DSpace-CRIS 8

The article discusses the origins of Europe’s religious and historical literacy, leading through distinctions to a common European identity. The phenomenon of cultural and religious adaptation in European identity is analyzed in the case of Lithuania in the 16th–17th centuries. It is shown that, despite the different genetic, religious, and historical characteristics, Europeans have a peculiar commonality. Historical reflection on the cultural structure of Europe makes it possible to talk about the Greek, Jewish, and Arab worlds in the Latin Civilization of Europe. The libraries of monasteries, which accumulated manuscripts of ancient thinkers, language schools, and translation workshops served the religious-cultural revival. The written culture, cherished by Charlemagne, has become a factor in a new religious-cultural identity. The Protestant and Catholic reforms that came with written culture led to the modernization of culture with a variety of religious discourses and an understanding of national identity. With the modernization of the Catholic Church, the idea of ecclesiastical union was realized with the establishment of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church.

The Blue Economy is becoming an increasingly vital component of regional development strategies, offering the potential to decouple economic growth from environmental degradation. It is viewed not only as a source of employment and value creation, but also as a platform for long-term environmental sustainability and innovation. While the Blue Economy integrates social, environmental, and economic dimensions, this study focuses on its contribution to regional economic development in EU coastal countries. Although coastal regions benefit from direct access to marine resources, the scale, structure, and effectiveness of Blue Economy contributions vary significantly across Member States. Acknowledging this heterogeneity, the study examines whether countries with different structural profiles exhibit signs of balanced or at-risk Blue Economies. The analysis draws on secondary data from the European Commission’s Blue Indicators Tool for the period 2009–2021, focusing on gross value added (GVA) and employment. These indicators are used to calculate growth rates and structural indices, including the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index (HHI), Labour Intensity in Manufacturing Index (LIMI), and Relative Regional Specialization Index (RRSI). Using quartile thresholds and quadrant analysis, countries are classified according to their sectoral concentration, labour intensity, and regional advantages. Findings show that the Blue Economy has a divergent impact on regional development. Countries with labour-intensive, tourism-dominated economies—such as Bulgaria, Spain, Italy, Greece, and France—demonstrate declining trends in both GVA and employment. These at-risk economies are highly exposed to demand fluctuations and structural inefficiencies. Moreover, even where economic performance improves, labour involvement is declining due to the automation of services such as tourism. In contrast, balanced economies such as Latvia, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Lithuania, Romania, and Belgium show more diversified sectoral structures, lower labour intensity, and stronger regional advantages. Their Blue Economies are more resilient to shocks and better aligned with digital and innovation-driven transformation. Capital-intensive sectors like shipbuilding, maritime transport, and ocean energy are particularly associated with employment stability and productivity growth. Importantly, the analysis confirms that recent changes in employment dynamics are not directly linked to the COVID-19 crisis or its recovery phase. Instead, the underlying driver is the acceleration of automation and digitalization, which the pandemic only reinforced, particularly in labour-intensive service sectors. While this study is limited to the economic dimension, it acknowledges the crucial role of social and environmental aspects, such as wellbeing, inclusion, and the ecological health of marine and coastal ecosystems. These will be addressed in the subsequent phase of the research.

This study analysed the leadership approaches that determine one of the components of organisational resilience: situational awareness in business organisations. A lack of situational awareness in leadership results in poor decision making and low organisational resilience, which undermines the continuity and sustainability of the organisation’s activities. This observation prompts the following research question: which leadership methods enhance situational awareness and how are these methods effectively applied in business organisations? This study analysed the situational awareness requirements for leadership through leadership methods. With the help of mixed methods that integrate qualitative and quantitative approaches, an empirical study was conducted in eight European countries; in total, 30 leaders of business organisations were interviewed and 3370 employee questionnaires were analysed. The analysis identified the leadership methods that enhance situational awareness; it also presented the assumptions that determine the effectiveness of these methods. The relationship between leadership methods and situational awareness was found to be mediated by the interaction of the two elements of situational awareness with twelve leadership methods. These findings provide a structured approach to explaining how leadership methods affect situational awareness, thus complementing existing theoretical frameworks and encouraging the development of new theoretical models.

