This study explores the impact of environmental policies and human development on the CO₂ emissions for the period of 1995–2015 in the Group of Seven and BRICS economies in the long run through panel cointegration and causality tests. The causality analysis revealed a bilateral causality between environmental stringency policies and CO₂ emissions for Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America, and a unilateral causality from CO₂ emissions to the environmental stringency policies for Canada, China, and France. On the other hand, the analysis showed a bilateral causality between human development and CO₂ emissions for Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America, and unilateral causality from CO₂ emissions to human development in Brazil, Canada, China, and France. Furthermore, the cointegration analysis indicated that both environmental stringency policies and human development had a decreasing impact on the CO₂ emissions.

The main objective of the research is to analyze the impact of financial sector development indicators and financial institutions access on primary energy use based on a sample of European Union transition members over 20 years period (1996–2017) through panel cointegration and causality tests that allow for cross-section dependence. The causality analysis revealed that the direction of the causality among financial development indicators, financial institutions access, and primary energy use varied among the countries. On the other side, panel cointegration coefficients disclosed that the financial development index positively affected the primary energy use, but private credit did not have a significant effect on the primary energy use. Furthermore, financial institutions’ access had a significant negative impact on primary energy use. However, country-level cointegration coefficients indicated that the financial development index positively affected the primary energy use in Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Hungary, and Slovenia, and private credit also had a positive impact on primary energy use in Bulgaria, Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, and Slovakia, but the effect of financial development index on primary energy use was found to be very higher than that of private credit. Moreover, financial institutions’ access negatively affected the primary energy use in Croatia, Estonia, Hungary, Poland, and Romania.

The corporate governance of Romanian SMEs states that these companies have been less and less able to generate performance over the last few years. An average number of 1.273 SMEs per year have been included in the study, coming from all the eight local development regions of Romania. The data covers a period of 14 financial years, between 2005 and 2018. The findings showed, after statistical computations using regression models, that the performance of Romanian SMEs depended on the level of external managerial consultancy that corporate governance received from specialized companies and on the increasing level of wages. Given the high flexibility potential of SMEs, these choices are seen as tailored actions and strategies to compete successfully and support sustainable performance in the local context where its trend is downward. Moreover, the act of achieving performance at present is upheld by the performance attained in previous financial years. The impact of these factors could be established as a matter of priority in a long-term approach, for a time lag of up to 3 years. Moreover, the performance of companies covering all the local development regions is influenced only to a small degree by taxation levels, by the frequency of tax supervision performed by government institutions, by the capacity of corporate governance to be up to date with legislative change or by the self-financing of the activity conducted by the companies.

The main goal in this article is to explore the causes and nature of economic migration from the Republic of Moldova. The conceptual and analytical frame­work is based on the widening and deepening of meanings of security, as part of the transition from traditional, Cold War, state-centric understanding of security to the multisectorial approaches of security. Two relevant sectors of security are selected in this study, namely economic security and societal security, because they provide in-depth understanding of economic migration from Gagauzia and Transnistria. The methodology is based on interviews taken with migrant work­ers from the two regions and on interpretation and analysis of research findings. Before discussing the findings, we documented migration experiences of migrant workers who belong to different ethnic groups, tracing their pre-migration situ­ations and post-migration life. Also, we documented how their economic aspira­tions and ethnic identity shaped their migration intentions and perceptions of different countries of destination. W poszukiwaniu bezpieczeństwa ekonomicznego i społecznego. Doświadczenia migrantów ekonomicznych z Naddniestrza i Gagauzji Głównym celem niniejszego artykułu jest zbadanie przyczyn i charakteru migracji zarobkowej z Republiki Mołdawii. Ramy koncepcyjne i analityczne opierają się na poszerzaniu i pogłębianiu znaczenia terminu „bezpieczeństwo” w ramach przejścia od tradycyjnego, zimnowojennego, państwocentrycznego rozumienia do podejścia wielosektorowego. W pracy wybrano dwa istotne sektory bezpieczeństwa, a mianowicie bezpieczeństwo ekonomiczne i bezpieczeństwo społeczne, ponieważ zapewniają one dogłębne zrozumienie migracji ekonomicznej z Gagauzji i Naddniestrza. Metodologia opiera się na wywiadach przeprowadzonych z pracownikami migrującymi z obu regionów oraz na interpretacji i analizie wyników badań. Przed omówieniem wyników zostały udokumentowane doświadczenia migracyjne pracowników migrujących należących do różnych grup etnicznych, przyglądając się ich sytuacji przed i po migracji. Ponadto zbadano również, w jaki sposób aspiracje ekonomiczne i tożsamość etniczna migrantów kształtowały ich intencje migracyjne i postrzeganie różnych krajów docelowych.

The article aims to present and analyse various forms of arranged marriages in Roma communities from Romania and to examine the nature and type of relations between local authorities, through their representatives, and leaders of Roma communities. The main goal is to discuss the ways in which conflicts between Roma cultural values (and decisions taken within the community and endorsed by the informal leader), on the one hand, and the legal aspects pertaining to national law, on the other, are mediated. The main hypothesis is that, despite official parallelism between the two, empirical evidence reveals cases of intense interactions at local level, which are indicative for some forms of re-interpretation, revisiting of certain Roma customs, negotiation, and re-adaptation, as exemplified by public organized weddings or engagements in some Roma communities from Romania.

The article discusses the responsibility to protect (RtoP) and the shift from a right for humanitarian intervention towards a global responsibility to protect civilians, as exemplified by the wording of Resolutions 1970 and 1973. The main goal of the article is to analyse the response of the United Nations to the crisis in Libya and discuss the ways in which responsibility to protect and human security were incorporated throughout the involvement in Libya. The article is structured in three main parts. The first one provides a brief overview of the essentials of the responsibility to protect while the second one focuses on the UN’s incorporation of RtoP. Finally, the last part tackles the degree to which the intervention in Libya reflected an adequate and consistent RtoP framework.