Showing papers on "Directive published in 1994"

A cross‐cultural study of directive sequences and some implications for compliance‐gaining research

Abstract: Compliance gaining has been widely studied in communication research as a phenomenon central to interpersonal life. Yet the category of attempts to compel the actions of others, labeled as directives in pragmatics and ethnography, has received little specific attention, despite its close connection to actual spoken life. This essay presents an ethnographic examination of directive sequences in two speech communities, one in the U.S. and one in Colombia, with emphasis on the distinctive belief systems revealed by directive use. Data from several earlier studies of compliance gaining are then reexamined to show that patterns of results obtained in those studies are consistent with the cultural values of U.S. Americans and inconsistent with the values of Colombians. The likelihood that those patterns reveal cultural underpinnings in the constructs of personality, situation, and gender is then discussed.

Safety issues in modern applications of robots

Abstract: Most industrial robots have the capability of inflicting serious injuries to anyone unfortunate enough to come into contact with them when they are working at normal speeds. During programming and maintenance, for example, it may be necessary for work to be done in close proximity with the robot with power available to its actuators. From January 1995 machines not undergoing the appropriate EC conformity assessment and not declared to comply with the essential health and safety requirements of the Council Directive of 14 June 1989 on the approximation of the laws of the Member States relating to machinery may not be marketed in the European Community. This Directive is commonly known as the Machinery Directive: it is enacted in UK Law by The Supply of Machinery (Safety) Regulations 1992. The directive requires a machine's manufacturer, or the manufacturer's representative in the European community to ensure and guarantee that certain technical documentation, including a technical construction file, is and will remain on his premises for any inspection purposes. It is intended that this documentation demonstrate how the essential safety requirements have been met. As machinery becomes more complex it will become more difficult to demonstrate that it is, indeed, safe. This paper outlines requirements of the machinery directive, discusses potential difficulties in validating the safety of computer controlled machinery and introduces strategies for designing safe systems.

Patients' and healthcare providers' opinions regarding advance directives.

Abstract: PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES To gain a better understanding of patients' and healthcare providers' preferences regarding when, how, and by whom advance directive information should be given and to explore the nursing role in advance directives. DESIGN A qualitative study using focus group methodology. SETTING A National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer center located within a large, university-affiliated, tertiary care hospital in the northeastern United States. SAMPLE Two samples participated in the study: eight adult ambulatory patients with cancer and 15 healthcare providers (4 physicians, 10 nurses, and 1 social worker). METHODS Separate patient and provider focus groups were conducted in private rooms by experienced facilitators using an interview guide with questions based on the literature, the hospital's advance directive materials, and the investigators' experience; sessions were audio-taped, transcribed, and analyzed using qualitative data analysis techniques. FINDINGS Patients and healthcare providers discussed focus group questions and commented that advance directive discussions should be provided early in the treatment or illness, presented in a short and simple format with reading materials at a level appropriate for the patient, and continued throughout the illness with those who desire follow-up. Nurses, doctors, social workers, or a designated/trained advance directive person were individuals that the patients identified as people with whom they could have advance directive discussions. CONCLUSIONS Results suggested that advance directive information should be given prior to hospital admission, be provided in a variety of formats, and that nurses, social workers, doctors, or designated staff representatives could all be part of the advance directive process. NURSING IMPLICATIONS Nursing roles should include early assessment of patients to determine needs for discussion, advocacy on behalf of patients, and provision of information. Future research should examine use of specific personnel for facilitating advance directives and compare different formats for presenting advance directive information to patients.

European Rule-making in Accounting: The Seventh Directive as a Case Study

Abstract: This paper analyses EC rule-making, using the Seventh Directive as a case study. Three stages of a Directive's life are identified, with different key players taking the lead. The paper analyses the evolution of the Seventh Directive up to its adoption in 1983, looking at 19 key features. The adopted Directive is close to previous UK consolidation practices, but investigation shows that, from its origins in the late 1960s to the published drafts of the late 1970s, it showed clear German parentage. The coalition of forces leading to the major changes from German to UK practices is examined.

