Journal articles on the topic 'Technological innovations – Government policy – European Union countries'

This paper investigates how firm-level innovation and productivity affect the export propensity in manufacturing firms in seven Eastern European Union countries. With respect to innovation activities, we analyze the complementarity between pair-wise product, process and non-technological (organizational and marketing) innovations when the objective function is represented by the exporting probability of a firm. Analyzing CIS2008 data, we find that productivity always has a positive and significant impact on the exporting propensity of firms. Furthermore, complex innovative firms, when large in size and/or from medium high–high technology sectors, can take advantage in terms of a higher attitude to export than non-innovators and simple innovators. By considering these results, governments have to introduce policies that can induce firms, especially small and medium ones, to implement complex innovations. This is fundamental in order to be more productive and more competitive.

Green energy is regarded as the breakthrough of the fourth technological revolution of mankind, which is highly concerned by the whole world. By analysing the development strategies of major developed countries to promote green energy industry, this paper constructs a theoretical framework from four aspects: government policy, green consumption, technology and capital, so as to summarize the typical characteristics of the development of green energy industry. The study found that government policy and technology are the main driving force for the development of green energy industry in major developed countries, the resource-rich United States leads the industrial development with policy, and the European Union obtains new energy development through policy and technological innovation at the same time. Japan continues to innovate and take the lead in technology to break the limitations of innate conditions. The conclusions of the study will help countries with the same resource base, policy environment and consumption concept to sort out the development ideas of green energy, and provide some reference and reference for the formulation of effective development strategies.

Access to public health services is a cause that benefits the people and concerns the vital interests of the people. Everyone has access to basic health care services. The continuous improvement in people’s health is an important indicator of the improvement in people’s quality of life. This paper selects data from the European Union (EU) on aspects of public health expenditure, medical care resources, and government emergency coordination capacity from the period 2008 to 2017. Principal component analysis and factor analysis are used to measure their public health service capacity scores and conduct a comparative analysis. On this basis, the TOBIT model is adopted to explore the driving factors that lead to the spatial differentiation of public health service capabilities, and to combine it with the data of the COVID-19 epidemic as of 8 August 2020 from the official announcements of the World Health Organization and governments for further thinking. The results indicate that the public health service capacity of countries in the EU is showing a gradual increase. The capacity in Western Europe is, in turn, higher than that of Northern Europe, Southern Europe and Eastern Europe. In addition, the overall capacity in Western Europe is relatively high, but it is not balanced and stable, while Northern Europe has remained stable and balanced at a high level. Population density, degree of opening up, education level, economic development level, technological innovation level, and degree of aging have a positive effect on public health service capabilities. The level of urbanization has a negative effect on it. However, in countries with strong public health service capabilities, the epidemic of COVID-19 is more severe. The emergence of this paradox may be related to the detection capabilities of countries, the high probability of spreading thCOVID-19 epidemic, the inefficient implementation of government policy, the integrated system of the EU and the adverse selection of youth. This paper aims to improve the ability of the EU to respond to public health emergencies, improve the utilization of medical and health resources, and better protect people’s health from the perspective of public health service capacity.

Social innovations are activities aiming at implementation of social objectives, including mainly the improvement of life of individuals and social groups, together with public policy and management objectives. The essay indicates and discusses the most important contemporary problems, solving of which requires social innovations. Social innovations precondition the progress of civilisation. The world needs not only new technologies, but also new solutions of social and institutional nature that would be conducive to achieving social goals. Social innovations are experimental social actions of organisational and institutional nature that aim at improving the quality of life of individuals, communities, nations, companies, circles, or social groups. Their experimental nature stems from the fact of introducing unique and one-time solutions on a large scale, the end results of which are often difficult to be fully predicted. For example, it was difficult to believe that opening new labour markets for foreigners in the countries of the European Union, which can be treated as a social innovation aiming at development of the international labour market, will result in the rapid development of the low-cost airlines, the offer of which will be available to a larger group of recipients. In other words, social innovations differ from economic innovations, as they are not about implementation of new types of production or gaining new markets, but about satisfying new needs, which are not provided by the market. Therefore, the most important distinction consists in that social innovations are concerned with improving the well-being of individuals and communities by additional employment, or increased consumption, as well as participation in solving the problems of individuals and social groups [CSTP, 2011]. In general, social innovations are activities aiming at implementation of social objectives, including mainly the improvement of life of individuals and social groups together with the objectives of public policy and management [Kowalczyk, Sobiecki, 2017]. Their implementation requires global, national, and individual actions. This requires joint operations, both at the scale of the entire globe, as well as in particular interest groups. Why are social innovations a key point for the progress of civilisation? This is the effect of the clear domination of economic aspects and discrimination of social aspects of this progress. Until the 19th century, the economy was a part of a social structure. As described by K. Polanyi, it was submerged in social relations [Polanyi, 2010, p. 56]. In traditional societies, the economic system was in fact derived from the organisation of the society itself. The economy, consisting of small and dispersed craft businesses, was a part of the social, family, and neighbourhood structure. In the 20th century the situation reversed – the economy started to be the force shaping social structures, positions of individual groups, areas of wealth and poverty. The economy and the market mechanism have become independent from the world of politics and society. Today, the corporations control our lives. They decide what we eat, what we watch, what we wear, where we work and what we do [Bakan, 2006, p. 13]. The corporations started this spectacular “march to rule the world” in the late 19th century. After about a hundred years, at the end of the 20th century, the state under the pressure of corporations and globalisation, started a gradual, but systematic withdrawal from the economy, market and many other functions traditionally belonging to it. As a result, at the end of the last century, a corporation has become a dominant institution in the world. A characteristic feature of this condition is that it gives a complete priority to the interests of corporations. They make decisions of often adverse consequences for the entire social groups, regions, or local communities. They lead to social tensions, political breakdowns, and most often to repeated market turbulences. Thus, a substantial minority (corporations) obtain inconceivable benefits at the expense of the vast majority, that is broad professional and social groups. The lack of relative balance between the economy and society is a barrier to the progress of civilisation. A growing global concern is the problem of migration. The present crisis, left unresolved, in the long term will return multiplied. Today, there are about 500 million people living in Europe, 1.5 billion in Africa and the Middle East, but in 2100, the population of Europe will be about 400 million and of the Middle East and Africa approximately 4.5 billion. Solving this problem, mainly through social and political innovations, can take place only by a joint operation of highly developed and developing countries. Is it an easy task? It’s very difficult. Unfortunately, today, the world is going in the opposite direction. Instead of pursuing the community, empathic thinking, it aims towards nationalism and chauvinism. An example might be a part of the inaugural address of President Donald Trump, who said that the right of all nations is to put their own interests first. Of course, the United States of America will think about their own interests. As we go in the opposite direction, those who deal with global issues say – nothing will change, unless there is some great crisis, a major disaster that would cause that the great of this world will come to senses. J.E. Stiglitz [2004], contrary to the current thinking and practice, believes that a different and better world is possible. Globalisation contains the potential of countless benefits from which people both in developing and highly developed countries can benefit. But the practice so far proves that still it is not grown up enough to use its potential in a fair manner. What is needed are new solutions, most of all social and political innovations (political, because they involve a violation of the previous arrangement of interests). Failure to search for breakthrough innovations of social and political nature that would meet the modern challenges, can lead the world to a disaster. Social innovation, and not economic, because the contemporary civilisation problems have their roots in this dimension. A global problem, solution of which requires innovations of social and political nature, is the disruption of the balance between work and capital. In 2010, 400 richest people had assets such as the half of the poorer population of the world. In 2016, such part was in the possession of only 8 people. This shows the dramatic collapse of the balance between work and capital. The world cannot develop creating the technological progress while increasing unjustified inequalities, which inevitably lead to an outbreak of civil disturbances. This outbreak can have various organisation forms. In the days of the Internet and social media, it is easier to communicate with people. Therefore, paradoxically, some modern technologies create the conditions facilitating social protests. There is one more important and dangerous effect of implementing technological innovations without simultaneous creation and implementation of social innovations limiting the sky-rocketing increase of economic (followed by social) diversification. Sooner or later, technological progress will become so widespread that, due to the relatively low prices, it will make it possible for the weapons of mass destruction, especially biological and chemical weapons, to reach small terrorist groups. Then, a total, individualized war of global reach can develop. The individualisation of war will follow, as described by the famous German sociologist Ulrich Beck. To avoid this, it is worth looking at the achievements of the Polish scientist Michał Kalecki, who 75 years ago argued that capitalism alone is not able to develop. It is because it aggressively seeks profit growth, but cannot turn profit into some profitable investments. Therefore, when uncertainty grows, capitalism cannot develop itself, and it must be accompanied by external factors, named by Kalecki – external development factors. These factors include state expenses, finances and, in accordance with the nomenclature of Kalecki – epochal innovations. And what are the current possibilities of activation of the external factors? In short – modest. The countries are indebted, and the basis for the development in the last 20 years were loans, which contributed to the growth of debt of economic entities. What, then, should we do? It is necessary to look for cheaper solutions, but such that are effective, that is breakthrough innovations. These undoubtedly include social and political innovations. Contemporary social innovation is not about investing big money and expensive resources in production, e.g. of a very expensive vaccine, which would be available for a small group of recipients. Today’s social innovation should stimulate the use of lower amounts of resources to produce more products available to larger groups of recipients. The progress of civilisation happens only as a result of a sustainable development in economic, social, and now also ecological terms. Economic (business) innovations, which help accelerate the growth rate of production and services, contribute to economic development. Profits of corporations increase and, at the same time, the economic objectives of the corporations are realised. But are the objectives of the society as a whole and its members individually realised equally, in parallel? In the chain of social reproduction there are four repeated phases: production – distribution – exchange – consumption. The key point from the social point of view is the phase of distribution. But what are the rules of distribution, how much and who gets from this “cake” produced in the social process of production? In the today’s increasingly global economy, the most important mechanism of distribution is the market mechanism. However, in the long run, this mechanism leads to growing income and welfare disparities of various social groups. Although, the income and welfare diversity in itself is nothing wrong, as it is the result of the diversification of effectiveness of factors of production, including work, the growing disparities to a large extent cannot be justified. Economic situation of the society members increasingly depends not on the contribution of work, but on the size of the capital invested, and the market position of the economic entity, and on the “governing power of capital” on the market. It should also be noted that this diversification is also related to speculative activities. Disparities between the implemented economic and social innovations can lead to the collapse of the progress of civilisation. Nowadays, economic crises are often justified by, indeed, social and political considerations, such as marginalisation of nation states, imbalance of power (or imbalance of fear), religious conflicts, nationalism, chauvinism, etc. It is also considered that the first global financial crisis of the 21st century originated from the wrong social policy pursued by the US Government, which led to the creation of a gigantic public debt, which consequently led to an economic breakdown. This resulted in the financial crisis, but also in deepening of the social imbalances and widening of the circles of poverty and social exclusion. It can even be stated that it was a crisis in public confidence. Therefore, the causes of crises are the conflicts between the economic dimension of the development and its social dimension. Contemporary world is filled with various innovations of economic or business nature (including technological, product, marketing, and in part – organisational). The existing solutions can be a source of economic progress, which is a component of the progress of civilisation. However, economic innovations do not complete the entire progress of civilisation moreover, the saturation, and often supersaturation with implementations and economic innovations leads to an excessive use of material factors of production. As a consequence, it results in lowering of the efficiency of their use, unnecessary extra burden to the planet, and passing of the negative effects on the society and future generations (of consumers). On the other hand, it leads to forcing the consumption of durable consumer goods, and gathering them “just in case”, and also to the low degree of their use (e.g. more cars in a household than its members results in the additional load on traffic routes, which results in an increase in the inconvenience of movement of people, thus to the reduction of the quality of life). Introduction of yet another economic innovation will not solve this problem. It can be solved only by social innovations that are in a permanent shortage. A social innovation which fosters solving the issue of excessive accumulation of tangible production goods is a developing phenomenon called sharing economy. It is based on the principle: “the use of a service provided by some welfare does not require being its owner”. This principle allows for an economic use of resources located in households, but which have been “latent” so far. In this way, increasing of the scope of services provided (transport, residential and tourist accommodation) does not require any growth of additional tangible resources of factors of production. So, it contributes to the growth of household incomes, and inhibition of loading the planet with material goods processed by man [see Poniatowska-Jaksch, Sobiecki, 2016]. Another example: we live in times, in which, contrary to the law of T. Malthus, the planet is able to feed all people, that is to guarantee their minimum required nutrients. But still, millions of people die of starvation and malnutrition, but also due to obesity. Can this problem be solved with another economic innovation? Certainly not! Economic innovations will certainly help to partially solve the problem of nutrition, at least by the new methods of storing and preservation of foods, to reduce its waste in the phase of storage and transport. However, a key condition to solve this problem is to create and implement an innovation of a social nature (in many cases also political). We will not be able to speak about the progress of civilisation in a situation, where there are people dying of starvation and malnutrition. A growing global social concern, resulting from implementation of an economic (technological) innovation will be robotisation, and more specifically – the effects arising from its dissemination on a large scale. So far, the issue has been postponed due to globalisation of the labour market, which led to cheapening of the work factor by more than ten times in the countries of Asia or South America. But it ends slowly. Labour becomes more and more expensive, which means that the robots become relatively cheap. The mechanism leading to low prices of the labour factor expires. Wages increase, and this changes the relationship of the prices of capital and labour. Capital becomes relatively cheaper and cheaper, and this leads to reducing of the demand for work, at the same time increasing the demand for capital (in the form of robots). The introduction of robots will be an effect of the phenomenon of substitution of the factors of production. A cheaper factor (in this case capital in the form of robots) will be cheaper than the same activities performed by man. According to W. Szymański [2017], such change is a dysfunction of capitalism. A great challenge, because capitalism is based on the market-driven shaping of income. The market-driven shaping of income means that the income is derived from the sale of the factors of production. Most people have income from employment. Robots change this mechanism. It is estimated that scientific progress allows to create such number of robots that will replace billion people in the world. What will happen to those “superseded”, what will replace the income from human labour? Capitalism will face an institutional challenge, and must replace the market-driven shaping of income with another, new one. The introduction of robots means microeconomic battle with the barrier of demand. To sell more, one needs to cut costs. The costs are lowered by the introduction of robots, but the use of robots reduces the demand for human labour. Lowering the demand for human labour results in the reduction of employment, and lower wages. Lower wages result in the reduction of the demand for goods and services. To increase the demand for goods and services, the companies must lower their costs, so they increase the involvement of robots, etc. A mechanism of the vicious circle appears If such a mass substitution of the factors of production is unfavourable from the point of view of stimulating the development of the economy, then something must be done to improve the adverse price relations for labour. How can the conditions of competition between a robot and a man be made equal, at least partially? Robots should be taxed. Bill Gates, among others, is a supporter of such a solution. However, this is only one of the tools that can be used. The solution of the problem requires a change in the mechanism, so a breakthrough innovation of a social and political nature. We can say that technological and product innovations force the creation of social and political innovations (maybe institutional changes). Product innovations solve some problems (e.g. they contribute to the reduction of production costs), but at the same time, give rise to others. Progress of civilisation for centuries and even millennia was primarily an intellectual progress. It was difficult to discuss economic progress at that time. Then we had to deal with the imbalance between the economic and the social element. The insufficiency of the economic factor (otherwise than it is today) was the reason for the tensions and crises. Estimates of growth indicate that the increase in industrial production from ancient times to the first industrial revolution, that is until about 1700, was 0.1-0.2 per year on average. Only the next centuries brought about systematically increasing pace of economic growth. During 1700- 1820, it was 0.5% on an annual average, and between 1820-1913 – 1.5%, and between 1913-2012 – 3.0% [Piketty, 2015, p. 97]. So, the significant pace of the economic growth is found only at the turn of the 19th and 20th century. Additionally, the growth in this period refers predominantly to Europe and North America. The countries on other continents were either stuck in colonialism, structurally similar to the medieval period, or “lived” on the history of their former glory, as, for example, China and Japan, or to a lesser extent some countries of the Middle East and South America. The growth, having then the signs of the modern growth, that is the growth based on technological progress, was attributed mainly to Europe and the United States. The progress of civilisation requires the creation of new social initiatives. Social innovations are indeed an additional capital to keep the social structure in balance. The social capital is seen as a means and purpose and as a primary source of new values for the members of the society. Social innovations also motivate every citizen to actively participate in this process. It is necessary, because traditional ways of solving social problems, even those known for a long time as unemployment, ageing of the society, or exclusion of considerable social and professional groups from the social and economic development, simply fail. “Old” problems are joined by new ones, such as the increase of social inequalities, climate change, or rapidly growing environmental pollution. New phenomena and problems require new solutions, changes to existing procedures, programmes, and often a completely different approach and instruments [Kowalczyk, Sobiecki, 2017].

