Right-wing populism has through the past decades flourished in several countries in Europe. Research has shown that right-wing populism is, with its political starting point in ?the people?, focusing on the majority and is sometimes excluding the minorities from the politics. Since human rights regulations are mainly a protection of minority rights, the aim is to examine if the politics of the Sweden Democrats, as a case of a growing right-wing populist party, is a threat to human rights and in that case, in what respects. The thesis is supposed to answer the question in what respects the politics of the Sweden Democrats contravene with the European Convention?s protection of minority rights.

This thesis examines the European Union's sanctions policy regarding human rights and interdependence. Previous research has discussed whether sanctions are effective or result in desirable outcomes. This paper aims to take a step back and understand motives by analyzing consistency in the EU?s decisions to impose sanctions. The question is relevant because formal justification can be used to cloak actual motives, and by examining actual decisions, the analyses shed light on motives.

The aim of this paper is to describe and explain which policy instruments for human rights (HR) the United States and the European Union use towards Burma and to examine the priority given to HR in their respective foreign policy. From the results of an empirical analysis this paper seeks to analyze the US and the EU as powers in the international system and aims to explain their behavior from this theoretical perspective. From the theoretical approaches used I conclude that these actors act in different ways regarding the Burmese issue. This is partially due to the structure of the international system. Both actors primarily use different forms of diplomatic tools and sanctions to try to force change for HR in Burma.

The study seeks knowledge about the Swedish euro-scepticism and about the work of the Swedish euro-sceptical Members of the European Parliament (MEPs). How do they work in an environment where the norm is to have a positive attitude towards a future federal state of Europe? How do they regard their own situation and possibilities to make a change?The study includes a debate on today's Swedish euro-scepticism as background. My finding about the MEPs? work is that their way of acting in the European Parliament does not distinguish from other MEPs? in large.

The main purpose of this essay is to study the Swedish labor law concerning employees who are, aspire to be, or are expected to become parents, both men and women. Thereby accomplishing a gender perspective on the issue at hand. The study also take in to account the laws issued by the European Union, and their impact on the Swedish law system, so as to gain an international perspective. The laws regarding parental leave, both Swedish and European, involve protection for workers from being treated in a less favorable way than someone in a comparable situation, as employers are forbidden to disfavor any employee or job-seeker in basically all situations in the work place or in a recruiting context, if the disfavor is in any way related to the parental leave. The only situation where an employer is allowed to disfavor an employee regarding his or her parental leave, is if the disfavoring is a necessary consequent of the employee?s absence.

Corruption is a very broad definition which is not easy to define. It happens due to the phenomenon?s complexity and its many different forms and syndromes. Before fighting corruption it is therefore necessary to find its roots and form. Furthermore, many countries aspire today for a better democracy but find visible barriers on their ways in a form of corruption i.a.

The aim of this thesis is to study perceptions around the freedom of movement of workers within the EU before and after its enlargement in 2004, both on a Swedish and a European level. I have chosen to conduct my study using a discourse analysis as a structure for my theory and method. Theories based on previous research have also been used. My material consists of Communications from the European Commission, Swedish Command Papers as well as a research report. One of the main findings is that at a Swedish level, there is concern about how the free movement of workers will affect the labour market and welfare system.

Purpose: The purpose of the investigation is to give an insight to hot the EU legal environment in the field of vertical relationships influences the competitiveness of the 2nd tier of the automobile industry. Conclusion:It follows that European legislation has succeedded in raising the competitiveness by breaking down the powers of the predominantly more powerful companies that the 2nd tier players do business with and by giving companies sufficient leeway to act. The comment must be made here that serious problems due to a power misbalance might still exist yet are not uncovered. In the course of my research I have found a lack of issues in my subject field. These problems however would have a more structural and economical cause, dealing with these problems would fall outside the boundaries of the competence of European competition legislation.