An international view of true and fair accounting

Abstract: 1. What They Say about True and Fair - A Survey of the English Language Literature 2. True and Fair - A Survey of UK Financial Directors 3. True and Fair - UK Auditors' View 4. The True and Fair Requirement - Impact on and of the Fourth Directive 5. Debating True and Fair in Australia - An Exercise in Deharmonization.

Advance Directives: Implications for Policy

Abstract: One mark of a maturing discipline is its members' willingness to expose the field's accepted wisdom to scrutiny and challenge. In any applied field, such scrutiny must include consideration of whether accepted theoretical principles are well-suited to real life conditions. We in bioethics are fortunate to have many colleagues eager to explore the practical dimensions of various theoretical viewpoints. One of their most popular subjects has been the advance treatment directive, and the empirical findings to date have important implications for health care policy. The empirical data on advance directives provide guidance at two policy levels. At the broadest level, the empirical data challenge the existing consensus that directives are the ideal mechanism for resolving decisions on life-sustaining treatment for incompetent patients. The data speak to the question of how much financial and other support the government, health care institutions, and other funding sources should devote to educating and otherwise encouraging members of the public to complete a directive. At the second level, the data suggest some targets for "tinkering." That is, if we agree that directives are valuable to at least some segment of the population, what can we do to remove existing unnecessary and unjustified impediments to their use? Other contributors to this supplement offer helpful suggestions on removing these impediments. I will instead focus on the broader implications of some of the empirical findings. The assumption underlying most of the bioethics and legal commentary, as well as the relevant empirical research, has been that advance directives, and the exercise of "precedent autonomy"[1] they represent, constitute the preferred approach to determining how aggressively to treat seriously ill incompetent patients. Implicit in most of the literature is die notion that it would be good if more people completed advance directives. This judgment can be contested, however. Why are directives preferable to other possible approaches to end-of-life decisionmaking for incompetent patients? Why are they preferable to, for example, an approach that permits close relatives or friends to decide how aggressively to treat such patients, after consultation with caregivers and within a range of choices deemed acceptable by courts, legislators, and other institutions involved in establishing normative standards in our society Philosophers and others favoring the advance directive approach have contended that since autonomy is @and ought to be assigned a high priority by most members of this society, it should carry the most weight in resolving decisions on medical treatment. When it comes to patients who cannot tell us how they would exercise their autonomy when a question concerning life-sustaining treatment arises, we should look to their past expressions of autonomy to resolve the question. Any possible alternative approach is second-best, to be used only when patients fail to leave us an indication of how they would decide. In recent years, a few writers have questioned the moral justification for assigning directives this high priority.[2] But the empirical data suggest another kind of weakness in the advance directive approach: irrelevance. The arguments favoring advance directives assume that autonomy over one's future as an incompetent patient is a precious freedom that law and policy should go to great lengths to protect. But how important is precedent autonomy to people in this country Precedent autonomy clearly is important to many of the philosophers, legal academics, and policy makers writing on this subject. Empirical findings, however, indicate that many study subjects do not understand what an advance directive is and that fewer still have undertaken to complete a formal directive. These data suggest that the exercise of precedent autonomy might not be very important to most of the public. At least, not so important that they are willing to take the time and trouble to learn about directives and to complete a written directive. …

Following advance directives.