The increase in the concentration of the banking industry across European Union countries during the last fifteen years can be explained in terms of: a) global factors, like the comprehensive adoption of technological innovations, the intensification of competition that has resulted from the deregulation of the financial sector and, more recently, as a consequence of the government interventions and forced acquisitions prompted by the 2007-2009 financial crisis; and, b) factors that have been specific to the E.U., in particular, the structural changes that took place in the region as a result of the creation of the Single Financial Market (1993) and the introduction of the euro (1999). This work analyzes the concentration process of the banking industry in the E.U. during the last fifteen years giving preeminence to the strategic choices made by the region?s commercial banks. It also reports the most visible E.U. banks? M&As and government interventions that resulted from the 2007-2009 financial crisis, make a preliminary evaluation of the outcomes, and suggests possible future trends for the banking industry in the region.

THIS BOOK IS ABOUT MANIFESTATIONS of power in medicines and pharmaceutical industry policy. The main focus is on the Republic of Ireland but there are chapters also on drug regulation in Canada, Britain and Australia. The multinational pharma companies loom larger in Ireland than in most other countries; several chapters detail the implications for this small country of the presence of a major cluster of global drug companies. Globalisation is the hallmark of the drug sector; innovation and production occur within international networks which are mirrored by interaction between regulatory agencies which operate similar systems of control and monitoring. Since the 1990s, many aspects of product safety regulation have been standardised across the developed countries through the International Conference on Harmonization (ICH) process, sponsored by the regulatory agencies and industry associations of the USA, the European Union and Japan. While orchestrating vast scientific, economic and technological resources, the big pharma companies participate as insiders in national policy processes, such as those described in this book. Firms typically affirm a commitment to the health and economic concerns of the local jurisdiction ? however governments cannot help but be sensitive to their global reach and power to choose where to invest.

The article presents the main research results on the peculiarities of the functioning of agricultural cooperatives and the practices of state regulation of their activities in the countries of the European Union. The high importance of agricultural cooperatives is justified, first of all, by their multifunctionality, and, consequently, by their contribution both to the development of the agricultural economy and to the stability of rural areas. The main trends in the development of agricultural cooperation in Europe are: (1) the enlargement of the cooperative business; (2) the development of vertical integration along the technological chain, (3) all kinds of organizational innovations to expand financial opportunities, (4) strengthening competitiveness through the growth of the scale of activities and all kinds of innovations, (5) socialization of cooperative activities in order to improve the living conditions of rural communities. The specificity of state support for European agricultural cooperatives lies in expanding the range of mechanisms and instruments used by the state, providing financial assistance mainly to small regional cooperatives (performing functions important for rural areas), taking into account the possibilities of cooperative activities under extraordinary conditions (such as the COVID-19 pandemic or emerging natural cataclysms).

Fiscal policy influences economic conditions through public spending and taxes, generating positive or negative impulses, both on short and long term. The present research focuses on analysing the effects of the discretionary changes in the fiscal policy in seven post-communist countries of the European Union during the period 2000–2018. The autoregressive distributed lag model (ARDL) has been applied in order to obtain the convergence rates to equilibrium with a clear analysis of the periods needed to achieve the long-run fiscal sustainability. Also, the error correction vector model (VECM), which is based on the autoregressive vector (VAR) model, has been used in the second part of the analysis focusing on the Cholesky factorization of innovations. Impulse-response functions aiming to estimate the response of government expenditures to the shock produced by three macroeconomic variables have been identified.

The development of eco-innovation activities performed by enterprises remains one of the key challenges of sustainable development. In modern economies, the implementation of innovative technological solutions should also take into account performing eco-innovation activities by enterprises. The aim of the research was to assess the involvement level of small and medium-sized enterprises in eco-innovation activities, regarding the implementation of actions for the effective management of resources and the implementation of sustainable products, against the background of their involvement in innovation activities related to the implementation of product innovations and business processes, as well as the assessment of spatial-temporal diversity and trends for changes in this regard. The spatial scope of the research addresses 27 European Union countries, and the time scope of the research covers the years 2013–2020. The methods of multivariate statistical analysis, with particular emphasis on classification methods, were used in the research. The main finding of the research is the division of the European Union countries into three types of classes, including the countries assessed as: (1) poor eco-innovators and moderate innovators; (2) moderate eco-innovators and poor innovators; and (3) leaders of eco-innovation and innovation. The conducted research shows that SMEs in the European Union countries are much less involved in eco-innovation activities than in innovation ones; the level of involvement in eco-innovation can be divergent from that of involvement in innovation. Moreover, the involvement in eco-innovation does not show an upward trend.

Abstract In the article, whose construction is of theoretical and empirical nature, the author attempted to achieve the following objectives: 1) identification and critical assessment of expenditures on research and development (GERD index), expressed in euro per inhabitant, incurred by statistical units concentrated in the sectors: business enterprises, government, higher education, private non-profit organizations and jointly in all sectors in countries members of the European Union. The level and dynamics of these expenditures are treated as an indirect measure of senior management’s involvement in creating R&D policy and efficient management in R&D phases; 2) an attempt to verify theses that R&D expenditures are variable and diversified in EU Member States, which indicates the lack of a rational R&D policy focused on the systematic generation of new knowledge materialized in innovations providing customers the expected value in a systemic way; 3) developing models of innovative R&D activities management. To develop the article, research methods are used, such as: critical-cognitive analysis of literature, statistical-comparative analysis of Eurostat’s empirical secondary material, projection method. The level of the GERD meter indicates a significant differentiation of R&D expenditure in individual sections of the analysis. The member states of the old EU had relatively higher outlays for this purpose compared to the new member states.

The article deals with the problems of designing and updating study programmes during the integration process of the Lithuanian education system into the European education space. After the substantial change of general programmes of Basic education(2008) and Secondary education (2011) and seeking to fully involve self-development of general cultural, subject specific, generic and specific competencies which are necessary for teachers, it is important to update the study programmes.The problem of the research: what content of technology teacher training programme should be from the innovations point of view in order to meet the expectations of the changing society.The object of the research: the innovative content of the technology teacher training programme.The aim of the research: to highlight the innovative aspects of the content of technology teacher training programmes, having performed content analysis of technology teacher training programmes of the universities of Lithuania and some European countries.Research methods:analysis of scientific literature, analysis of the programmes of universities of some European countries which provide training for technology teachers as well as the analysis of the legal acts and strategic education policy documents of the European Union and the Republic of Lithuania.Updating of the study programme of technological education is a permanent process, which is conditioned by the following factors: market economy and the needs of information society, the fact that higher education is becoming mass, penetration of humanistic ideas into the content of education as well as the valid unified study quality assessment policy in the European Union.Taking into account the recommendations of the international experts’ group and considering international changes of analogous study programmes, the Committee of Technology Pedagogics Study Programmes of Lithuanian University of Educational Sciences in cooperation with the social partners carried out a research of opinions of students, graduates, university lecturers and employers on the study quality.They also performed a comprehensive analysis of the Bachelor’s degree study programmes of some Western European universities. The analysis revealed that theoretical models of study programmes design of different European universities have similarities and differences, which are determined by the philosophical aspect, humanistic ideas and the context of the national education policy. In the research the experience of five universities from the innovations point of view was used: the University of Helsinki (Finland), Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh (Great Britain), the Polytechnic Institute of Tomar (Portugal), and the University of Iceland.The following elective subjects have been included in the study programme of technology pedagogics: pedagogical ethics, sustainable development and social welfare, educational creative projects, family health education, health promoting nutrition education, visualization of technology education, eco creations, national and global food culture, interior design, technology education for special needs students, art therapy, development of leadership competencies, formation of study archives. The hidden curriculum of the study programme of technology pedagogics is ethnic culture, ecology, project activities.

In the modern conditions of the post-COVID world, the transformation of the world economy in the framework of the transition to the post-industrial paradigm, and the economy of “knowledge”, the national innovation system (NIS) plays a leading role in the formation of competitive sectors of any given country. Within this setting, the performance of the Russian innovation system significantly lags behind other countries and calls for modernisation based on the modern regulatory tools, policies, and world’s leading trends. The direct import of institutions of foreign innovation systems demonstrates its limited effectiveness due to the incompleteness of institutions and mechanisms for regulating the institutional environment of the Russian economy. One of the generally recognised, leading, and the most “universal” instruments for implementing innovation policy by government institutions is the public procurement of innovation. The analysis of international experience shows that the implementation of the innovation policy via innovative public procurement has a highly heterogeneous landscape even in such a “cohesive” jurisdiction as those represented by the European Union (EU) as far as different types of policy dominate in different countries of the world. There is no clear trend towards the only one mainstream regulatory approach. In this context, the Russian experience demonstrates de facto the absence of any centralised, transparent, and effective policy expressed in such pseudo-innovative procurement as refuelling cartridges or car repairs. This paper identifies the existing institutional failures of the Russian NIS on the example of the regulation of innovative domestic procurement. It proposes ways to modernise the current policy based on the institutional and narrative approaches in order to foster its leading position in the international competition. This article shows the gaps in the literature in institutional governance of innovations and innovation procurement in Russia and points at directions for future research based on narrative economics. Outlining the present knowledge as a foundation for future research in institutional governance of innovations, this article holds implications for both academics and practitioners in the field of the innovation policies and public procurement.

The Director-General of the WHO has suggested that China’s approach to the COVID-19 crisis could be the standard of care for global epidemics. However, as remarkable as the Chinese strategy might be, it cannot be replicated in other countries and certainly not in Europe. In Europe, there is a distribution of power between the European Union and its member states. In contrast, China’s political power is concentrated in the central government. This enables it to take immediate measures that affect the entire country, such as massive quarantines or closing borders. Moreover, the Chinese legal framework includes restrictions on privacy and other human rights that are unknown in Europe. In addition, China has the technological power to easily impose such restrictions. In most European countries, that would be science fiction. These conditions have enabled China to combat epidemics like no other country can. However, the WHO might have been overoptimistic. The Chinese standard of care for treating COVID-19 also raises problematic issues for human rights, and the real consequences of these actions remain to be seen.

The subject of the study is the practical experience of the functioning of the mechanism of public procurement of goods, works and services in the member states of the European Union, its reformation under the influence of the introduction of new EU legislative norms in the field of public procurement, and the harmonization of the national legislation of the participating countries with Directives 2014/23/EU, 2014/24/EU and 2014/25/EU. The purpose of the work is to establish the impact of the new legislative norms of the European Union in the field of public procurement on the mechanism of procurement of goods, works and services for budget funds in the European Union, to identify the advantages of applying these norms. The methodological basis of the article is a set of cognitive methods applied to the mechanism of public procurement. The research was based on general scientific methods, namely: dialectical, which implies objectivity, comprehensiveness and systematic knowledge; logical; special methods of scientific knowledge: historical, method of systematic analysis and generalization of normative documents. The general logic of the article is based on a complex and systematic approach using modern scientific apparatus. Results of the article. The article establishes the main directions of changes in the mechanism and tools of public procurement in the countries of the European Union, which took place after the implementation of the norms of Directives 2014/23/EU, 2014/24/EU and 2014/25/EU, an analysis of the advantages of their implementation in national legislation of member states. The evaluation of the efficiency of the public procurement market in the EU countries was carried out. The directions and sources of further research are substantiated, first of all, by taking into account the aspects of digitalization of the sphere of public administration and finance, social and environmental innovations. Field of application of results. The results can be used by state and local self-government bodies, territorial communities, and economic entities of various forms of ownership. Conclusions. The new norms of EU legislation in the field of public procurement, set out in Directives 2014/23/EU, 2014/24/EU and 2014/25/EU, are aimed at simplifying procedures for public procurement of goods, works and services for budget funds, which promotes the free movement of goods and services in the countries of the European Union. As a result, customers get better value for money. Thus, public procurement becomes a tool of EU strategic policy. Although it cannot be claimed that the EU's public procurement policy is flawless, the experience of all participating countries is always taken into account in the process of its development and implementation. The EU public sector can use the procurement of goods, works and services with budget funds to increase the number of jobs, growth and investment, as well as to create an economy that is more innovative, resource and energy efficient and socially inclusive.