The European Court of Justice, the ECJ, has the governing function in the Union as a guardian of law and justice. Even today, with a Union of 15 memberstates, statistics show that the ECJ and the Court of First Instance have increasing difficulties in fulfilling their tasks. This situation is chiefly a cause of an increasing number of cases raised. Due to this, profound changes have to be made in order to preserve common lawagreements in a future expansion of the Union. The purpose of this paper is to exam which changes the Courts have to make in order to meet an increased amount of cases that an enlarged Union would mean..

This bachelor thesis is a study of the European Union as a role model in the world. Its main focus is to answer the question ?In what respects did the European Union (EU) work as a model at the establishment of the African Union (AU) and the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR)?? By doing so it hopes to shed some light on how other unions in the world contemplate the EU. The method is partly theoretical and partly empirical. In the theoretical part, the thesis discusses in what respects the African Union and the Union of South American Nations might and might not be similar to the European Union.

The high debt levels experienced in European Countries have lead to academic interest in the deficit bias -the tendency for governments to run budget deficits and accumulate debt. In part one of this thesis a surveyof the economic literature on the origins and solutions to the deficit bias are conducted. The proposedinstitutional solution to the deficit bias in the form of Fiscal Policy Councils (FPC) are outlined and existingEuropean FPCs presented. Based on the works of Calmfors and Wren-Lewis (2011) the EuropeanCommission (EC) is defined as an FPC. Based on this survey, two hypothesis are formulated: (1) theforecasts of future macro-economic events and fiscal performance will differ between the national FPCs andthe national government.

The general aim of this paper is to describe how the European Union can affect and transfer their conditionality politics to the Western Balkan countries. A specific purpose of this study is to describe and explain what we in this paper consider to be a specific additional membership criterion, regional cooperation that has been especially designed for this region. The point of departure for this paper is Europeanization theory that will be used to study the European Union?s impact on non EU-members in Europe. The theoretical Europeanization mechanisms are taken from Heather Grabbes ?Europeanization model?.

This thesis aims to investigate whether the parties Danish People?s Party, the Progress Party, the Finns Party and the Sweden Democrats can be categorized within the same party family, based upon the parties positions regarding the EU and European integration. The thesis contributes to increased knowledge and deeper understanding about these parties stances toward the EU and European integration, with a particular focus on how euroscepticism is expressed within each party. The thesis addresses the following research questions: which category of euroenthusiast, europragmatist, eurosceptic and euroreject best describes each of the four parties? Do the parties fall within the same category, or are they dispersed across different categories? The categories are based on different conceptualizations of euroscepticism (Kopeck? & Mudde, 2002), which composes the theoretical framework along with an analytical scheme based on the different conceptualizations.

The fundamental freedoms and human rights is something the countries, and its citizens, of theEuropean Union more or less take for granted. However, in recent years these rights have become atopic of discussion in the way that a debate about the Islamic headscarves has developed. Thisdebate has resulted in that a number of countries, including France, have taken legislative measuresto ban clothing that fully covers ones face. Out of these bans a discussion has arisen concerning thefundamental freedoms and human rights. These burqa bans, as it is labeled in the pubic debate, havebeen accused to wrongfully limit the individuals freedoms and human rights.This study therefore has the aim to analyze these burqa bans in relation to the European Union,United Nations and the Council of Europe?s general declarations concerning the fundamentalfreedoms and basic human rights.The main result of this study shows that these bans in fact is not a proportionally restrict in thefundamental freedoms and human rights.

Background: A large part of the daily political and economic debate in Sweden concerns the EU. One question that has been debated since the beginning of European integration is whether trade is created as a consequence of integration and, ifso, how great are the gains related to the increased trade. An equally important but maybe less debated question is whether countries outside the union are affected by the increased European integration. Is increased European integration made at the cost of countries outside the EU? Purpose: The purpose of this study is, by calculating trade creation and trade diversion, to evaluate if a number of developing countries? trade with Sweden has decreased after Sweden?s membership in the European Union.