Abstract: As we define the ethical framework in which directives operate, we must heed empirical research. Studies indicate that patients, wishes about life-sustaining treatments are not entirely stable over time, though choices to forgo life-sustaining treatment seem to be much more stable than choices to receive such treatment.[1] One report provides an excellent description of the vacillation and ambivalence of patients, choices when life-threatening events occur;[2] another indicates that patients vary in how strictly they wish to have their advance directives followed.[3] Very little research on the impact of advance directives upon decisions at the time of life-threatening events has been conducted. In a prospective study of advance directives that I and my collaborators conducted, several findings warranted attention.[4] First, even though the directives were created in an institutional long-term care setting and were available in the medical record, they were often left behind when patients were transferred to the acute care hospital. Second, even though the directive specified treatment choices for a variety of circumstances, including critical illness, terminal illness, and permanent unconsciousness, they were not applicable in all circumstances. The most striking finding, however, is that the advance directives were not always followed. Analysis of individual cases revealed two situations in which directives were not followed: when the preference in the directive was too restrictive to allow care that the family or provider believed to be approriate at the moment of illness, or when the family or provider did not believe the preferred care would be beneficial. Care was most likely to be consistent with previously expressed wishes if the patient remained competent, the directions were those previously expressed by the family, or the outcome event led to transfer to an acute care hospital setting where explicit discussion of treatment decisions was perhaps more likely. Anecdotal reports confirm that the existence of an advance directive may not lead to care consistent with a patient's wishes unless a surrogate vigorously asserts the validity of the directive.[5] On a positive note, one study reports that dialysis patients who had either written or verbal advance directives were much more likely than patients without directives to be reconciled to their death and to experience a death characterized by good interactions among patient, family, and medical staff., Mixed results have been reported from studies examining whether advance directives affect the cost of care at the end of life.[7] In sum, research shows that while use of advance directives may be associated with a more graceful death, these documents do not speak loudly on their own and have equivocal effects upon health care costs. While these empirical data are informative, changes in the medical approach to the end of life and die reimbursement of medical practice may have even more influence on the way we incorporate advance directives into practice. When Luis Kutner and later Sissela Bok conceived of living wills, modern medicine was tightly focused upon utilizing newly developed, life-sustaining treatments to prolong life. At the same time, the practice of medicine was reimbursed almost exclusively on a fee-for-service basis that created incentives for the physician to do more rather than less. Thus living wills were designed so that individuals who wished to forgo treatment at the end of life could fend off these tendencies. Since that time there has been a cascade of pressures upon and changes in the delivery of medical care that exert a much larger and different influence upon end-of-life decisions. New research information, demographics, economics, and ethics all have dampened the urge to use life-sustaining treatments indiscriminately at the end of life. Outcomes research has made us much more cognizant of the limited capacity of therapy to prolong life. …

Which advance directive do patients prefer

Abstract: This study examined patient acceptance of two different advance directives. Outpatients completed the two directives and a 12-item acceptability questionnaire for each, and then stated their directive preferences. Of 128 patients enrolled, 97 (76%) responded. Overall, 47% of the respondents were satisfied with the Let Me Decide directive and 53% with the Medical Directive (NS). Thirty-nine percent preferred the Let Me Decide directive, 37% preferred the Medical Directive, and 25% had no preference or were uncertain which they preferred. Although there was no difference in patient acceptance between the directives, 76% of the patients preferred one or the other. Therefore, different people like different directives, and a variety of directives should be available for patients to review before they complete one.

Furthering the Effectiveness of Ec Directives and the Judicial Protection Of Individual Rights Thereunder

Abstract: THE achievement of a certain degree of legal harmony among the States of the European Community in fields such as tax law, company law, sex discrimination law, labour law, consumer law and environmental law, depends to a large extent on the adoption and implementation of directives. According to Article 189 of the EEC Treaty, these are binding upon the member States, which are under the obligation to adopt "within the framework of their national systems, all the measures necessary to ensure that the directive is fully effective, in accordance with the objectives which it pursues".' Non-implementation of a directive constitutes a serious breach of Community law (more specifically, of Articles 189 and 5 of the EEC Treaty),2 which has a substantial negative impact on the process of integration. A member State which fails to implement a directive deprives the directive of its intended result, brings into question the equality of member States under Community law by endangering the fundamental requirement of its uniform application, creates discrimination between European citizens, and impairs individual rights. The European Court of Justice has always been conscious of the costs that member States' failure to implement directives could have for the achievement of the objectives of the Treaty, and has obviously been no less aware of the limited reach of Articles 169 to 171 as means to get directives implemented within the member States. For the Court "a genuine rule of law in the European context implies binding rules which apply uniformly and which protect individual rights".3 In its search to overcome this "deficiency" of the "new legal order" it has explored various ways of maximising, through the national courts, the effectiveness of directives, so as to protect rights which they are designed to confer upon individuals. In this process the Court has woven a complex system