The purpose of this article is to analyze and rate ideas related to functioning of the public procurement system, in particular the so called “green orders”, in terms of its impact on the development of eco-innovative solutions in the construction industry. The public procurement system, due to its obligatory character for many business entities and significant value, establishes the directions of development for many industries, especially the construction industry. The pace of technological progress accomplished after Poland’s accession to the European Union and competing on the global market requires constant implementation of innovative solutions. Public procurement also amplifies the demand for ecological goods and services from public institutions, being one of the most effective instruments of implementing such solutions. The European Union has issued a number of directives, decrees and communiques governing the rules, capabilities and desired range of applying ecological criteria of conferring public procurement. The essay outlines the current situation of ecological public procurement and provides practical examples of creating innovative and sustainable growth, based on the construction industry. Construction significantly drives the economy, which vulnerable to crises and turbulence. Green public procurement, together with ecological innovations, can positively impact the development and stabilization of the industry, due to its orientation towards sustainable growth. Experience drawn from other, particularly Western European, countries, such as Germany, Austria and Scandinavian countries, which have a high level of energy efficient and passive constructions based on ecological innovations thanks to research and implementations performed by various institutions and government grants, is a significant benchmark for Poland and the only way of reducing construction costs, which could comply with the EU directive in the near future. It seems that both researchers and practitioners appreciate the West European line of work, as institutions and initiatives towards implementing sustained construction are being created in Poland. These include, among others: operations of the Polish Institute of Passive Building in Gdansk or Center for Energy Efficient Buildings in Lesser Poland, in Kraków. Referring to Western European experience, the solution lies in developing our own research facilities, institutions testing and implementing new, native (ie. less expensive) and innovative technological and material solutions. Cooperation and skill sharing between researchers and practitioners, such as architects, constructors, producers and developers is necessary, as are initiatives towards training staff qualified in building such houses and constructing appropriate equipment on a high school level. The practical examples of Lesser Polish public finance units outlined in this article denote the existence of ideas and willingness to create new solutions among the Polish engineering staff. These initiatives, however, require sufficient financial support and research facilities, which can be achieved thanks to the current implementation of a new public procurement law, increasing the role of sustainable procurement. Furthermore, public investor awareness is increasing in the range of introducing sustained development rules, especially in the utilization of green procurement in the building sector, as evidenced by public facilities constructed in the passive and energy efficient standard.

Sustainable development is one of the fundamental and most important objectives of the worldwide policy. The conducted research shows that sustainable development (SD) is increasingly important in the consciousness of the EU countries, which can be viewed through a prism of the undertaken projects. This paper raises the issue of clusters and their significance in the development of a sustainable economy. The article explores trends in the European Union policy related to sustainable development and clusters. The purpose of this study is to find an answer to the following questions: How can clusters contribute to sustainable development and what are the key factors that ensure this process? To achieve the goal of the article a systematic study of the literature and reports was carried out. Moreover, the analysis of the activity of European clusters in the context of sustainable development was performed. Next, the examples of cluster projects focused on sustainable development were presented. It was shown that the clusters contribute a smarter and sustainable development by succeeding in technological and scientific results, developing new technologies for emerging industries, creating new business activities, enticing major technology companies, and connecting local firms into world-class value systems. Furthermore, the clusters participate actively in sustainable development as they promote knowledge creation, joint learning, technology transfer, as well as collaboration, and sustainable innovations. Finally, clusters facilitate the sustainable upgrading of small and medium enterprises and encourage the participation of stakeholders in the process of sustainable development.

The purpose of the work was to analyze the foreign experience of management in the fi eld of agricultural development: history, current state, the influence of digitalization. A number of highly promising modern trends in the development of agriculture in the world has been described in the article. In our days, the centralized management model in the development of rural areas and agribusiness still dominates in European countries, with all this the modern general approach of the policy of the EU and other European countries outside this union in regional development consists, first of all, in transferring as much management functions as possible to the regional level. This approach is also characteristic of the domestic model of agricultural development policy. The most important and eff ective tool (direction) of modernization of any of the known control systems in the modern world is their digitalization. Digitalization of management in the agricultural sector at all levels from the state to the subject of small agribusiness will not be an exception. Further digital transformation of management in domestic agriculture represents a higher level of digital integration, which affects the most complex organizational changes in government structures and agribusiness. The results of the implementation of these tasks would be able to dramatically affect the growth of profi ts in the agricultural business, the competitiveness of products and will allow the agricultural industry as a whole to reach the modern world technological frontiers.

The article examines the implementation of innovations in industrial enterprises, as well as their sources of funding in Ukraine and Europe. The role of innovation infrastructure as a driver of economic development of national and regional economy due to the formation of a holistic goal to scale innovation and the relationship of various stakeholders involved in innovation, the formation of the investment environment. The paper identifies problems and areas for improving innovation in the regions of Ukraine and the motives for implementing new projects. Based on the analysis of statistical data on the development of innovation in the regions of Ukraine and in order to identify strategic instruments of state regulation for the development and scaling of innovations, identified and described the shortcomings and conditions for the development of innovation infrastructure. Based on the study of statistical reporting of Ukraine and European countries, it is determined that the improvement of innovation policy and competition of enterprises is possible with the implementation of new technologies for the production and implementation of innovative services in different regions of the country. It is established that the indicators of development and scaling of innovations in the regions of Ukraine have a steady trend, which affects the destructive processes in the country, and funding such an important component of innovation development as research aimed primarily at the public sector, while in the European Union - at business sector. With effective government stimulation of the business sector and the provision of positive state, regional and local conditions, the situation regarding economic and innovation indicators in Ukraine may have a positive dynamics in the future. It is established that when forming strategies for the development of innovation infrastructure, it is necessary to pay attention to the feedback between the business sector and the interests of the country and gradually move to the European experience of innovation development. This strategy will create progressive models for coordinating the scaling up of innovation for the country's sustainable development.

This study presents a systematic review of 169 papers concerning the ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) related to rural areas, specifically to dairy farms. The objective was to delve into the relationship between dairy farmers and the administrative authorities via e-government, comparing this area to another eight concerning the farmer’s needs and expectations in relation to the ICT in different fields of their business. We observed that areas such as connectivity and digital inclusion are the most covered areas not only at the study level but also at the government level since countries all over the world are trying to develop politics to put an end to the so-called “digital divide,” which affects rural areas more intensely. This is increasing due to the growing technological innovations. The areas of the market, production, financial development, management and counseling, Smart Farming, and Internet of Things have been approached, associated with the ICT in dairy farms, showing in the latter two an increasing number of papers in the last few years. The area of public administration in relation to dairy farms has also been covered, being remarkable the low number of pieces of research concerning the interaction by the farmers, more specifically by dairy farmers, with the public administration, which is surprising due to the new global need and especially in the European Union (EU) of interacting with it telematically by all legal entities. The results show that there are still barriers to the implementation of the electronic government (e-government) since the websites do not meet the user’s expectations. Therefore, this study lays the ground for future research on this area. As a graphical abstract of the contributions of this paper, we present a graphic summary, where the different contributions by areas and expressed in percentage values are shown.

One of the most important sectors of the economy in Russia is industry. In this regard, the state seeks to stimulate the development of innovations in this area. Over the past few years, many industrial sectors in Russia have been in a crisis situation, which is caused by several factors: a decrease in the level of real investment, a decrease in the solvent demand of enterprises-customers and public consumers, and the introduction of financial and economic sanctions in 2014 against Russia by the United States and the European Union countries, as well as the effect of other macroeconomic factors independent of the activities of industrial enterprises. This study aims to identify the main trends in the development of industrial production in Russia in recent years, and an explanation of its causes. This topic is relevant in connection with the foregoing and may be of interest to academic economists studying industry development trends in developing countries. The aim of the study is to analyze the state of industry in Russia from 2015 to 2018 during the period of sanction pressure on the industrial and financial sectors of the Russian economy. Having examined the latest data on the results of the activity of Russian industry as a whole, one can note positive trends in the development of industrial production in Russia despite a number of negative internal and external factors. It is concluded that today, for Russia, the strategic tasks in industrial policy are reduced to overcoming technological backwardness and carrying out technological modernization of industries based on the use of innovative achievements, as well as import substitution for the sectors of the economy that are sensitive to foreign sanctions.

It is proven that the country’s post-war recovery policy should take into account previous development miscalculations, and the recovery itself should be considered as a “window of opportunity” for the formation of a new highly productive and high-tech “smart” and “green” economy, an important component of which should be modern industry. It is substantiated that smart specialization involves not so much the stimulation of innovations as the activation of long-term structural changes in the region’s economy with an orientation to the future, that is, the formation of such a policy that will enable the region to occupy important niches in global markets. The experience of implementing the strategy of smart specialization in the European Union is considered. Together with the development of entrepreneurship and the cluster structure of industry, it is part of the economic decentralization of Ukraine. Attention is focused on the fact that, against the background of a slight increase in the share of high-tech industries in the overall structure of the country’s industry, there is a decrease in the specific weight of medium-tech industries and an increase in the share of low-tech industries. The results of the application of the smart approach to the strategic planning of the development of regions should be the modernization of industry and its transition to a new technological structure, the activation of the innovative technological and “digital” potential of the territories. The necessity of implementing the concept of smart specialization for effective synergistic use of public investments, supporting countries/regions in building their innovation potential while simultaneously focusing limited human and financial resources on several competitive areas in order to promote economic growth has been proven. Ways to achieve and tasks of implementing the smart specialization approach in the national economic strategy are systematized. The strategic vectors of ensuring sustainable development and smart specialization of industry are substantiated.

The paper analyses key movement forces in the dairy industry in the Czech Republic and evaluates their importance in the industry and their influence on the following development of the dairy industry in the Czech Republic.The current most important key movement forces in the dairy industry in the Czech Republic are identified: changes in the long-term industry growth rate and marketing innovations. There is space for growth of the industry – the average consumption of the milk products in the Czech Republic per inhabitant 225,1 kg in 2002 is almost by 17% lower than in 1989 (269 kg per inhabitant) and also by 10% lower than the current average consumption in the EU countries (250 kg per inhabitant). There is also space for increase exports from the Czech Republic into the EU countries. The liberalization of the foreign trade with cheeses and curds – “double-zero variation” was positive for the Czech Republic in the first year after the introduction. The share of the import of cheeses and curds on the total export from the EU decreased from 24.6% to 15.5%, and the share of the export of cheeses and curds on the total export from the CR into the EU increased from 10.1% to 19.7%.The key movement forces in the dairy industry in the Czech Republic also are changes in the cost effectiveness; the foreign capital; and key forces resulting from the factors in the macro-environment – the integration of the Czech Republic into the European Union, the government interventions and changes in the government policy.

Abstract. Introduction For the development of the circular economy, many countries have begun to actively use various tools and mechanisms of public policy to ensure its complexity: from technology, financing and forms of business to the readiness of society as a whole to change their habits and create new schemes. However, achieving this goal is impossible without changing existing production strategies, taking into account the world's best practices for the implementation of the concept of circular economy, providing a positive economic effect for both producers and consumers. Expanding the circular economy at the global level requires a combination of business models, technological advances and innovations, as well as the joint efforts of stakeholders to secure its financing, including business and government. Purpose. The main purpose of the article is to study the views of the European community on the possibilities of financing projects in the field of circular economy, as well as to identify key recommendations for accelerating the funding cycle in the light of changes in the circular economy, taking into account best European practices. Results. The article examines the peculiarities of forming an opinion on the circularity of business processes by the European community; approaches to classifying projects as circular are given; There are three groups of circular economy business projects that differ significantly in terms of financing and cash flow: product as a service, joint models or industrial symbioses with other organizations, innovative models of products and processes; it is substantiated that the implementation of business projects requires a new perspective on their financing; the main sources of financing of circular economy projects are considered; the main barriers to accessing bank financing are presented, as well as the experience of foreign banks in their commitments to facilitate the transition to a circular economy; examples of European organizations and associations that take an active position on the financing of circular economy projects are given; It is argued that the growth of circular business models will require innovation and structural changes in production and consumption systems and related technological changes, which in turn requires a new view of banking institutions, insurers and investors to accelerate the financing cycle in the circular economy. sector by government organizations, creating a favorable policy and legal framework to accelerate a systematic, concrete and scalable approach to integrating circularity into financial products and services. Conclusions. Studies show that the implementation of circular economy projects requires a balanced approach to their financing, and there is no single right option for choosing a source of funding. Given the three groups of circular economy business projects that differ significantly in terms of financing and cash flow, financing will also differ in the way and by organization. It is established that the effective development of the circular business requires the use of several financing instruments, and in accordance with the partners in the chain of movement of materials. In order to expand the sources of possible financing of circular projects, it is necessary to consolidate the circular economy both as a strategic direction of economic development in order to achieve sustainable development, and as a priority area of investment.

The strategic guideline for the Russian Federation, stipulated by the Strategy for Spatial De-velopment, is to strengthen the connectivity of the economic space, modernize the sectoral structure, and stimulate the dynamics of the industrial production of the territories. The formation of a regional industrial policy, coordination with global scientific and technological priorities and the possibilities of the territories is considered as a driver of Russia's recovery growth. The article analyzes the experience of European coun-tries, presents the evolution of the priorities of the industrial development strategy, systematizes effective tools and practices for updating the EU industry. The industrial policy of the EU is studied by the authors in two dimensions: 1) taking into account the integration goals and the potential of institutional support; 2) from substantive positions, in terms of priorities, tasks, mechanisms for the transformation of industry. The high elasticity of transformational changes in response to global challenges has been revealed: multiplicative en-richment of subject goals (“innovations – digitalization – resource-saving technologies – industrial ecolo-gy”); creation of a comprehensive toolkit focused on the complementarity of the industry of the EU coun-tries, focused on platform solutions, digital connectivity, environmental neutrality. The position on the pres-ence of out-of-country patterns and qualitative stages of modern industrial policy in countries and macro-territories with a heterogeneous economic space is substantiated, benchmarks of effective solutions are iden-tified in the context of systemic government support for transformational changes in the industry of territories with different levels of development. The obtained conclusions can be used in the development of decisions in the field of state regulation of the industrial policy of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation.

China is currently Germany’s main trade partner. For many German companies, it is an attractive production site and an important link in global value chains. Despite existing disagreements, both sides in their official documents have continued to view their relationship as “comprehensive strategic partnership”. Yet experts and German mass media have increasingly tended to call China a “systemic rival”. Berlin is aware of the fact that it is having to deal not with a competitor but with a real contender for the world’s economic and technological leadership. Moreover, it is feared that the Chinese model based on the combination of state economic dirigism and political authoritarian methods of government may find a sympathetic ear in some countries. The question is how to build relationship with China in this new situation. The quest for a reasonable balance between calls to give a “tough” answer to the Chinese capital expansion, the drain of technologies and restrictions that German companies are facing in China’s market on the one hand and the necessity to continue a constructive dialogue with the new superpower on the other – that is the main task of German politics with respect to China. In view of the absence of a common political stance to be followed by the European Union countries in their dealings with China and the growing U.S. pressure aimed at securing, from its allies, support of the policy of confrontation towards China, the formulation of the German Chinese policy will most likely have to be situational resembling an attempt to solve an equation with many unknowns. The article explores trade and investment aspects of German-Sino relations and existing contradictions in the domain of sсientific and technical cooperation and technology transfer. Analysis is made of German business complaints regarding conditions of doing business in China, as well as of steps taken by the German authorities to limit Chinese investors’ activity in Germany.