Background. Treatment with angiotensin-converting-enzyme (ACE) inhibitors reduces the rate of cardiovascular events among patients with left-ventricular dysfunction and those at high risk of such events. We assessed whether the ACE inhibitor perindopril reduced cardiovascular risk in a low-risk population with stable coronary heart disease and no apparent heart failure. Methods We recruited patients from October, 1997, to June, 2000. 13 655 patients were registered with previous myocardial infarction (64%), angiographic evidence of coronary artery disease (61%), coronary revascularisation (55%), or a positive stress test only (5%). After a run-in period of 4 weeks, in which all patients received perindopril, 12 218 patients were randomly assigned perindopril 8 mg once daily (n=6110), or matching placebo (n=6108). The mean follow-up was 4.2 years, and the primary endpoint was cardiovascular death, myocardial infarction, or cardiac arrest. Analysis was by intention to treat...

Recent comprehensive data provided through the DAISIE project (www.europe-aliens.org) have facilitated the development of the first pan-European assessment of the impacts of alien plants, vertebrates, and invertebrates – in terrestrial, freshwater, and marine environments – on ecosystem services. There are 1094 species with documented ecological impacts and 1347 with economic impacts. The two taxonomic groups with the most species causing impacts are terrestrial invertebrates and terrestrial plants. The North Sea is the maritime region that suffers the most impacts. Across taxa and regions, ecological and economic impacts are highly correlated. Terrestrial invertebrates create greater economic impacts than ecological impacts, while the reverse is true for terrestrial plants. Alien species from all taxonomic groups affect “supporting”, “provisioning”, “regulating”, and “cultural” services and interfere with human well-being. Terrestrial vertebrates are responsible for the greatest range of impacts, and these are widely distributed across Europe. Here, we present a review of the financial costs, as the first step toward calculating an estimate of the economic consequences of alien species in Europe.

1 Pathways describe the processes that result in the introduction of alien species from one location to another. A framework is proposed to facilitate the comparative analysis of invasion pathways by a wide range of taxa in both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Comparisons with a range of data helped identify existing gaps in current knowledge of pathways and highlight the limitations of existing legislation to manage introductions of alien species. The scheme aims for universality but uses the European Union as a case study for the regulatory perspectives. 2 Alien species may arrive and enter a new region through three broad mechanisms: importation of a commodity, arrival of a transport vector, and/or natural spread from a neighbouring region where the species is itself alien. These three mechanisms result in six principal pathways: release, escape, contaminant, stowaway, corridor and unaided. 3 Alien species transported as commodities may be introduced as a deliberate release or as an escape from captivity. Many species are not intentionally transported but arrive as a contaminant of a commodity, for example pathogens and pests. Stowaways are directly associated with human transport but arrive independently of a specific commodity, for example organisms transported in ballast water, cargo and airfreight. The corridor pathway highlights the role transport infrastructures play in the introduction of alien species. The unaided pathway describes situations where natural spread results in alien species arriving into a new region from a donor region where it is also alien. 4 Vertebrate pathways tend to be characterized as deliberate releases, invertebrates as contaminants and plants as escapes. Pathogenic micro-organisms and fungi are generally introduced as contaminants of their hosts. The corridor and unaided pathways are often ignored in pathway assessments but warrant further detailed consideration. 5 Synthesis and applications. Intentional releases and escapes should be straightforward to monitor and regulate but, in practice, developing legislation has proved difficult. New introductions continue to occur through contaminant, stowaway, corridor and unaided pathways. These pathways represent special challenges for management and legislation. The present framework should enable these trends to be monitored more clearly and hopefully lead to the development of appropriate regulations or codes of practice to stem the number of future introductions.

The accelerating rates of international trade, travel, and transport in the latter half of the twentieth century have led to the progressive mixing of biota from across the world and the number of species introduced to new regions continues to increase. The importance of biogeographic, climatic, economic, and demographic factors as drivers of this trend is increasingly being realized but as yet there is no consensus regarding their relative importance. Whereas little may be done to mitigate the effects of geography and climate on invasions, a wider range of options may exist to moderate the impacts of economic and demographic drivers. Here we use the most recent data available from Europe to partition between macroecological, economic, and demographic variables the variation in alien species richness of bryophytes, fungi, vascular plants, terrestrial insects, aquatic invertebrates, fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. Only national wealth and human population density were statistically significant predictors in the majority of models when analyzed jointly with climate, geography, and land cover. The economic and demographic variables reflect the intensity of human activities and integrate the effect of factors that directly determine the outcome of invasion such as propagule pressure, pathways of introduction, eutrophication, and the intensity of anthropogenic disturbance. The strong influence of economic and demographic variables on the levels of invasion by alien species demonstrates that future solutions to the problem of biological invasions at a national scale lie in mitigating the negative environmental consequences of human activities that generate wealth and by promoting more sustainable population growth.