The European Union's Investment Services Directive

Abstract: The EU has become the world’s primary actor in accomplishing multinational regulatory harmony in the field of securities regulation. In its recent adoption of the Investment Services Directive, the EU has completed a critical chapter of its evolving regulatory code for the European capital markets. While the Directive’s multistate licensing scheme, critical to the establishment of an internal market for financial services, was from the beginning based on an uncontested conceptual verity, no similar consensus existed on a number of related controversies that emerged. This article describes the EU’s previous achievements in the field of securities regulation, including the policies underlying the proposal and adoption of the Investment Services Directive. It then surveys the scope and major provisions of the Directive and discusses the more controversial issues that divided the Member States into opposing camps. In its analysis of the Directive’s substantive terms, this article notes several of the Directive’s deficiencies, including the failure to establish minimum commonality in the areas of administrative and judicial remedies for investors, conduct-of-business rules and transactional disclosure. The article concludes by noting that the Directive, despite its limited success in achieving an integrated European market system, represents a remarkable advance in the development of the EU’s multinational securities code.

TUPE or not TUPE: Competitive tendering and the transfer laws

Abstract: This article examines the challenge to the Governments policy of market testing represented by the European Union's Acquired Rights Directive. The aim of the Directive, expressed in UK legislation through the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 1981, is to safeguard jobs, terms and union recognition under a new employer. The authors examine the effect of market testing on jobs and employment conditions and the significance of the protection afforded by the European Union.

What makes a directive valid

Abstract: Advance directives apply to those individuals who are incapable of having a wish. It is necessarily the case that the purpose of advance directives cannot be to express the wishes of a wishless individual. In contrast to some previous interpretations, advance directives, therefore, should not be understood to be about what a wishless person would have wanted if they could have a wish. Rather, advance directives are about what a person did want in advance, and the directives that we honor concern the surviving interests of the patient.[1] The same form of justification applies to estate wills. The theoretical basis for advance directives is that the end of life and the process of death are critical matters that the individual has more right to manage than any other person.[2] The person who leads it, more than any other person, has a rightful interest in molding the narrative whole that is her or his life. The argument that the patient with an advance directive made a mistake rarely holds, because the possibility of misjudgment is hard - if not impossible - to establish, and because the right to manage surviving interests includes the right to judge differently from others.[3] From the above reasoning it follows that substituted judgments for wishless individuals should be used to judge as they would have when they were competent if they had considered the situation that ultimately arose. Best interests judgments for wishless individuals then should be reserved for situations in which surviving interests cannot be ascertained or in which the patient stated in advance that best interests judgments may be used. There are limits to the situations in which advance directives carry moral validity. In particular, patients who are capable of having a wish but are decisionally incapacitated fall into a conceptually distinct category. When a person is radically changed and the narrative theme of this person's life - the theme that motivated the advance directive - has changed, the advance directive may no longer be valid. Although it is in practice extremely difficult, first, to define clearly which people belong in this liminal category and second, to know their wishes, it may occasionally be reasonable to disregard their advance directives. People have a surviving interest in managing their moments of incapacity, but people also have an interest in being protected from unreasonable bondage to an action they would have changed if they could.[4] , Note, however, that this limit applies to situations in which advance directives are morally valid. It does not alter the fundamental justifying argument: whenever advance directives are morally valid it is by reason of surviving interests. Practical Criteria of Moral Validity: Seeking Empirical Standards If it is clear that advance directives are justified by surviving interests, the standards by which to judge directives' validity are also clear. First, directives must meet standard criteria for real-time informed consent for medical decisionmaking.[5] The person must have adequate and fairly framed information about the procedure in question, the risks, benefits, and alternatives. Next, the person must be competent to consent or make the decision(s); the decision(s) must be uncoerced. And finally, the decisions should ideally be made with due attention to the process and context, so that there is an established therapeutic relationship with an advising physician, consultants are involved where relevant, and family members and others are involved as appropriate. Moreover, directives must meet standards that are specifically relevant to advance decisionmaking. First, the documentation of preferences should be made in ways that accurately present wishes. For this to occur, predrafted documents and worksheets should be validated. Second, the preferences should be reasonably stable. While genuine changes in preference based on new experience or education are acceptable and even desirable, fleeting changes in preferences should be excluded ahead of time if possible. …

Risk communication in the Netherlands: The Monitored Introduction of the EC 'Post Seveso' Directive