Problem setting. The public policy in the field of digitization is aimed at forming a qualitative basis for technological evolution and creating conditions for sustainable progress in all spheres of human and society’s life. Currently, the process of digital transformation of public administration is one of the priority directions in the conditions of increasing global challenges of digital technological development. At the same time, the digital transformation of public administration is of particular importance in the conditions of increased socio-economic risks. Recent research and publications analysis. Problems of digitization, formation and development of electronic governance, provision of electronic services to the population, formation of open government, formation of electronic democracy, introduction of electronic technologies in public administration analyzed foreign and Ukrainian scientists, in particular: O. Bernazyuk, T. Birkovich, V. Birkovich, V. Dreshpak, N. Hrytsyak, O. Ka- banets, O. Karpenko, P. Klimushyn, V. Kuybida, I. Lopushynskyi, I. Makarova, V. Na- mestnik, O. Orlov, M. Pavlov, O. Parkhomenko-Kutsevil, Yu. Pigarev, H. Pocheptsov, V. Rakipov, O. Skoryk, S. Chukut, and others. Highlighting previously unsettled parts of the general problem. The purpose of the article: the introduction of digitalization of public administration in Ukraine requires a systematic analysis of foreign experience of digitalization of public administration. Presenting main material. The regulatory and legal basis for ensuring e-government activities in the USA are the following laws: Law on the elimination of paper carriers of documents in state bodies; Law on electronic signature; Freedom of Information Act (FOIA); Law on introduction of smart cards in state bodies for identification of employees, payment of travel expenses, calculation of wages, etc.; S.803 E-Government Act of 2002; Government Performance and Efficiency Act of 1993/ «Open government» (Open government), or «government of open information», also called «government 2.0» (Gov 2.0), is a further development of the concept of digitalization of public administration and enjoys great attention in the US from both the upper echelons of government and local authorities and the public. The experience of the United States demonstrates that the creation of digitalization of public administration takes place in the course of reforming the entire system of public administration in the direction of greater openness and the introduction of competitive and contractual principles; creation of specialized management structures with increased responsibility for performance results; increasing the role of ethical requirements for management; active interaction with civil society. At the same time, the following advantages of digitalization of public administration are also obvious: simplification of bureaucratic procedures, significant reduction of deadlines for the preparation of documents, provision of easily verified, strict tax accountability of legal entities and individuals through the introduction of a unified electronic accounting system, increase in the level of budget revenues, reduction of the scale of corruption and, accordingly , the growth of citizens’ trust in government institutions. Modern digital technologies have a positive impact on the quality and speed of providing administrative (state) services. The process of interaction of citizens and legal entities with executive authorities is simplified, making them more attractive and less time- consuming. The well-being of the population and the economic development of the country depend on the level of digitization of the public administration process. The information openness of state authorities is increasing. It can be noted that now there is a need to develop standards in the field of digitalization of public administration with a mandatory report on the satisfaction of the population with the work of public administration bodies. All this will increase the quality of the activities of state authorities and, accordingly, the quality of life of the population. In the perspective of further investigations, it is planned to analyze patterns, principles, methods, and tools for the development of digitalization of public administration in the countries of the European Union. Conclusions of the research and prospects fo further studies. Modern digital technologies have a positive impact on the quality and speed of providing administrative (state) services. The well-being of the population and the economic development of the country depend on the level of digitization of the public administration process. Digitization provides informational openness of state authorities. Currently, there is a need to develop standards in the field of digitization of public administration with a mandatory report on public satisfaction with the work of public administration bodies. All this will increase the quality of the activities of state authorities and, accordingly, the quality of life of the population. In the perspective of further investigations, the author intends to analyze patterns, principles, methods, and tools for the development of digitalization of public administration in the countries of the European Union.

Introduction. One of the key contradictions in the modern market relations is associated with the phenomena of deglobalization. It is the practice of the European Union with respect to supranational influence on fiscal relations of economic agents and the “trumponomics” that have confirmed the need to further increase the effectiveness of international tax and budget regulatory institutions. Problem Statement. The modern fiscal policy in market economies aims at regulating the distribution of resources between the private and public sectors with minimal impact of inflationary or deflationary fluctuations on the producer price index. Government actions that mobilize market potential shall include elements of fiscal reform related to a set of targeted measures to reduce the growth rate of the monetary aggregates. Purpose. To identify the main directions of a systemic strengthening of fiscal functions of governments, primarily, in countering the threats of destabilization in the presence of dynamic phenomena of globalization and their further multiplication. Мaterials and Мethods. The methods of position-time situational analysis and synthesis have been used; the dynamics of statistical macroeconomic indicators (GDP) within the framework of various systematic model assessments of the tax reform impact have been compared. Results. Both the positive and the negative experience of implementing programs for international financial institutions and governments of different countries aim at achieving the goals of full employment and sustainable development with the help of revenue and budgetary means of demand management and established monetary leverages have been considered. Recommendations for improvement of regulatory fiscal effects on Ukraine’s socio-economic system (SES) stability growth have been justified in the light of current trends of change management. Conclusions. Rational tax policy shall provide for the improvement of legislative mechanisms in combination with the formation and use of costs, stimulating the saving of resources with a view to their best practical use. In the context of globalization and increasing threats of information asymmetry with the existence of various technological paradigms in the SES, regulations shall be based on establishing transparent “game rules”. Mandatory payments shall come from sources of business income rather than from capital, because the use of the latter for paying taxes is contrary to the interests of investors and the goals of sustainable growth.

Problem setting. The fact of significant technological lag of the national economy of Ukraine from the countries of the European Union and South and North America is obvious. In addition to the economic components of this trend, of great importance is the lack of necessary organizational and regulatory prerequisites for the mass dissemination of technology transfer and development of public relations for their creation, transfer of rights and implementation in the productive sector of the economy. The current legislation that regulates innovation and determines the status of technology, unfortunately, is a branch of law that has been implemented under the influence of global trends in the spread of these processes and is not the result of natural development of society and business practices. Given the leading, initiating role of innovation legislation, the requirements of which create the preconditions for the development of innovative legal relations, legal science faces an extremely important task – to form such an effective and efficient concept of legal regulation of relations that mediate the circulation of technologies that would interest businesses intensive exchange of scientific developments and their more mass bringing to the level of specific production equipment, machinery, machines and mechanisms. Analysis of recent researches and publications in the work were investigated the works of scientists such as Yu. Ye. Atamanova, O. D. Svyatotsky, P. P. Krainev, S. F. Revutsky, S. Yu. Poguliayev, K. Yu. Ivanova, O. V. Hladka, A. I. Denisov etc. Article’s main body. Elements that are part of the technology transfer subsystem: relationships, subjects and objects. Relations that are part of the structure of the technology transfer subsystem of the National Innovation System: (1) Relations within the technology market; (2) Relations within the public-law sector of technology transfer; (3) Relationships involving unorganized ways of creating, transferring and implementing technologies. All entities involved in the technology transfer subsystem of the National Innovative System can be characterized as follows: (a) the author (developer) of the technology; (b) the owner of the object of intellectual property rights (owner of property rights to the object of intellectual property rights) on the basis of which the technology is developed; (c) the recipient of the technology (business entity in which the technology is embodied in the integral property complex); (d) the customer of the technology development process; (e) the state, represented by the authorized bodies of state power, which carries out public administration within the framework of the state technological policy; (f) local governments that, within their competence, influence the specifics of technology transfer within one or more settlements; (g) the investor, the person at whose expense the process of development and further implementation of the technology takes place and is implemented; (h) professional participants (specialized and professional intermediaries), which should include technology brokers, legal entities and individuals providing services related to the use of technology etc. The following forms of technology participation in economic legal relations can act as objects of the technology transfer subsystem of the National Innovative System, namely: (a) material embodiment of technology in the form of an integral technological line and / or experimental design of technology; (b) information implementation of the technology; (c) an integral property complex of the business entity to the production assets of which the technology has already been implemented; (d) technology as an innovative product; (e) technology as an innovative product that is both commodityfunctional and production (industrial) nature. Conclusions and prospects for development. (1) The main areas of improvement of the current legislation of Ukraine regulating relations in the field of technology circulation are: (a) determination of the legal status of subjects and participants of relations related to the creation, transfer of rights and implementation of such objects; (b) creation of normative “tools” for protection of the rights and legitimate interests of subjects and participants of relations related to the circulation of technologies; (c) creation of a normative field that establishes the list and procedure for the functioning of the organizational principles of the technology market (means of state influence, determination of the limits of such influence, the general procedure for implementation). (2) The necessity of adopting an additional new Law of Ukraine “On Technologies in Ukraine”, which will contain all the necessary regulations that will determine the economic and legal mechanism for regulating relations related to the creation, transfer of rights and implementation of technologies and / or its components, which in fact remained outside the subject of regulation of current regulations. (3) It is proposed to enshrine in the current legislation of Ukraine, in a normative document not lower than the level of the Law of Ukraine, an updated concept of the National Innovative System, which would reflect all relevant features of understanding its structure and interaction; (4) To determine in the current legislation of Ukraine the legal status of the technology transfer subsystem as a separate element of the National Innovation System; (5) To fix in the Law of Ukraine “On state regulation of activities in the field of technology transfer” a list of elements of the subsystem of technology transfer of the National Innovation System, for more adequate formation of long-term legislation, which should serve as a guideline for regulatory impact as an integral object of legal regulation by authorized public authorities.

In the era of globalization, the attraction of foreign investments has become an important factor in promoting the economic growth of countries. Investors are constantly looking for favorable conditions for investing their capital, which involves a combination of several important factors. The investor, who is focused on getting the maximum profit with the minimum cost, before making an investment decision, will study the investment environment of the host country, the proximity to large key markets, the barriers to entry from the host country to international markets, the availability of production and energy resources, the level of political and economic stability, the number of labor force, qualifications, etc. .sh. In terms of investments in the modern world, two types of trends have been identified: 1. High-tech investments, which are mainly located in developed countries, due to the developed country's intellectual resources, key market and good opportunities for business development, and 2. Investment, which is focused on obtaining maximum profit at the expense of cheap resources and labor force, and there is no or minimal technical innovation in it. It is important for the state to attract such direct foreign investments, which will not only be focused on making profits, but will also ensure the raising of the qualifications of local staff, the introduction of technological innovations, and the social protection of employees. Thanks to the economic reforms implemented after the post-Soviet upheavals, Georgia has become an attractive place for foreign investment, however, due to the shortage of labor force and low qualifications, investments focused on cheap resources and labor force are entering the country more than high-tech ones. The entry of relatively large, high-tech investments is hindered, in addition to the scarcity of the country's workforce and relatively low qualifications, the low level of energy independence, the territories occupied by the Russian Federation of Georgia, the generally politically and economically unstable region (Tskhinvali, Abkhazia, Karabakh regions), the aggressive state - the Russian Federation. Neighborhood and high probability of potential armed conflicts. The positive factors that make Georgia attractive for foreign investors are a favorable geopolitical location with land access, moderate natural and climatic conditions, low level of corruption, less bureaucratic and simple legislation compared to other countries, high level of harmonization of national legislation with international legislation, with the European Union in 2014 and in 2017 Free trade agreements signed with China, which allow a foreign investor to export products produced on behalf of Georgia to two of the world's largest markets without any problems. Due to the fact that one of the most important factors of production - "capital" - is needed to develop the economy, and the country does not have it at this stage, attracting foreign investments is a vitally important task for the economic growth of Georgia. In developing countries like Georgia, the level of domestic savings is relatively low. In addition to this, apart from the banking system, there is no stock market. In the period 1996-2021, a total of about 23.12 billion dollars of investment came into Georgia. The first and only investor country in 1996 was Ukraine with 3753.45 thousand US dollars. In the following years, significant investments were made in Georgia from the USA (1.81 billion USD), the European Union, CIS countries and Great Britain. According to the latest data, foreign investment has entered Georgia from 74 countries, which is almost 2 times less than the number of countries with which Georgia has trade relations (export-import). Since 2003, the growth of investments had an irreversible character, however, the 2008 world economic crisis and Russia's military attack on Georgia sharply reduced this figure, and it took 6 years to restore the pre-war figure. In addition, since 2017, foreign investments in Georgia have been characterized by a decreasing trend. Pandemic year 2020 was particularly notable in terms of investment decline. Despite the fact that after the signing of the Georgia-EU association in 2014, foreign investments should have increased due to the desire to access the EU market, until 2017, their volume was decreasing. In 2017, in the history of independent Georgia, the largest level of foreign investments - 1.98 billion USD was recorded. In the same year, the agreement on free trade between Georgia and China was signed, which should also increase foreign investments due to the desire to access the Chinese market, although the country has not returned to the level of foreign investments made in 2017. On December 31, 2013, the Organic Law of Georgia "On Economic Freedom" adopted in 2011 entered into force. The law, on the one hand, regulates the limit of the amount acceptable from taxpayers - in case of the desire to increase the tax rates of income, profit, VAT and import taxes, citizens' consent is required through a referendum, and on the other hand, the amount of spending of collected taxes is controlled by the limits of the established macroeconomic parameters. After the implementation of this law, the tax burden of taxpayers was not supposed to increase, but the government took advantage of the loophole in the law and in 2017 the excise duty rate was sharply increased on cars (the excise duty on right-hand drive cars was doubled), fuel and tobacco products. The property tax has also been increased, since it does not belong to the general state tax. Since January 1, 2017, when the Estonian model of profit tax came into force, the state budget received about 500 million GEL less. To make up the deficit, either government spending had to be cut, or debt had to be incurred, or taxes had to be raised. In 2017, the government's expenses increased by 800 million GEL, we took on a debt of 400 million GEL, and the excise and property tax rates were also increased, according to which if the family had an annual income of more than 40,000 GEL, they would have already paid property tax on the car. As of May 2021, the foreign debt has increased to 24.8 billion GEL and has already violated the macroeconomic parameter written in the Law on Economic Freedom, according to which the government's debt cannot exceed 60% of GDP. From 2011, when the law was adopted, until 2013, when the law entered into force, the volume of direct foreign investments did not increase, on the contrary - it even decreased, although this can be blamed on the caution caused by the change of government in 2012. - Investors are likely to observe the possibility of a change in the country's political vector. When the law came into force in December 2013, that is, in fact from 2014, the volume of investments increased by leaps and bounds, and this dynamic continued until 2017, when taxes were increased. Since 2018, the volume of direct foreign investments has dropped almost to the level of 2011. Based on all of the above, we believe that in order to attract foreign investments, Georgia should make maximum use of those competitive advantages that will attract the attention of foreign investors. The country, which has historically been a corridor of regional and world importance, has yet to fully utilize its transport function.

