubiera (un) mañana (‘As if there were no tomorrow’), which more frequently occurs in European Spanish than in other diatopic varieties of that language. As it is shown in the article, the phrase modifies verbs and verbal predicates, being able to perform intensifying quantification.

It is often said that biotechnology is “as old as the world”. However, only now modern biotechnologies based on genetic engineering provide innovative solutions underpinning the development and transformation of the modern economy, thereby creating real opportunities to guarantee the supply of food, medicines and energy for the world's ever-growing population (in November 2022, the world's population will exceed 8 billion). The development of innovative technologies is often conditional on public acceptance and, as a consequence depends on public opinion, coherent legislation and a profound transformation from an oilbased economy to a circular and sustainable bioeconomy. Poland, as part of the European Union, belongs to the group of countries where such modern concepts are developing.

The generalization of the European experience in waste management in the context of the directives, decisions and regulations adopted in the last decade in the European Union, as well as the state of the organizational, economic and regulatory framework for solving the waste problem in Ukraine, reveals a systemic lag in the implementation of new conceptual, methodological and practical approaches to the formation of an appropriate state policy.
The dynamics of handling certain types of waste in Ukraine have been analyzed. Features of disposal and waste management in Ukraine have been identified. A comparative assessment of the dynamics of waste generation in European countries and Ukraine per capita has been carried out, a block model of the financing system for the waste management sector in Ukraine has been formed and the directions of effective waste management in Ukraine have been determined. Furthermore, priority policy measures for waste management and secondary resource use in Ukraine have been formulated.
A set of obstacles on the method of efficient waste management in Ukraine has been prioritized. In the context of the formation of an efficient waste-management strategy, it has been advised to structure its three components of the subsystem: receipts (sources of formation) of funds, their accumulation and costs (expenses). This structuring indicates the presence of a number of flows of funds, each of which is largely autonomous but together they create a complementary system. Improvements to the legislative framework have been suggested. In particular, it is recommended to devote more resources to reorienting the existing economic model, which will create new business projects and will increase the flow of investment into the country.

The aim of the article is to discuss and assess the diversification of renewable energy sources consumption in European Union member states. The time scope covers 2005 and 2015. The data comes from Eurostat. The analysis was based on synthetic indicators – using a non-standard method. Synthetic indicators were assessed based on three simple features such as: the share of renewable energy in energy consumption in 2015, the difference between the share of renewable energy in energy consumption in 2015 and in 2005 (in percentage points), deficit/surplus in the 2020 target reached in 2015 (in percentage points). The European Union member states were divided into four diversified group in terms of renewable energy sources consumption (first class – a very high level, second class – quite a high level, third class – quite a low level, fourth class – a very low level). Then the divided groups were analyzed according to the share of renewable energy sources in the primary production of renewable energy and the consumption of individual renewable energy sources. During the research period renewable energy consumption increased in the European Union, but individual member states are characterized by a diverse situation. The type of energy used depends largely on national resources. The countries of Northern Europe are characterized by a greater share of renewable energy sources in consumption. Biomass is the most popular renewable source of energy in the European Union. Depending on the conditions of individual countries – it is agricultural and forest biomass.

Poland is the leading country in pursuing its own citizens under the European Arrest Warrant (EAW), with the number of EAWs issued between 2005 and 2013 representing one third of the warrants issued by all EU countries (although some serious inconsistencies between Polish and Eurostat sta-tistical data can be observed). The data show that Poland overuses this instrument by issuing EAWs in minor cases, sometimes even for petty crimes. However, even though this phenomenon is so wide-spread, it has attracted very little academic interest thus far. This paper fills that gap. The authors scrutinise the topic against its legal, theoretical and statistical backdrop. Based on their findings, a theoretical perspective is drawn up to consider what the term ‘justice’ actually means and which activities of the criminal justice system could be called ‘just’ and which go beyond this term. The main question to answer is: Should every crime be pursued (even a petty one) and every person face pun-ishment – even after years have passed and a successful and law-abiding life has been building in another country? Or should some restrictions be introduced to the law to prevent the abuse of justice?

During the Brexit campaign, both those who opted for Britain leaving the EU and those who wanted to remain in the structures of the Union referred to William Shakespeare to support the rightness of their preference. The question of how Shakespeare would have voted was raised by numerous journalists, writers and politicians who either tried to present Shakespeare as a national bard promoting British isolationism or a staunch adherent of England being an integral part of the European continent. The paper scrutinizes some aspects of Shakespeare’s plays which indicate the writer’s attitude towards the relations between England and Europe.

European beaver (Castor fiber), the largest rodent species inhabiting a wide area of Eurasia, feeds mainly on dry parts of plants, bark or wood. Such kind of nourishment needs to be properly digested in each part of the gastrointestinal tract. The time of stomach digestion, which directly influences all the following steps of the digestion process, is precisely controlled by the pylorus and its innervation. However, virtually no data is available on the organization of the enteric nervous system in most of the wild animal species, including beavers. On the other hand, a pecu- liar diet consumed by beavers, suggests that the arrangement of their stomach intramural nerve elements can be atypical. Therefore, the present study investigated the distribution and chemical coding of neurons and nerve fibers in the pylorus of the European beaver.