Abstract: Implementation of article 8.1 of the EC-“Seveso” Directive (82/501/EC) is now under way in many countries in Europe. In The Netherlands, the implementation of the Directive started with a carefully monitored introduction of active information provision at two sites (Dordrecht and Elst). This introduction was supported by a multidisciplinary research group. This group helped to develop the risk communication program and also played a role in the evaluation of the program. This paper describes these processes and their evaluation. We will focus on the design of the risk communication programs and the effects of the programs on knowledge and attitudes of the local target groups. This effort and its results clearly started an institutional learning process involving governmental bodies at several organizational levels (local, regional, and national), and industrial organizations (individual firms and organizations of industries). Monitoring the design, the implementation, and the effects of active information provision proves an effective means to gain experience with the implementation of the Seveso Directive and could help to facilitate further implementation.

The European Product Liability Directive: A Comparison with U.S. Law, an Analysis of Its Impact on Trade, and a Recommendation for Reform So as to Accomplish Harmonization and Consumer Protection

Abstract: I. Introduction On July 25, 1985, the Council of the European Communities adopted a product liability directive(1) (the Directive) that has engendered a wide and varied debate among industry and consumer groups,(2) as well as within the legal community.(3) The Directive(4) has been legislatively adopted by all the Member States of the European Union (EU) (as the European Community (EC) is now known) except Ireland, France, and Spain.(5) However, the debate over the Directive's impact on litigation and on competition in the EU has yet to be resolved. This Note will undertake an analysis of the Directive with an eye toward that debate. The author will first analyze the Directive, its history and implementation, and the interesting and relevant differences between it and U.S. product liability law, from a doctrinal standpoint. The Note will next discuss the impact of the Directive on trade in light of various predictions by scholars. The author will explain why fears of a European product liability crisis on a U.S. scale are unfounded, in large part because of the important procedural structures discouraging litigation in Europe. The analysis will conclude with a call for reform of the Directive itself, justified by the Directive's purported goals of protecting European consumers and harmonizing European product liability law so as to create a level competitive playing field in the EU.(6) II. The Scope and Direction of the Directive The Directive begins with a simple but far-reaching prescription: "The producer shall be liable for damage caused by a defect in his product."(7) Thus, with a single sentence, the Directive wipes away years of negligence doctrine in European product liability law, with one caveat. After a Member State has enacted the Directive, a plaintiff may still employ that country's previously available tort and contract remedies,(8) unless the individual country's enabling legislation eliminates them. The Directive next defines key relevant terms such as product, producer, and defective.(9) The term product, which includes electricity, encompasses all movable articles except primary agricultural products and game.(10) The Directive's designation of what qualifies as a producer is expansive, and therefore threatens more individuals and companies with liability than those currently exposed to litigation under the present legal regimes in EU countries.(11) The Directive provides that product or component part manufacturers, producers of raw materials, and those who present themselves as producers all meet the definition of producers.(12) Were these the only qualifications, perhaps the Directive would not have occasioned such an outcry from industry concerns. However, the Directive also defines those who import products into the EU as producers.(13) Finally, the Directive permits plaintiffs to treat each supplier (of the product causing the injury) as a defendant-producer unless that supplier apprises the plaintiff "of the identity of the producer or of the person who supplied him with the product."(14) This places the burden on the named defendant to prove that he is not the producer. Thus, the Directive places a higher burden on product liability defendants than they face under U.S. law, where the burden of proof for identifying the defendant rests with the plaintiff.(15) Further, under Article 4, the plaintiff need only prove the defect in the product, the damage suffered, and the causal link between the two.(16) Implicitly, the plaintiff is encouraged to assert that any supplier is the producer, thereby forcing the named supplier to try and avoid liability by naming another "producer," or by proving that "the defect which caused the damage [probably] did not exist . . . when put into circulation by" the supplier but "came into being afterwards."(17) A product is defective under the Directive according to a consumer expectations test. …