Relevance of research topic. The development of a resource-efficient economy has become a natural trend for the development of many developed countries, even those that are rich in natural resources. Ukraine has also started transforming its economic system in response to growing challenges from resource constraints, climate change and competition in international markets. An important push in this direction was the signing of the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the European Union, according to which there should be an implementation of the substantive provisions of the EU Directives concerning the "greening" of industry, and in particular those affecting the activity and development of potentially dangerous industries. Hence, there is a need for monitoring of implementation of institutional instruments for ecologization of industrial production and analysis of the implementation of economic reforms, which are provided with a number of strategic state documents in the field of “greening” of the industry. Formulation of the problem. Today there is a need for reforming the existing system of air quality management, water and wastewater management, waste management, since the current one does not allow full implementation of the policy provisions of the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the European Union. Comprehensive solution of urgent environmental problems requires coordinated actions of various government institutions and the adoption of managerial decisions on the assessment of technogenic and environmental risks and the monitoring of the environmental impact of industrial enterprises; there is also a need for the introduction of new effective levers of state policy on the management of hazardous production on the basis of the concept of "greening" of the industry. Analysis of recent research and publications. The problems of the disclosure of the transformational changes in the industry in the direction of its "greening" and the role of the state in the modernization of potentially hazardous productions have been given considerable attention in the scientific works of Berzina S., Burkinskyi B., Veklych O., Galushkina T., Ilyashenko I., Kvasha T., Kozachenko T., Kupinets L., Musina L., Omelchenko A., Potapenko V., Harichkov S., Khlobistov Y. and others. Selection of unexplored parts of the general problem. The new environmental policy is the control of pollution of the environment, primarily, the control of industrial pollution. In this context, the environmental modernization of industrial enterprises is conditioned by changing the state's environmental policy towards polluting enterprises, which will improve the quality of life for modern and future generations, will provide "green" industrial growth, form effective mechanisms for the preservation and restoration of the natural environment. The introduction of new instruments of state policy in the environmental sphere is a large-scale reform that will affect the entire Ukrainian industry, while the formation of a systematic vision of major achievements in the implementation of international requirements for the eco transformation of industrial enterprises is still an insufficiently researched issue in the scientific literature. Setting the task and the purpose of the study. The main task of the publication is the development of effective measures to improve institutional instruments for managing the ecological development of industrial enterprises in order to support the implementation of the Agreement with the EU in the field of greening the Ukrainian economy and assessing the implementation of the EU Directives, the implementation of other international instruments in Ukrainian legislation, including management of hazardous enterprises, which will help minimize the risks of environmental aspects in the process of production, effective prevention and control of industrial pollution, raising the level of environmental safety. Method or methodology for conducting research. The research uses the following methods of scientific knowledge: dialectical method, methods of comparison and observation, methods of economic analysis, analysis and synthesis, ascension from abstract to concrete, system-structural method. Presentation of the main material (results of work). The current state and trends of the development of potentially dangerous industrial enterprises in Ukraine are characterized and the features of their functioning are characterized, which are connected in a certain way with the significant use of potentially dangerous technologies, the growth of environmental problems and territories where there is a high probability of natural and man-made disasters; the analysis of strategic documents of the state in the field of hazardous production management has been carried out; new approaches to environmental modernization of potentially hazardous industries, determined by the priority of environmental safety and subordination of the goals of the development of industrial production to the technology of environmental and ecological safety with the coordination of interests of the ecology and economy, are grounded; recommendations on ecological adaptation of economic growth related to the development of industry have been developed. The field of application of results. Realization of measures of influence of state ecological policy on activity of industrial enterprises. Conclusions according to the article. The proposed measures on ecological adaptation of economic growth in industry allow to improve the mechanism of prevention, reduction and control of industrial pollution in accordance with international environmental requirements and promote the industrialists and entrepreneurs in ensuring the proper level of "greening" of technological processes.

These scientists point out that the market situation in Ukraine is favorable for the dairy industry functioning and the country has the appropriate prerequisites for its development: favorable climate, large areas of agricultural land, soil fertility, historical experience in farming, qualified staff and significant dairy market capacity. However, the authors reveal the presence of significant problems in the development of Ukrainian dairy subcomplex enterprises which requires further research in the industry development in the current conditions. The aim of the paper is to analyze and assess the main factors of raw milk competitiveness in accordance with the European quality requirements on the dairy complex of Ukraine, as well as analyze the problems of its development and ways to solve them. Currently, dairy enterprises production in Ukraine meet the high quality standards of the EU only partially. Therefore, the main task for Ukrainian producers is to ensure the high quality of both raw milk and the processed products. In addition, antibiotics and palm oil, pesticides, plant substitutes, milk substitution with water, etc. must be excluded from dairy products. According to the statistics, the total consumption fund in Ukraine, including exports and imports, is 9.33 million tons of milk. If we divide this figure by 42 million people of Ukraine, we get 221 kg of milk per capita. But if we divide the real figures - 6.68 million tons - by the real figure for the Ukrainian population - 36 million people - we will see that the consumption level is much lower - 185 kg per capita. Milk production decreased by almost 3.6% in Ukraine during the year. This drop was the most noticeable in cream and butter production, so it is not surprising that this niche was quickly filled by the importers. But what impedes Ukrainian milk industry development in the domestic market and its entering the foreign market? The only reason is low level of milk production. In Ukraine, the volumes in 2019 fell below 10 million tons for the first time. These data are confirmed by the recently published "Forecast of milk production in Ukraine by 2030: methods and calculations" submitted by Olha Kozak, a researcher at the Department of Economics of Agricultural Production and International Integration of the National Research Center "Institute of Agrarian Economics". According to the expert, the internal shortage of the product in 2019 was indicated primarily by the growth of the purchase price for raw milk, which for the last three months of 2019 was almost in line with the world prices or 10-15% higher than in the previous year. In October 2019, the price reached the maximum in hryvnia for the period of Ukraine's independence. Some experts in this field claim that our milk is more expensive than in Belgium, and this is nonsense. The experts predict a record decline in raw materials for 2020. In 2020, these processes will only intensify, causing structural changes in all components of the dairy food system. The situation will also be complicated by the abolition of the Second Grade milk since January 1, 2020, which is provided by the new DSTU "3662: 2018" Raw cow's milk. Specifications". This implies that processing companies will not receive about 1 million tons of second-grade milk. Dairy food producers are embarrassed as they can not compete with the UE plants in terms of prices. Recently, which was attended by Vadym Chagarovsky, the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Dairy Enterprises Union spoke at the Forum Dairy Business 2019 held in Kyiv. The expert claimed that it is necessary to work out a special development strategy for the period until 2025 in order to save the industry. The document will provide for a change in marketing strategies and, in particular, the definition of target export markets. Currently, Ukraine has implemented a system of food safety and quality control focused on the ultimate result. That is, individual product samples are selected for analysis by the controller. In case of positive results, the good quality of products is confirmed and the whole batch is subject to sale [1]. However, this approach does not guarantee complete safety and absolute product quality. 19 million tons of milk were produced by Ukrainian enterprises and about 5 tons were produced by the population20 years ago. According to these indicators, we were among the top ten world milk producers and, despite the problems with its quality, milk was suitable for processing. Therefore, development of dairy farming in Ukraine requires, above all, operating with real numbers. This is the only way the government can see the real state of this sector. And, by the way, the biggest error is in the amount of milk supplied by the population. The identification of cattle kept in small private farms could settle this problem and provide tracking real numbers and exercising effective control. Thus, the main problems of the milk market in Ukraine are insufficient milk supply and, above all, its low competitiveness and quality. According to some experts, the competitiveness of milk depends on its quality by 80%. At present, raw milk producers are not responsible for the microbiological and hygienic indicators of the EU countries. Since 2004, the quality of milk supplied to processing plants in Ukraine is regulated by the requirements of DSTU 3662-97 "whole cow's milk". Procurement requirements. In 2007, this standard was changed and a additional Extra grade was introduced. In the EU, the main document which sets requirements for food quality and safety is the Regulation (EU) № 853/2004 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 29 April 2004 defining specific rules for the hygiene of foodstuffs. The growing demands on dairy products quality has been an important trend in milk production: in July 2018 DSTU 3662: 2015 "Raw cow's milk. Specifications" was adopted. According to the document, there are three types of milk on the market: "extra", "higher" and "first". However, it was decided afterwards to leave the "second" grade until early 2020 to give farmers time to modernize production [6]. Over the next two years, it will be approved for processing into animal feed, casein, etc. Milk price has not only to reimburse the costs of its production, but to stimulate the growth of its production and contribute to increasing the profitability of its production as well. In addition, raw milk prices include the costs of milk processing enterprises, which cannot increase the price for milk and dairy products due to low solvency of consumers. More than that, the price increase may lead to a reduction in consumption. Increasing the competitiveness of raw milk producers is an important direction in the development of dairy industry enterprises in Ukraine. To achieve this aim they need to develop a set of measures aimed at increasing the productivity of cows, gradual increasing the livestock, especially in agricultural enterprises, increasing milk production and improving its quality characteristics through highly efficient technologies on an innovative basis, taking into account world experience. For this purpose the following steps must be taken: to restore and reconstruct the existing large livestock farms and complexes; increase the efficiency of selection work; to improve the conditions of the animals farming, milking and raw milk cooling system; set up modern large dairy complexes with highly productive animals and a well-established system of raw milk quality assurance; to consolidate raw milk producers with milk processing enterprises which will contribute to pricing policy regulation; to provide effective state support for producers; to introduce resource saving technologies into production in order to reduce resource costs and improve milk quality; to create a new technical and technological base that will meet the modern requirements for milk production; to learn from the experience of other countries; to improve the quality of milk by combating counterfeiting. Thus, the сurrent problems of raw milk producers competitiveness increase are challenging and relevant, and government measures aimed to meet high standards of dairy products safety and quality are the rule for the world's leading producers.

This paper is included in the First Monday Special Issue #3: Internet banking, e-money, and Internet gift economies, published in December 2005. Special Issue editor Mark A. Fox asked authors to submit additional comments regarding their articles. E-money four years later In the late 1990s, there was a lively debate about the implications of the newly emerging e-money on the ability of central banks to control monetary aggregates.[1] What caught the imagination of many observers was not so much the fact that new types of money were electronic. Rather, it was the potential that new forms of money were capable to be transferred via the internet without the intervention of a traditional credit institution. More than anything else, the trial of DigiCash in 1994 with its ‘Cyberbucks’ rang the alarm bells of monetary authorities. It had everything they feared: it was issued by a non-bank, it could be used via the internet, it was P2P capable and it was anonymous. Against this background, a debate ensued about the merits of the new type of money and its potential to limit the power of central banks. Central banks and international bodies such as the Bank for International Settlements published a large number of reports [2] and academics scrutinised the issues involved. Finally, law makers took to the issue and e-money became subject of regulation in a number of countries. Thus, after long debates, the E-Money Directive of the European Union was passed in 2001 (it is currently reviewed). By 2001, however, many of the early pioneers such as DigiCash, Cybercash or First Virtual had gone out of business. The whole discussion began losing steam. Moreover, the very concept of ‘e-money’ was slowly changing. Initially, e-money was meant to be a close electronic substitute for cash: a bearer instrument, capable to circulate, anonymous, etc. To some degree, this was achieved by e-purses. However, only to a degree because e-purses do not allow balances to circulate. The recipient has to return balances to financial institutions and the corresponding value will be credited to a bank account. Thus, from the point of view of the payor, e-purses have a lot in common with cash, but not from the point of view of the payee. On the internet, nothing like the envisioned digital bearer certificates has emerged. Rather, today, what is called ‘e-money’ consists of limited purpose accounts with non-banks. In the EU these non-banks have to obtain an e-money licence. In the U.S. they may be required to hold state money transmitter licences. These accounts have much more in common with bank accounts than with cash. What drives the demand for these products is convenience of use. Thus, in the end, the internet e-money that exists is not a new type of money at all. And the card based e-money is struggling in many parts of the world. Only recently, one of the first e-purse schemes, the Danish Danmont has been discontinued. What are the lessons? 1. I think the approach by Alan Greenspan to take a ‘wait and see’ attitude was vindicated. Strict ex ante regulation of new concepts and products make life difficult for small start-ups and thus slows down innovation. Moreover, early regulation may be misguided because it is not known well what to regulate. Thus, the type of e-money regulators had in mind in the late 1990s (digital bearer instruments) never took off. 2. Payments exhibit strong network effects. Therefore, any new instrument that is meant to be more than just a niche product has be firmly connected with the payment backbone: the bank-based retail and wholesale payment system. Therefore, the emergence of a parallel circulation of alternative monies should not worry central bankers. Such schemes are unlikely to grow beyond the already existing scale (in form of barter schemes etc.). Technological innovations are unlikely to change this. This is the point made in my paper and I think it is still valid. 3. The early discussion was very much about technical issues. Innovators that entered the market were technology companies. However, the payment industry also is, to a considerable extent, a service industry. The early newcomers ignored this and paid the price. They all vanished from the market. Today’s successful internet payment providers are much more focussed on service than their predecessors. 4. It seems wise to let non-banks have a share of the payment market. Internet payments, for example, require a mix of technological skills and quality of service that banks may often be unable to provide. Notes to Special Issue Update 1. Strictly speaking, the term e-money was a misnomer. It implied that traditional monies were non-electronic. But as a matter of fact, bank deposits had been electronic for many years already. 2. Between 1996 and 2001 the BIS published 5 reports on e-money. The ECB (and its predecessor the EMI) published 2 reports (1994 and 1998) and a security framework for e-money issuers (2002). The European Commission passed an E-Money Directive that came into force in 2002. In some countries law makers were much faster. Thus, the German government amended the German banking law in 1997 requiring e-money issuers to become banks. Technically, it is conceivable that banks (or even non-banks) that are based in offshore centres can issue e-money and distribute it via the Internet all over the world. Therefore, many economists see offshore e-money issuers as a severe threat to the ability of central banks to conduct monetary policy. In this paper, it is argued that offshore issuers will denominate their e-money products in terms of existing currencies. Therefore they will be affected by monetary policy measures in the same way as onshore banks.