The experiment was performed on stomachs obtained from a group of 6 beavers caught in Northeastern region of Poland (due to beaver overpopulation). Pyloric wall tissue cryosections were double immunostained with a mixture of antibodies against pan-neuronal marker PGP 9.5 (to visualize enteric neurons) and ChAT (cholinergic marker), nNOS (nitrergic marker), SP, CGRP, Gal (peptidergic markers).

Confocal microscopy analysis revealed that the majority of enteric nerve cells were clustered forming submucosal and myenteric ganglia and all the studied substances were expressed (in various amounts) in these neurons.

We conclude, that the anatomical arrangement and chemical coding of intramural nerve elements in the beaver pylorus resemble those found in other mammalian species.

The article deals with West Slavonic words on cud represented by verbs such as Old Czech cúditi, Polish cudzić or adjectives such as Czech cudný, Polish cudny, czudny. These words are not etymologically clear, and the etymological dictionaries suggest different solutions, either considering these words as cognates or looking for other etymological connections. More light on the issue could be thrown by Old Church Slavonic študь ‘custom, manners, morals’ which has not been taken into account so far while reflecting the etymologies of the abovementioned words. Old Church Slavonic word corresponds to older Czech cud ‘discipline, good manners’ and this noun (in its late Proto Slavonic form) can be taken as a basis for the verb (Old Czech cúditi etc.) in the meaning ‘to clean, brush, remove’ and the adjective (Czech cudný etc.) in the meaning ‘chaste, modest, moral’. The Proto Slavonic root of the word can be reconstructed as * tjud from Pre Slavonic * teud which can be traced back to Indo European * teuH ‘to protect, friendly give one’s mind to sb.’. Nominal derivatives of this root offer striking semantic parallels in Germanic: Old English geđiede ‘good, decent, chaste’, đēaw ‘custom, manners, morals’, Old High German, Old Saxon thau ‘discipline’.

The subject of this review is the monograph of Professor Stefan Warchoł on the (pre)history of the Indo‑European peoples in the light of Slavic archaic vocabulary: appellativa and zoonymy (mainly names of cows), which occurs on the whole Slavic territory.

Maria Janion (1926–2020), an oustanding humanist, scholar, critic, historian of literature; a professor at the Institute of Literary Research in the Polish Academy of Sciences, author of twenty books and several hundred articles; expert on Polish and European Romanticism; the tutor of the many generations of humanists. She died in Warsaw on August 23rd, 2020.

This paper presents the attempts carried out at the start of the twentieth century by Austro-Hungarian Army specialists in camouflage painting. Consideration to the landscape features of the surroundings helped the army to protect the fortifications from enemy observation. Against the background of global and European trends, where the development of camouflage came only after the outbreak of the First World War, these experiments were innovative and pioneering. This topic is important because of the international and European context of the research and introducing practical issues for a proper approach to reconstructing and conserving historic fortifications. The research was conducted in Austria, Poland, Italy, Croatia, Montenegro, and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Previous studies of camouflage with paint in Austro-Hungarian fortifications are incidental and contributory, hence the need for a cross-sectional approach and practical recommendations. Inquiries, literature studies, analysis of available archival sources and the limited iconographic material, and field research were conducted. The results indicate that there was no general camouflage painting scheme in Austria-Hungary and each site was treated individually within its unique context.
The study aims to conclude how to properly read the relics of camouflage painting and preserve and protect this specific engineering heritage. It is also possible to formulate guidelines on the basis of the results. The restoration of such paintings for educational purposes might be a part of conservation work programs, and the more extensive revaluation of architecturae militaris monuments that has recently been taking place both in Poland and abroad.

In the article the author acquaints the readers with a number of renovated nineteenth-century market halls, that are located in Barcelona, as well as the Markthal, a new and large market hall opened in Rotterdam in 2014. Avant-garde contemporary designs were presented, demonstrating the philosophy of introducing new shapes into a historical environment different for each architect. Apart from the predominant function of selling foodstuffs from practically all over the world, market halls are places, that are proof of the individuality and local traditions of every European city.

The following article presents a selection of the most interesting examples of transformations of public space in towns and cities of varying sizes in Lesser Poland which were aided by European grants obtained from the pool of EU funds, with special attention to the Lesser Poland Regional Operational Programme (ROP) an also the Rural Development Programme (RDP) in the years 2007-2013. The presented findings are of a preliminary nature and are phase in the wider studies being conducted by the Author covering the multifaceted transformations of public space that have taken place and are taking place in Poland with the aid of European funding. The aim of these studies is an overall evaluation of how, in specific planning periods, the joining of the European Union and the possibility of taking advantage of Western experience, as well as financial support, influenced and influence today the transformations of public space in Polish towns and cities, and their influence on people’s thoughts and perceptions of such space.