Effects on interest rates of immediately releasing fomc directives

Abstract: I. INTRODUCTION Each meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) generally focuses on short-run operations that are consistent with long-run objectives such as price stability. When the FOMC reaches a consensus about the general stance of short-term policy, it transmits a Domestic Policy Directive to the Manager of the Trading Desk at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, providing the Trading Desk with guidance for the conduct of open market operations during the intermeeting period. Unlike changes in other components of monetary policy, however, the contents of a directive are not officially divulged to the public until approximately 45 days after an FOMC meeting. This practice was broken on February 4, 1994 when, in the midst of a two-day meeting, the FOMC announced that it had decided to "increase slightly the degree of pressure on reserve positions . . . [an action] expected to be associated with a small increase in short-term money market rates" (see Board of Governors, 1994). This announcement and releases of FOMC directives on the day of the three subsequent FOMC meetings represented a wholesale change in the FOMC's attitude toward precommitment and the provision of information to financial markets. Until recently, and with the aid of a successful defense of an inquiry under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the six week delay meant that the FOMC released one directive only after it had been supplanted by a new one. Thus, financial market participants always were unaware of the Fed's current policy stance--or, as some members of Congress have argued, sophisticated market participants were able to exploit this delay by discerning signals of policy changes that the average investor did not see. These prompt announcements of directives also rebut key elements of the FOMC's defense in the 1976 FOIA filing. In that defense, the FOMC argued that such precommitment during the inter-meeting period would impair its ability to conduct monetary policy. The FOMC also argued that an "announcement effect" associated with immediate release of the directive would create additional volatility and uncertainty in financial markets. Indeed, the key element of its defense of the 1976 FOIA challenge was evidence that this increased volatility would raise the average level of interest rates by eight basis points and thereby increase the costs to the government of debt financing. However, this evidence was not based on any actual experience with early release of the directives. This absence of market responses to directives released early may have ended in recent years. Periodic stories in the Wall Street Journal have reported the essence of 11 directives less than a week after the FOMC adopted them. Assuming that market participants viewed these stories as credible reports of FOMC decisions, one can employ "leaks" of the directives as empirical proxies for early releases. The analysis here uses these proxies to test whether advance news reports of the directive have engendered any unusual volatility in short-term financial markets. Moreover, in light of recent events, the analysis also focuses on recent Congressional hearings and the recent changes in FOMC practices. II. THE ART OF "FEDSPEAK": THE DOMESTIC POLICY DIRECTIVE The Domestic Policy Directive does not state policy actions in precise language but rather states them in "terms of art that have meaning when read by knowledgeable market participants" (emphasis added; see Axilrod, 1992). Indeed, Stern-light (1976, p. 6), a former manager of the Open Market Desk, writes, "It should be appreciated that full disclosure of the Directive is still not 'perfect information' as to precisely what the Open Market Desk will do--and indeed it is possible at times that disclosure of the Directive would be more misleading than no information at all." Many economists probably would disagree with this assertion, preferring instead Maisel's line of reasoning: "[most] experts on markets . …

The Development of UK and European Major Hazards Legislation and the Review of the Seveso Directive

Abstract: Describes the development of major hazard controls, first domestically in the UK and more recently in the European Community. Traces UK developments are traced from the early concerns of the 1960s, the Flixborough disaster and the work of the Advisory Committee on Major Hazards on which the current philosophy for controlling major hazards is based. Describes in detail the evolution of European Community legislation from the Seveso Directive to the proposed new Directive for the control of major accident hazards (COMAH). The proposed COMAH Directive will be considered in the CEC′s Environment Working Group and Environment Council over the coming months. If these negotiations are successful in reaching common position by the end of 1994, the new Directive is likely to be adopted by the Council of Ministers in 1995. The UK will have to implement the new Directive within 18 months of its adoption.

The professionals' view of the Health and Safety Commission's draft Construction (Design and Management) Regulations

Abstract: This paper reports the situation in early 1993 at the end of the consultation period and before negotiations between the Construction Industry Council and the Health and Safety Executive commenced. These have led to the great majority of the Council's recommendations being accepted. In June 1992 the Council of the European Communities adopted the Directive ‘The minimum safety and health requirements at temporary or mobile construction sites’.This is to be transposed into UK law by new Regulations made under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. The Directive and the Regulations set out to improve coordination of health and safety matters throughout construction, from inception to completion and beyond. New duties will be imposed on clients, designers, on planning supervisors (in fact a coordinator) and on principal contractors. Whilst professionals support the Health and Safety Commission's aims, there is great concern about the practicality of the proposed arrangements and the liability they will ...