Innovative development is one of the political priorities of the European Union countries. The Commission of the European Communities recommends that countries pursue innovation policies at the regional level. The regional development of innovations is possible only in conditions of openness. It is important to understand in which conditions the regions will support each other, and in which they will become competitors pulling over limited resources. The strength of mutual influence is determined by economic, technological and geographical distances. In this study we determined how technological development in one region effects the level of development of neighboring territories in the European Union. The research methodology is the calculation of spatial autocorrelation (global and local Moran index I) by the number of patents in 2018-2021 in 169 regions of Europe. Among the regions four groups were identified: innovation cluster centers, innovation agglomerations, the neighbors of innovative cores and the territories outside the influence. The dynamics of development is also analyzed. It is shown that in some cases regions form technological clusters (in Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands) or pull assets from neighbors to more innovative regions (in France, Austria, Denmark). In general, most regions of the EU regions have the low level of patent activity. At the same time, it is possible to identify regions - innovation centers, for instance, Castile-Leon (Spain), Masovian voivodeship (Poland). Understanding the emerging innovation blocs in the European Union will allow to implement more focused and effective policy.

If until the 90s. innovation policy was focused solely on the activities of enterprises in the real sector of the economy, and economic and social problems were not considered in their interconnection and interdependence, then with the advent of the 21st century the situation has changed dramatically. The increasing contribution of health care, education, social security to the gross domestic product, job creation has made it possible to consider them as a sphere of origin and application of innovations. It has been established that in conditions of a high load on the budget system of the country, social innovations can play a significant role in the development of society, influencing the saving of government spending on the social sphere while improving the quality of life of citizens. The purpose of the article was to identify the features of supporting innovative activities in the social sphere at the state level in the Russian Federation and the European Union. The study revealed the content of the activities of key organizations that are focused on the development of social innovations: in the Russian Federation – the Agency for Strategic Initiatives, the Social Projects Support Fund, innovation centers in the social sphere in the regions of the country, in the European Union – the Commission on Social Innovations and the Innovation Union . The key features of the activities of these organizations are identified in terms of support and replication of social innovation. Based on the study, it was found that in Russia, the ecosystem for supporting innovation in the social sphere is less stable and structured, but is dynamically developing in terms of its individual components. In the European Union, the system for supporting social innovation is much more established, many of its elements are highly developed (in particular, evaluating the effectiveness of social innovation).

The article is devoted to the review of theoretical and applied studies on the impact of technological progress on the labor market and public policy. Firstly, the influence of previous industrial revolutions is considered. It is shown that new technologies during the last two centuries have been resulting in growth of employment and reduction of working hours. In addition, mass computerization observed in the past few decades has led to polarization of the labor market. Secondly, the concept of the Fourth Industrial Revolution is analyzed. It is pointed out that, despite active discussion of this topic in the mass media and in the expert community, so far the results of the former have been limited and the latest technologies related to it are poorly distributed even in the most developed countries. However, studies devoted to quantitative estimates of automation and labor substitution have a highly controversial methodology. As a result, the majority of alarmist predictions are deemed unfounded. Various studies have indicated that the more likely response to the new technological revolution is not an increase in unemployment, but rather a spread of non-standard employment. Finally, changes in government labor market policy due to technological innovations of recent years are investigated. Despite the persistent intentions to reform the fundamental labor market policies, European employment services continue to apply a standard set of practices. The data available for Russia indicate that the risks of automation and significant changes on the labor market are even lower than in developed countries.

Ever since relevant bioengineering technologies have sufficiently matured to the platformizable commercialization stage, a slew of money has flocked to the cell and gene therapy market over the last few years, resulting in an abundance of clinical studies in the field. Newer modalities have brought up a string of regulatory and legislative tasks, such as developing guidelines and legislative rules to systematically regulate newer pharmaceutical products. Accordingly, another layer of legislation and guidelines tailored for cell and gene therapies has been introduced and is expected to evolve on par with technological progress. Furthermore, authorities have shifted to pricing and reimbursement policies that can share risks for cost and outcome among stakeholders altogether, such as developers and the government, while expanding the accessibility of patients to innovative cell and gene therapies. This review attempts to capture the salient regulatory features of the cell and gene therapy market in the context of South Korea and the European Union and points out where two sovereign entities currently stand on each policy element and how each tackles regulatory challenges. We can observe the converging trend where regulatory, pricing and reimbursement rules of adjoining countries in the supranational union or member countries of a consortium are getting more aligned. Evidently, concerted efforts to share regulatory science knowledge and embrace reference pricing have played their parts. The authors argue that policy priorities should be placed on initiatives to harmonize with other medical authorities to better the rights of patients and clear out the uncertainties of developers, ultimately to share and advance regulatory science and layout forward-looking policies at opportune times.

The paper is devoted to the research of the role of human as the basis of human potential of the country on basis by the disclosuring of the concepts of human potential and analysis of the human development index, human capital index and the Global Competitiveness Index of Ukraine and the European Union. The expediency and necessity of digitalization of the state processes, the electronic document management system (EDMS), the electronic interaction with citizens and the electronic services are substantiated. Today in Ukraine the European integration acquires a qualitatively new meaning. This is due to the complex socio-economic and political processes, which are associated with the Ukraine’s chosen European vector of development, which in the perspective will help improve the socio-economic situation of society. The human potential is the broadest socio-economic category which characterizes the human participation in social processes. Human potential determines not only the country’s desire to ensure the future existence of creative, the qualified personnel, but also significantly affects on the expanded social renewal in terms of demographic, economic, social and spiritual life. Accordingly, in the digital economy, human resources should be given priority attention on the all levels of government. The development of human potential is influenced by the large number of factors (demo- graphic, investment, natural, housing, social, technical and technological, labour, economic, educational and innovative). One of the most recognized and widespread indicators in the world practice that assess the state, problems and level of human potential are such key indicators as: human development index, human capital index, the global competitiveness index. These indicators allow reflecting the impact on human potential of all these factors and show Ukraine in the ranking of countries of the world. The economic crises have affected on the Human Development Index (HDI) not only on Ukraine, but also on the European countries. In fact, over the ten-year period, the HDI rate for the European countries has deteriorated significantly, but with given the negative economic phenomena of 2017 and 2018, it still had some positive changes as of early 2020. At the same time, the small post-Soviet and now the European countries have significantly improved this indicator by conducting the successful reforms of social sphere. The Human Capital Index (HCI) shows that 70% of the national wealth is formed by the developed countries and only 30% of the national wealth of Ukraine. What is even worse is that while the developed countries are increasing their human capital, Ukraine is losing it. The Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) should be used by the countries, which are striving to remove the existing barriers to the economic development and competitiveness as a tool for analyzing the problematic issues in their economic policy and develop anti-crisis strategies. According to the GCI, Ukraine has improved its state, but this improvement is extremely slow, while the EU’s countries are among the TOP-fifty countries with a high level of competitiveness. Thus, during the research period, almost all indices (except HDI) have increased, however, such increasing did not provide the best position of Ukraine in the world rankings, which indicates about the need significantly much higher rates of intellectualization of the economy. The changes are quite slow. On the basis of conducted analysis, it can be stated that the level of using of human potential are not improving in the recent years. As the observations are shown, the using of human potential in Ukraine takes place in conditions of the crisis phenomena in the economy and socio-cultural contradictions in society. The reform of the economy as a whole and its individual sectors, in particular, the public sector of the economy, the electronic document management system (EDMS), the electronic interaction with citizens and services has a great influence on the improvement of the analyzed indices.