The interdisciplinary report is an effect of the work of a team of experts appointed by Division I for Humanities and Social Sciences, Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN). The team consisted of representatives of academic committees of the division. Its task was to formulate answers to 20 questions most frequently asked in public discourse regarding costs and benefits of the European integration, relations between Poland and the EU authorities, threats to the integration, the future of the EU and the place of Poland in the Community. The authors express concern about the potential results of the negative attitude of the current Polish government towards the actions of the institutions of the EU, the growing criticism towards the European integration and the threat of marginalisation of Poland within the EU or even the possibility of Poland’s leaving the EU (Polexit). They also indicate the possible economic, political and civilizational outcomes of the actions of the Polish authorities which weaken Poland’s ties to the EU. The report urges the academic community to increase their research activity and involvement in the public debate regarding these vital issues.

Temperature rise together with resultant ice cover retreat in Svalbard, changes in hydrology and geomorphology of fjords and coastal waters is presented as forming force for the marine habitats. Satellite data show increase of habitat complexity following the tidal glaciers retreat and emergence of new (315 km) and complex shoreline. Most evident changes occur in the inner-fjord settings of the west coast of archipelago, while habitats of exposed marine shores and eastern sector of Svalbard remains little changed. It is hypothesized, that decrease in ice cover opens more space for life compared to the cold period.

The case law of the CJEU dealing with the rule of law touches upon the question of execution of European Arrest Warrants (EAWs) issued by Polish courts. The year 2020 witnessed the second important judgment of the CJEU in this respect (the Dutch case). As in its 2018 predecessor (the Irish case), the CJEU excluded the possibility of overt denial of all EAWs issued by Polish courts. Instead it insists on a two-step examination, comprising not only a general evaluation but also the examination of the individual situation of a requested person. It remains to be seen whether this is a promise of armistice in the CJEU’s approach to Poland, although this is not believed by the author of the text.

The article presents the main elements of the European transport policy and the issues prevailing in the public debate in the last decade, i.e. 2010-2020. In particular, it analyses the challenges for European transport resulting from the need to combat climate change and to ensure a high level of environmental protection and safety, while taking into account the progressing technological revolution. The main assumptions of the European Green Deal, which aims to achieve climate neutrality by the European Union by 2050, are presented. The example of maritime transport serves to describe how various transport sectors are being brought into line with EU climate targets.

The Polish Government’s proposal, submitted in autumn 2017, for a comprehensive reprivatisation bill revived the international discussion on the scope of Polish authorities’ obligations to return property taken during World War II and subsequently by the communist regime. However, many inaccurate and incorrect statements are cited in the discussions, e.g. the argument that the duty of the Polish authorities to carry out restitution is embedded in the European Convention on Human Rights and its Protocol No. 1. This article challenges that claim and analyses the jurisprudence of the Convention’s judicial oversight bodies in cases raising issues of restitution of property taken over in Poland before the accession to both of the above-mentioned international agreements. In the article I argue that there is no legal basis for claiming that there exists a legal obligation upon the Polish State stemming directly from international law – in particular human rights law – to return the property and that the only possibly successful legal claims in this regard are those that can already be derived from the provisions of the Polish law applicable to these kinds of cases. In its latest rulings, issued in 2017–2019, the European Court of Human Rights determined the scope of responsibility incumbent on Polish authorities in this respect.

The aim of the work is to present one of the most important structures of the last decade — the European Central Bank in Frankfurt am Main, against the background of the role which a sustainable skyscraper can play in the urban composition of a modern city. A literature query and original in situ research show that from the beginning of the 20th century, skyscrapers have become a symbol of the success and importance of cities and metropolises. At the same time, most of the historic skylines of European cities were saved from ‘Manhattanization’. One of the exceptions is Frankfurt, the financial capital of the EU. This paper discusses the construction of the ECB building, both as another important landmark in the city’s urban composition and as an innovative, sustainable structure. The results show that the location of an important high-rise building with a prestigious function in the urban structure confirms the city’s status. At the same time, it was proved that the technological and formal solutions used in the complex, together with the reuse of the built structure (recycling of architecture), may contribute to the reduction of the carbon footprint and maintaining high environmental standards.

The strategic goals of EU energy development have been clarified, based on efforts to increase and comply with environmental protection requirements, reducing energy consumption in the manufacturing and service sector, reduce dependence on energy imports, and increase the involvement of renewable resources in energy. The structure of the unified energy system of Ukraine was monitored. The volumes of electricity released by various power-generating enterprises in Ukraine, as well as the existing capacity of main and inter-state electric power grids for transmission of electricity, were analyzed. The volume of electricity exports and imports of the unified energy system of Ukraine and its possibilities to increase exports to the EU countries have been diagnosed. It has been proven that due to the change in the operating model of the electricity market the liberalization of the electricity market of Ukraine promotes the attraction of investment resources aimed at branching the possibilities of importing electricity generated in Ukraine into the ENTSO-E system. The structural tendencies of changes in generated electricity in final consumption at the expense of renewable energy sources of the European countries and Ukraine were studied. Options for increasing the efficiency of renewable energy sources are proposed The use of renewable energy sources on the basis of leveling out certain disadvantages is proposed. The directions improve the management of electricity enterprises in the conditions of the European integration choice of Ukraine including towards attracting investment resources through the use of public-private partnerships to improve the efficiency of the energy system of Ukraine are substantiated.