An Overview of the Equality Directive On Social Security and Its Implementation in Four Social Security Systems

Abstract: In December 1984 the Equality Directive 79/ 7/EEC on Statutory Social Security schemes came into force. Since then, this Directive has forced changes to the social security systems in the UK, Irela...

The Eu Pregnancy Directive: A Guide for Human Resource Managers

Abstract: Part I Introduction 1. The Common Position of the EC Pregnancy Directive. 2. The Pregnancy Directive: Potential Impact in Britain. 3. Eurostructural Funds and Childcare. 4. Developing Organizational Policies: Pregnancy/Maternity, Parental Rights and Childcare. 5. The Advantages to Employers of Flexible Working Patterns: Quality and Equality. Part II 6. Belgium. 7. Denmark. 8. France. 9. Germany. 10. Greece. 11. Ireland. 12. Italy. 13. Luxembourg. 14. The Netherlands. 15. Portugal. 16. Spain. 17. UK.

On the Coyne-Rasminsky Directive and Responsibility for Monetary Policy in Canada

Abstract: A commonplace is that central banks should be made more independent of democratic political processes. A variant of this major theme is that central bankers should have autonomy over monetary policy, such autonomy being restricted ultimately, of course, to preserve democratic control, by the device of directives issued by their political masters. I investigate here the Canadian variant, the Coyne-Rasminsky Directive. The Directive, though said to be originally designed to strengthen democratic control over the Bank of Canada, has had the opposite effect. It is not just an instrument to enhance the autonomy of the Bank of Canada, it is in fact a device to enhance the autocracy of the Bank, an outcome which is the general product of the attempt to replace discretion with rules in the conduct of monetary policy in a modern democratic state.

European directive on training for general practice

Abstract: Widespread anxiety exists about fully implementing the European Union directive on specific training for general practice. Training for general practice has been mandatory in Britain since 1981, with the legislation embodied in the NHS Vocational Training Regulations.1 These regulations apply to the training of principals in general practice in the NHS, but other categories of doctors, such as locums and assistants, have not needed to comply. In 1986 the European Community introduced legislation to make specific training for general practice mandatory in all member states.2 This directive was consolidated with previous directives in 1993 to become Directive 93/16/EEC3; member states must fully implement it by 1 January 1995. The directive provides for the mutual recognition of diplomas and periods of training the defines the minimum acceptable length of specific training. It also requires that each member state ensures that “the exercise of general practice under national Social Security schemes” from next January should be conditional on doctors having …

Intrinsic safety-the way forward

Abstract: This paper discusses the position of intrinsic safety and low power systems in the context of CENELEC. It avoids discussing the impact of possible EC directives which at the time of writing this paper (November 1993) have not been finalised. In the authors opinion unless these directives are considerably modified then it is impossible to be optimistic about the consequences. The worst case scenario is of the standards being ignored and equipment based on dubious interpretation of the “essential requirements” of the directive certified by a self appointed national certifying authority becoming the norm. The more probable scenario is that industry will carry on as before, virtually ignoring or paying lip service to the directive, confident in the knowledge that the directive is not enforceable and there is no one to enforce it anyway. The United Kingdom will inevitably suffer, because some attempt will be made to enforce the directives. This prognosis is supported by the present situation on surveillance of the manufacture of certified equipment, which is a clear requirement of the existing directive but is only enforced by the UK certifying authorities.

What Is Protected in a Computer Program? - Copyright Protection in the United States and Europe

Abstract: What Makes Computer Program Different? The Law in the United States and Europe America and Europe Compared The EC Software Directive Conclusion Bibliography Index.

Ergonomic standards go beyond hardware

Abstract: European concerns about ergonomics, which are closely linked to worker health and safety have already expanded to a directive that affects user-interface design. Now the European Community is debating whether or not the directive should be tied to a standard, ISO 9241. As ISO 9000 has demonstrated, this is not just a concern for European developers. US developers are also finding that ISO standards gate their entry into the global market. The author reports on the status of this decision. Although conformance issues are still being hotly debated, ISO 9241 may be laying the foundation for more usability standards. Software companies may soon have a new ISO standard to be concerned with. >