Connecting I’ve moved house on the weekend, closer to the centre of an Australian capital city. I had recently signed up for broadband, with a major Australian Internet company (my first contact, cf. Turner). Now I am the proud owner of a larger modem than I have ever owned: a white cable modem. I gaze out into our new street: two thick black cables cosseted in silver wire. I am relieved. My new home is located in one of those streets, double-cabled by Telstra and Optus in the data-rush of the mid-1990s. Otherwise, I’d be moth-balling the cable modem, and the thrill of my data percolating down coaxial cable. And it would be off to the computer supermarket to buy an ASDL modem, then to pick a provider, to squeeze some twenty-first century connectivity out of old copper (the phone network our grandparents and great-grandparents built). If I still lived in the country, or the outskirts of the city, or anywhere else more than four kilometres from the phone exchange, and somewhere that cable pay TV will never reach, it would be a dish for me — satellite. Our digital lives are premised upon infrastructure, the networks through which we shape what we do, fashion the meanings of our customs and practices, and exchange signs with others. Infrastructure is not simply the material or the technical (Lamberton), but it is the dense, fibrous knotting together of social visions, cultural resources, individual desires, and connections. No more can one easily discern between ‘society’ and ‘technology’, ‘carriage’ and ‘content’, ‘base’ and ‘superstructure’, or ‘infrastructure’ and ‘applications’ (or ‘services’ or ‘content’). To understand telecommunications in action, or the vectors of fibre, we need to consider the long and heterogeneous list of links among different human and non-human actors — the long networks, to take Bruno Latour’s evocative concept, that confect our broadband networks (Latour). The co-ordinates of our infrastructure still build on a century-long history of telecommunications networks, on the nineteenth-century centrality of telegraphy preceding this, and on the histories of the public and private so inscribed. Yet we are in the midst of a long, slow dismantling of the posts-telegraph-telephone (PTT) model of the monopoly carrier for each nation that dominated the twentieth century, with its deep colonial foundations. Instead our New World Information and Communication Order is not the decolonising UNESCO vision of the late 1970s and early 1980s (MacBride, Maitland). Rather it is the neoliberal, free trade, market access model, its symbol the 1984 US judicial decision to require the break-up of AT&T and the UK legislation in the same year that underpinned the Thatcherite twin move to privatize British Telecom and introduce telecommunications competition. Between 1984 and 1999, 110 telecommunications companies were privatized, and the ‘acquisition of privatized PTOs [public telecommunications operators] by European and American operators does follow colonial lines’ (Winseck 396; see also Mody, Bauer & Straubhaar). The competitive market has now been uneasily installed as the paradigm for convergent communications networks, not least with the World Trade Organisation’s 1994 General Agreement on Trade in Services and Annex on Telecommunications. As the citizen is recast as consumer and customer (Goggin, ‘Citizens and Beyond’), we rethink our cultural and political axioms as well as the axes that orient our understandings in this area. Information might travel close to the speed of light, and we might fantasise about optical fibre to the home (or pillow), but our terrain, our band where the struggle lies today, is narrower than we wish. Begging for broadband, it seems, is a long way from warchalking for WiFi. Policy Circuits The dreary everyday business of getting connected plugs the individual netizen into a tangled mess of policy circuits, as much as tricky network negotiations. Broadband in mid-2003 in Australia is a curious chimera, welded together from a patchwork of technologies, old and newer communications industries, emerging economies and patterns of use. Broadband conjures up grander visions, however, of communication and cultural cornucopia. Broadband is high-speed, high-bandwidth, ‘always-on’, networked communications. People can send and receive video, engage in multimedia exchanges of all sorts, make the most of online education, realise the vision of home-based work and trading, have access to telemedicine, and entertainment. Broadband really entered the lexicon with the mass takeup of the Internet in the early to mid-1990s, and with the debates about something called the ‘information superhighway’. The rise of the Internet, the deregulation of telecommunications, and the involuted convergence of communications and media technologies saw broadband positioned at the centre of policy debates nearly a decade ago. In 1993-1994, Australia had its Broadband Services Expert Group (BSEG), established by the then Labor government. The BSEG was charged with inquiring into ‘issues relating to the delivery of broadband services to homes, schools and businesses’. Stung by criticisms of elite composition (a narrow membership, with only one woman among its twelve members, and no consumer or citizen group representation), the BSEG was prompted into wider public discussion and consultation (Goggin & Newell). The then Bureau of Transport and Communications Economics (BTCE), since transmogrified into the Communications Research Unit of the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts (DCITA), conducted its large-scale Communications Futures Project (BTCE and Luck). The BSEG Final report posed the question starkly: As a society we have choices to make. If we ignore the opportunities we run the risk of being left behind as other countries introduce new services and make themselves more competitive: we will become consumers of other countries’ content, culture and technologies rather than our own. Or we could adopt new technologies at any cost…This report puts forward a different approach, one based on developing a new, user-oriented strategy for communications. The emphasis will be on communication among people... (BSEG v) The BSEG proposed a ‘National Strategy for New Communications Networks’ based on three aspects: education and community access, industry development, and the role of government (BSEG x). Ironically, while the nation, or at least its policy elites, pondered the weighty question of broadband, Australia’s two largest telcos were doing it. The commercial decision of Telstra/Foxtel and Optus Vision, and their various television partners, was to nail their colours (black) to the mast, or rather telegraph pole, and to lay cable in the major capital cities. In fact, they duplicated the infrastructure in cities such as Sydney and Melbourne, then deciding it would not be profitable to cable up even regional centres, let alone small country towns or settlements. As Terry Flew and Christina Spurgeon observe: This wasteful duplication contrasted with many other parts of the country that would never have access to this infrastructure, or to the social and economic benefits that it was perceived to deliver. (Flew & Spurgeon 72) The implications of this decision for Australia’s telecommunications and television were profound, but there was little, if any, public input into this. Then Minister Michael Lee was very proud of his anti-siphoning list of programs, such as national sporting events, that would remain on free-to-air television rather than screen on pay, but was unwilling, or unable, to develop policy on broadband and pay TV cable infrastructure (on the ironies of Australia’s television history, see Given’s masterly account). During this period also, it may be remembered, Australia’s Internet was being passed into private hands, with the tendering out of AARNET (see Spurgeon for discussion). No such national strategy on broadband really emerged in the intervening years, nor has the market provided integrated, accessible broadband services. In 1997, landmark telecommunications legislation was enacted that provided a comprehensive framework for competition in telecommunications, as well as consolidating and extending consumer protection, universal service, customer service standards, and other reforms (CLC). Carrier and reseller competition had commenced in 1991, and the 1997 legislation gave it further impetus. Effective competition is now well established in long distance telephone markets, and in mobiles. Rivalrous competition exists in the market for local-call services, though viable alternatives to Telstra’s dominance are still few (Fels). Broadband too is an area where there is symbolic rivalry rather than effective competition. This is most visible in advertised ADSL offerings in large cities, yet most of the infrastructure for these services is comprised by Telstra’s copper, fixed-line network. Facilities-based duopoly competition exists principally where Telstra/Foxtel and Optus cable networks have been laid, though there are quite a number of ventures underway by regional telcos, power companies, and, most substantial perhaps, the ACT government’s TransACT broadband network. Policymakers and industry have been greatly concerned about what they see as slow takeup of broadband, compared to other countries, and by barriers to broadband competition and access to ‘bottleneck’ facilities (such as Telstra or Optus’s networks) by potential competitors. The government has alternated between trying to talk up broadband benefits and rates of take up and recognising the real difficulties Australia faces as a large country with a relative small and dispersed population. In March 2003, Minister Alston directed the ACCC to implement new monitoring and reporting arrangements on competition in the broadband industry. A key site for discussion of these matters has been the competition policy institution, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, and its various inquiries, reports, and considerations (consult ACCC’s telecommunications homepage at http://www.accc.gov.au/telco/fs-telecom.htm). Another key site has been the Productivity Commission (http://www.pc.gov.au), while a third is the National Office on the Information Economy (NOIE - http://www.noie.gov.au/projects/access/access/broadband1.htm). Others have questioned whether even the most perfectly competitive market in broadband will actually provide access to citizens and consumers. A great deal of work on this issue has been undertaken by DCITA, NOIE, the regulators, and industry bodies, not to mention consumer and public interest groups. Since 1997, there have been a number of governmental inquiries undertaken or in progress concerning the takeup of broadband and networked new media (for example, a House of Representatives Wireless Broadband Inquiry), as well as important inquiries into the still most strategically important of Australia’s companies in this area, Telstra. Much of this effort on an ersatz broadband policy has been piecemeal and fragmented. There are fundamental difficulties with the large size of the Australian continent and its harsh terrain, the small size of the Australian market, the number of providers, and the dominant position effectively still held by Telstra, as well as Singtel Optus (Optus’s previous overseas investors included Cable & Wireless and Bell South), and the larger telecommunications and Internet companies (such as Ozemail). Many consumers living in metropolitan Australia still face real difficulties in realising the slogan ‘bandwidth for all’, but the situation in parts of rural Australia is far worse. Satellite ‘broadband’ solutions are available, through Telstra Countrywide or other providers, but these offer limited two-way interactivity. Data can be received at reasonable speeds (though at far lower data rates than how ‘broadband’ used to be defined), but can only be sent at far slower rates (Goggin, Rural Communities Online). The cultural implications of these digital constraints may well be considerable. Computer gamers, for instance, are frustrated by slow return paths. In this light, the final report of the January 2003 Broadband Advisory Group (BAG) is very timely. The BAG report opens with a broadband rhapsody: Broadband communications technologies can deliver substantial economic and social benefits to Australia…As well as producing productivity gains in traditional and new industries, advanced connectivity can enrich community life, particularly in rural and regional areas. It provides the basis for integration of remote communities into national economic, cultural and social life. (BAG 1, 7) Its prescriptions include: Australia will be a world leader in the availability and effective use of broadband...and to capture the economic and social benefits of broadband connectivity...Broadband should be available to all Australians at fair and reasonable prices…Market arrangements should be pro-competitive and encourage investment...The Government should adopt a National Broadband Strategy (BAG 1) And, like its predecessor nine years earlier, the BAG report does make reference to a national broadband strategy aiming to maximise “choice in work and recreation activities available to all Australians independent of location, background, age or interests” (17). However, the idea of a national broadband strategy is not something the BAG really comes to grips with. The final report is keen on encouraging broadband adoption, but not explicit on how barriers to broadband can be addressed. Perhaps this is not surprising given that the membership of the BAG, dominated by representatives of large corporations and senior bureaucrats was even less representative than its BSEG predecessor. Some months after the BAG report, the Federal government did declare a broadband strategy. It did so, intriguingly enough, under the rubric of its response to the Regional Telecommunications Inquiry report (Estens), the second inquiry responsible for reassuring citizens nervous about the full-privatisation of Telstra (the first inquiry being Besley). The government’s grand $142.8 million National Broadband Strategy focusses on the ‘broadband needs of regional Australians, in partnership with all levels of government’ (Alston, ‘National Broadband Strategy’). Among other things, the government claims that the Strategy will result in “improved outcomes in terms of services and prices for regional broadband access; [and] the development of national broadband infrastructure assets.” (Alston, ‘National Broadband Strategy’) At the same time, the government announced an overall response to the Estens Inquiry, with specific safeguards for Telstra’s role in regional communications — a preliminary to the full Telstra sale (Alston, ‘Future Proofing’). Less publicised was the government’s further initiative in indigenous telecommunications, complementing its Telecommunications Action Plan for Remote Indigenous Communities (DCITA). Indigenous people, it can be argued, were never really contemplated as citizens with the ken of the universal service policy taken to underpin the twentieth-century government monopoly PTT project. In Australia during the deregulatory and re-regulatory 1990s, there was a great reluctance on the part of Labor and Coalition Federal governments, Telstra and other industry participants, even to research issues of access to and use of telecommunications by indigenous communicators. Telstra, and to a lesser extent Optus (who had purchased AUSSAT as part of their licence arrangements), shrouded the issue of indigenous communications in mystery that policymakers were very reluctant to uncover, let alone systematically address. Then regulator, the Australian Telecommunications Authority (AUSTEL), had raised grave concerns about indigenous telecommunications access in its 1991 Rural Communications inquiry. However, there was no government consideration of, nor research upon, these issues until Alston commissioned a study in 2001 — the basis for the TAPRIC strategy (DCITA). The elision of indigenous telecommunications from mainstream industry and government policy is all the more puzzling, if one considers the extraordinarily varied and significant experiments by indigenous Australians in telecommunications and Internet (not least in the early work of the Tanami community, made famous in media and cultural studies by the writings of anthropologist Eric Michaels). While the government’s mid-2003 moves on a ‘National Broadband Strategy’ attend to some details of the broadband predicament, they fall well short of an integrated framework that grasps the shortcomings of the neoliberal communications model. The funding offered is a token amount. The view from the seat of government is a glance from the rear-view mirror: taking a snapshot of rural communications in the years 2000-2002 and projecting this tableau into a safety-net ‘future proofing’ for the inevitable turning away of a fully-privately-owned Telstra from its previously universal, ‘carrier of last resort’ responsibilities. In this aetiolated, residualist policy gaze, citizens remain constructed as consumers in a very narrow sense in this incremental, quietist version of state securing of market arrangements. What is missing is any more expansive notion of citizens, their varied needs, expectations, uses, and cultural imaginings of ‘always on’ broadband networks. Hybrid Networks “Most people on earth will eventually have access to networks that are all switched, interactive, and broadband”, wrote Frances Cairncross in 1998. ‘Eventually’ is a very appropriate word to describe the parlous state of broadband technology implementation. Broadband is in a slow state of evolution and invention. The story of broadband so far underscores the predicament for Australian access to bandwidth, when we lack any comprehensive, integrated, effective, and fair policy in communications and information technology. We have only begun to experiment with broadband technologies and understand their evolving uses, cultural forms, and the sense in which they rework us as subjects. Our communications networks are not superhighways, to invoke an enduring artefact from an older technology. Nor any longer are they a single ‘public’ switched telecommunications network, like those presided over by the post-telegraph-telephone monopolies of old. Like roads themselves, or the nascent postal system of the sixteenth century, broadband is a patchwork quilt. The ‘fibre’ of our communications networks is hybrid. To be sure, powerful corporations dominate, like the Tassis or Taxis who served as postmasters to the Habsburg emperors (Briggs & Burke 25). Activating broadband today provides a perspective on the path dependency of technology history, and how we can open up new threads of a communications fabric. Our options for transforming our multitudinous networked lives emerge as much from everyday tactics and strategies as they do from grander schemes and unifying policies. We may care to reflect on the waning potential for nation-building technology, in the wake of globalisation. We no longer gather our imagined community around a Community Telephone Plan as it was called in 1960 (Barr, Moyal, and PMG). Yet we do require national and international strategies to get and stay connected (Barr), ideas and funding that concretely address the wider dimensions of access and use. We do need to debate the respective roles of Telstra, the state, community initiatives, and industry competition in fair telecommunications futures. Networks have global reach and require global and national integration. Here vision, co-ordination, and resources are urgently required for our commonweal and moral fibre. To feel the width of the band we desire, we need to plug into and activate the policy circuits. Thanks to Grayson Cooke, Patrick Lichty, Ned Rossiter, John Pace, and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments. Works Cited Alston, Richard. ‘ “Future Proofing” Regional Communications.’ Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Canberra, 2003. 17 July 2003 <http://www.dcita.gov.au/Article/0,,0_1-2_3-4_115485,00.php> —. ‘A National Broadband Strategy.’ Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Canberra, 2003. 17 July 2003 <http://www.dcita.gov.au/Article/0,,0_1-2_3-4_115486,00.php>. Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). Broadband Services Report March 2003. Canberra: ACCC, 2003. 17 July 2003 <http://www.accc.gov.au/telco/fs-telecom.htm>. —. Emerging Market Structures in the Communications Sector. Canberra: ACCC, 2003. 15 July 2003 <http://www.accc.gov.au/pubs/publications/utilities/telecommu... ...nications/Emerg_mar_struc.doc>. Barr, Trevor. new media.com: The Changing Face of Australia’s Media and Telecommunications. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2000. Besley, Tim (Telecommunications Service Inquiry). Connecting Australia: Telecommunications Service Inquiry. Canberra: Department of Information, Communications and the Arts, 2000. 17 July 2003 <http://www.telinquiry.gov.au/final_report.php>. Briggs, Asa, and Burke, Peter. A Social History of the Internet: From Gutenberg to the Internet. Cambridge: Polity, 2002. Broadband Advisory Group. Australia’s Broadband Connectivity: The Broadband Advisory Group’s Report to Government. Melbourne: National Office on the Information Economy, 2003. 15 July 2003 <http://www.noie.gov.au/publications/NOIE/BAG/report/index.htm>. Broadband Services Expert Group. Networking Australia’s Future: Final Report. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service (AGPS), 1994. Bureau of Transport and Communications Economics (BTCE). Communications Futures Final Project. Canberra: AGPS, 1994. Cairncross, Frances. The Death of Distance: How the Communications Revolution Will Change Our Lives. London: Orion Business Books, 1997. Communications Law Centre (CLC). Australian Telecommunications Regulation: The Communications Law Centre Guide. 2nd edition. Sydney: Communications Law Centre, University of NSW, 2001. Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts (DCITA). Telecommunications Action Plan for Remote Indigenous Communities: Report on the Strategic Study for Improving Telecommunications in Remote Indigenous Communities. Canberra: DCITA, 2002. Estens, D. Connecting Regional Australia: The Report of the Regional Telecommunications Inquiry. Canberra: DCITA, 2002. <http://www.telinquiry.gov.au/rti-report.php>, accessed 17 July 2003. Fels, Alan. ‘Competition in Telecommunications’, speech to Australian Telecommunications Users Group 19th Annual Conference. 6 March, 2003, Sydney. <http://www.accc.gov.au/speeches/2003/Fels_ATUG_6March03.doc>, accessed 15 July 2003. Flew, Terry, and Spurgeon, Christina. ‘Television After Broadcasting’. In The Australian TV Book. Ed. Graeme Turner and Stuart Cunningham. Allen & Unwin, Sydney. 69-85. 2000. Given, Jock. Turning Off the Television. Sydney: UNSW Press, 2003. Goggin, Gerard. ‘Citizens and Beyond: Universal service in the Twilight of the Nation-State.’ In All Connected?: Universal Service in Telecommunications, ed. Bruce Langtry. Melbourne: University of Melbourne Press, 1998. 49-77 —. Rural Communities Online: Networking to link Consumers to Providers. Melbourne: Telstra Consumer Consultative Council, 2003. Goggin, Gerard, and Newell, Christopher. Digital Disability: The Social Construction of Disability in New Media. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003. House of Representatives Standing Committee on Communications, Information Technology and the Arts (HoR). Connecting Australia!: Wireless Broadband. Report of Inquiry into Wireless Broadband Technologies. Canberra: Parliament House, 2002. <http://www.aph.gov.au/house/committee/cita/Wbt/report.htm>, accessed 17 July 2003. Lamberton, Don. ‘A Telecommunications Infrastructure is Not an Information Infrastructure’. Prometheus: Journal of Issues in Technological Change, Innovation, Information Economics, Communication and Science Policy 14 (1996): 31-38. Latour, Bruno. Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987. Luck, David. ‘Revisiting the Future: Assessing the 1994 BTCE communications futures project.’ Media International Australia 96 (2000): 109-119. MacBride, Sean (Chair of International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems). Many Voices, One World: Towards a New More Just and More Efficient World Information and Communication Order. Paris: Kegan Page, London. UNESCO, 1980. Maitland Commission (Independent Commission on Worldwide Telecommunications Development). The Missing Link. Geneva: International Telecommunications Union, 1985. Michaels, Eric. Bad Aboriginal Art: Tradition, Media, and Technological Horizons. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1994. Mody, Bella, Bauer, Johannes M., and Straubhaar, Joseph D., eds. Telecommunications Politics: Ownership and Control of the Information Highway in Developing Countries. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 1995. Moyal, Ann. Clear Across Australia: A History of Telecommunications. Melbourne: Thomas Nelson, 1984. Post-Master General’s Department (PMG). Community Telephone Plan for Australia. Melbourne: PMG, 1960. Productivity Commission (PC). Telecommunications Competition Regulation: Inquiry Report. Report No. 16. Melbourne: Productivity Commission, 2001. <http://www.pc.gov.au/inquiry/telecommunications/finalreport/>, accessed 17 July 2003. Spurgeon, Christina. ‘National Culture, Communications and the Information Economy.’ Media International Australia 87 (1998): 23-34. Turner, Graeme. ‘First Contact: coming to terms with the cable guy.’ UTS Review 3 (1997): 109-21. Winseck, Dwayne. ‘Wired Cities and Transnational Communications: New Forms of Governance for Telecommunications and the New Media’. In The Handbook of New Media: Social Shaping and Consequences of ICTs, ed. Leah A. Lievrouw and Sonia Livingstone. London: Sage, 2002. 393-409. World Trade Organisation. General Agreement on Trade in Services: Annex on Telecommunications. Geneva: World Trade Organisation, 1994. 17 July 2003 <http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/serv_e/12-tel_e.htm>. —. Fourth protocol to the General Agreement on Trade in Services. Geneva: World Trade Organisation. 17 July 2003 <http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/serv_e/4prote_e.htm>. Links http://www.accc.gov.au/pubs/publications/utilities/telecommunications/Emerg_mar_struc.doc http://www.accc.gov.au/speeches/2003/Fels_ATUG_6March03.doc http://www.accc.gov.au/telco/fs-telecom.htm http://www.aph.gov.au/house/committee/cita/Wbt/report.htm http://www.dcita.gov.au/Article/0,,0_1-2_3-4_115485,00.html http://www.dcita.gov.au/Article/0,,0_1-2_3-4_115486,00.html http://www.noie.gov.au/projects/access/access/broadband1.htm http://www.noie.gov.au/publications/NOIE/BAG/report/index.htm http://www.pc.gov.au http://www.pc.gov.au/inquiry/telecommunications/finalreport/ http://www.telinquiry.gov.au/final_report.html http://www.telinquiry.gov.au/rti-report.html http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/serv_e/12-tel_e.htm http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/serv_e/4prote_e.htm Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Goggin, Gerard. "Broadband" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0308/02-featurebroadband.php>. APA Style Goggin, G. (2003, Aug 26). Broadband. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 6,< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0308/02-featurebroadband.php>

I miss the ferry to San Pietro, so after a long bus trip winding through the southern Sardinian rocky terrain past gum trees, shrubs, caper plants, and sheep, I take refuge from the rain in a bar at the port. While I order a beer and panini, the owner, a man in his early sixties, begins to chat asking me why I’m heading to the island. For the tuna, I say, to research cultural practices and changes surrounding the ancient tuna trap la tonnara, and for the Girotonno international tuna festival, which coincides with the migration of the Northern Bluefin Tuna and the harvest season. This year the slogan of the festival reads Dal Sulcis a Sushi ("From Sulcis to Sushi"), a sign of the diverse tastes to come. Tuna here is the best in the world, he exclaims, a sentiment I hear many times over whilst doing fieldwork in southern Italy. He excitedly gestures for me to follow. We walk into the kitchen and on a long steel bench sits a basin covered with cloth. He uncovers it, and proudly poised, waits for my reaction. A large pinkish-brown loin of cooked tuna sits in brine. I have never tasted tuna in this way, so to share in his enthusiasm I conjure my interest in the rich tuna gastronomy found in this area of Sardinia called Sulcis. I’m more familiar with the clean taste of sashimi or lightly seared tuna. As I later experience, traditional tuna preparations in San Pietro are far from this. The most notable characteristic is that the tuna is thoroughly cooked or the flesh or organs are preserved with salt by brining or drying. A tuna steak cooked in the oven is robust and more like meat from the land than the sea in its flavours, colour, and texture. This article is about taste: the taste of, and tastes for, tuna in a traditional fishing community. It is based on ethnographic fieldwork and is part of a wider inquiry into the place of tradition and culture in seafood sustainability discourses and practices. In this article I use the notion of a taste network to explore the relationship between macro forces—international markets, stock decline and marine regulations—and transformations within local cultures of tuna production and consumption. Taste networks frame the connections between taste in a gustatory sense, tastes as an aesthetic preference and tasting as a way of learning about and attuning to modes and meanings surrounding tuna. As Antoine Hennion asserts, taste is more than a connoisseurship of an object, taste represents a cultural activity that concerns a wide range of practices, exchanges and attachments. Elspeth Probyn suggests that taste “acts as a connector between history, place, things, and people” (65) and “can also come to form communities: local places that are entangled in the global” (62). Within this framework, taste moves away from Bourdieu’s notion of taste as a social distinction towards an understanding of taste as created through a network of entities—social, biological, technological, and so forth. It turns attention to the mundane activities and objects of tuna production and consumption, the components of a taste network, and the everyday spaces where tradition and transformation are negotiated. For taste to change requires a transformation of the network (or components of that network) that bring such tastes into existence. These networks and their elements form the very meaning, matter, and moments of tradition and culture. As Hennion reminds us through his idea of “reservoir(s) of difference” (100), there are a range of diverse tastes that can materialise from the interactions of humans with objects, in this case tuna. Yet, taste networks can also be rendered obsolete. When a highly valued and endangered species like Bluefin is at the centre of such networks, there are material, ethical, and even political limitations to some tastes. In a study that follows three scientists as they attempt to address scallop decline in Brest and St Brieuc Bay, Michael Callon advocates for “the abandonment of all prior distinction between the natural and the social” (1). He draws attention to networks of actors and significant moments, rather than pre-existing categories, to figure the contours of power. This approach is particularly useful for social research that involves science, technology and the “natural” world. In my own research in San Pietro, the list of human and non-human actors is long and spans the local to the global: Bluefin (in its various meanings and as an entity with its own agency), tonnara owners, fishermen, technologies, fish shops and restaurants, scientific observers, policy (local, regional, national, European and international), university researchers, the sea, weather, community members, Japanese and Spanish buyers, and markets. Local discourses surrounding tuna and taste articulate human and non-human entanglements in quite particular ways. In San Pietro, as with much of Italy, notions of place, environment, identity, quality, and authenticity are central to the culture of tuna production and consumption. Food products are connected to place through ecological, cultural and technological dimensions. In Morgan, Marsden, and Murdoch’s terms this frames food and tastes in relation to a spatial dimension (its place of origin), a social dimension (its methods of production and distribution), and a cultural dimension (its perceived qualities and reputation). The place name labelling of canned tuna from San Pietro is an example of a product that represents the notion of provenance. The practice of protecting traditional products is well established in Italy through appellation programs, much like the practice of protecting terroir products in France. It is no wonder that the eco-gastronomic movement Slow Food developed in Italy as a movement to protect traditional foods, production methods, and biodiversity. Such discourses and movements like Slow Food create local/global frameworks and develop in relation to the phenomenon and ideas like globalisation, industrialization, and homogenisation. This study is based on ethnographic fieldwork in San Pietro over the 2013 tuna season. This included interviews with some thirty participants (fishers, shop keepers, locals, restaurateurs, and tonnara owners), secondary research into international markets, marine regulations, and environmental movements, and—of course—a gustatory experience of tuna. Walking down the main street the traditions of the tonnara and tuna are palpable. On a first impression there’s something about the streets and piazzas that is akin to Zukin’s notion of “vernacular spaces”, “sources of identity and belonging, affective qualities that the idea of intangible culture expresses, refines and sustains” (282). At the centre is the tonnara, which refers to the trap (a labyrinth of underwater nets) as well as the technique of tuna fishing and land based processing activities. For centuries, tuna and the tonnara have been at the centre of community life, providing employment, food security, and trade opportunities, and generating a wealth of ecological knowledge, a rich gastronomy based on preserved tuna, and cultural traditions like the famous harvest ritual la mattanza (the massacre). Just about every organ is preserved by salting and drying. The most common is the female ovary sac, which becomes bottarga. Grated onto pasta it has a strong metallic offal flavour combined with the salty tang of the sea. There is also the male equivalent lusciami, a softer consistency and flavour, as well as dried heart and lungs. There is canned tuna, a continuation of the tradition of brining and barrelling, but these are no ordinary cans. Each part of the tuna is divided into parts corresponding loosely to anatomy but more closely to quality based on textures, colour, and taste. There is the ventresca from the belly, the most prized cut because of its high fat content. Canned in olive oil or brine, a single can of this cut sells for around 30 Euros. Both the canned variety or freshly grilled ventresca is a sumptuous experience, soft and rich. Change is not new to San Pietro. In the long history of the tonnara there have been numerous transformations resulting from trade, occupation, and dominant economic systems. As Stefano Longo describes, with the development of capitalism and industrialization, the socio-economic structure of the tonnara changed and there was a dramatic decline in tonnare (plural) throughout the 1800s. The tonnare also went through different phases of ownership. In 1587 King Philip II formally established the Sardinian tonnare (Emery). Phillip IV then sold a tonnara to a Genovese man in 1654 and, from the late 18th century until today, the tonnara has remained in the Greco family from Genova. There were also changes to fishing and preservation technologies, such as the replacement of barrels after the invention of the can in the early 1800s, and innovations to recipes, as for example in the addition of olive oil. Yet, compared to recent changes, the process of harvesting, breaking down and sorting flesh and organs, and preserving tuna, has remained relatively stable. The locus of change in recent years concerns the harvest, the mattanza. For locals this process seems to be framed with concepts of before, and after, the Japanese arrived on the island. Owner Giuliano Greco, a man in his early fifties who took over the management of the tonnara from his father when it reopened in the late 1990s, describes these changes: We have two ages—before the Japanese and after. Before the Japanese, yes, the tuna was damaged. It was very violent in the mattanza. In the age before the pollution, there was a crew of 120 people divided in a little team named the stellati. The more expert and more important at the centre of the boat, the others at the side because at the centre there was more tuna. When there was mattanza it was like a race, a game, because if they caught more tuna they had more entrails, which was good money for them, because before, part of the wage was in nature, part of the tuna, and for this game the tuna was damaged because they opened it with a knife, the heart, the eggs etc. And for this method it was very violent because they wanted to get the tuna entrails first. The tuna remained on the boat without ice, with blood everywhere. The tonnara operated within clear social hierarchies made up of tonnarotti (tuna fishermen) under the guidance of the Rais (captain of tonnara) whose skills, charisma and knowledge set him apart. The Rais liaised with the tonnarotti, the owners, and the local community, recruiting men and women to augment the workforce in the mattanza period. Goliardo Rivano, a tonnarotto (singular) since 1999 recalls “all the town would be called on for the mattanza. Not only men but women too would work in the cannery, cutting, cleaning, and canning the tuna.” The mattanza was the starting point of supply and consumption networks. From the mattanza the tuna was broken down, the flesh boiled and brined for local and foreign markets, and the organs salted and dried for the (mainly) local market. Part of the land-based activities of tonnarotti involved cleaning, salting, pressing and drying the organs, which supplemented their wage. As Giuliano described, the mattanza was a bloody affair because of the practice of retrieving the organs; but since the tuna was boiled and then preserved in brine, it was not important whether the flesh was damaged. At the end of the 1970s the tonnara closed. According to locals and reportage, pollution from a nearby factory had caused a drastic drop in tuna. It remained closed until the mid 1990s when Japanese buyers came to inquire about tuna from the trap. Global tastes for tuna had changed during the time the tonnara was closed. An increase in western appetites for sushi had been growing since the early 1970s (Bestore). As Theadore Bestore describes in detail, this coincided with a significant transformation of the Japanese fishing industry’s international role. In the 1980s, the Japanese government began to restructure its fleets in response to restricted access to overseas fishing grounds, which the declaration of Excusive Economic Zones enforced (Barclay and Koh). At this time, Japan turned to foreign suppliers for tuna (Bestore). Kate Barclay and Sun-Hui Koh describe how quantity was no longer a national food security issue like it had been in post war Japan and “consumers started to demand high-quality high-value products” (145). In the late 1990s, the Greco family reopened the tonnara and the majority of the tuna went to Japan leaving a smaller portion for the business of canning. The way mattanza was practiced underwent profound changes and particular notions of quality emerged. This was also the beginning of new relationships and a widening of the taste network to include international stakeholders: Japanese buyers and markets became part of the network. Giuliano refers to the period as the “Japanese Age”. A temporal framing that is iterated by restaurant and fish shop owners who talk about a time when Japanese began to come to the island and have the first pick of the tuna. Giuliano recalls “there was still blood but there was not the system of opening tuna, in total, like before. Now the tuna is opened on the land. The only operation we do on the boat is blooding and chilling.” Here he references the Japanese technique of ikejime. Over several years the technicians taught Giuliano and some of the crew about killing the tuna faster and bleeding it to maintain colour and freshness. New notions of quality and taste for raw or lightly cooked tuna entered San Pietro. According to Rais Luigi “the tuna is of higher quality, because we treat it in a particular way, with ice.” Giuliano describes the importance of quality. “Before they used the stellati and it took five people, each one with a harpoon to haul the tuna. Now they only use one hook, in the mouth and use a chain, by hand. On board there is bleeding, and there is blood, but now we must keep the quality of the meat at its best.” In addition to the influence of Japanese tastes, the international Girotonno tuna festival had its inauguration in 2003, and, along with growing tourism, brought cosmopolitan and international tastes to San Pietro. The impact of a global taste for tuna has had devastating effects on their biomass. The international response to the sharp decline was the expansion of the role of inter-governmental monitoring bodies like International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), the introduction of quotas, and an increase in the presence of marine authorities on fleets, scientific research and environmental campaigns. In San Pietro, international relationships further widened and so did the configuration of taste networks, this time to include marine regulators, a quota on Bluefin, a Spanish company, and tuna ranches in Malta. The mattanza again was at the centre of change and became a point of contention within the community. This time because as a practice it is endangered, occurring only once or twice a year, “for the sake of tradition, culture” as Giuliano stated. The harvest now takes place in ranches in Malta because for the last three years the Greco family have supplied the tonnara’s entire quota (excluding tuna from mattanza or those that die in the net) to a major Spanish seafood company Riccardo Fuentes e Hijos, which transports them live to Malta where they are fattened and slaughtered, predominantly for a Japanese market. The majority of tuna now leave the island whole, which has profoundly transformed the distribution networks and local taste culture, and mainly the production and trade in tuna organs and canned tuna. In 2012, ICCAT and the European Union further tightened the quotas, which along with competition with industrial fisheries for both quota and markets, has placed enormous pressure on the tonnara. In 2013, it was allocated a quota that was well under what is financially sustainable. Add to the mix the additional expense of financing the obligatory scientific observers, and the tonnara has had to modify its operations. In the last few years there has been a growing antagonism between marine regulations, global markets, and traditional practices. This is exemplified in the limitations to the tuna organ tradition. It is now more common to find dried tuna organs in vacuum packs from Sicily rather than local products. As the restaurateur Secondo Borghero of Tonno della Corsa says “the tonnara made a choice to sell the live tuna to the Spanish. It’s a big problem. The tuna is not just the flesh but also the interior—the stomach, the heart, the eggs—and now we don’t have the quantity of these and the quality around is also not great.” In addition, even though preserved organs are available for consumption, local preserving activities have almost ceased along with supplementary income. The social structures and the types of actors that are a part of the tonnara have also changed. New kinds of relationships, bodies, and knowledge are situated side by side because of the mandate that there be scientific observers present at certain moments in the season. In addition, there are coast guards and, at various stages of the season, university staff contracted by ICCAT take samples and tag the tuna to generate data. The changes have also introduced new types of knowledge, activities, and institutional affiliations based on scientific ideas and discourses of marine biology, conservation, and sustainability. These are applied through marine management activities and regimes like quotas and administered through state and global institutions. This is not to say that the knowledge informing the Rais’s decisions has been done away with but as Gisli Palsson has previously argued, there is a new knowledge hierarchy, which places a significant focus on the notion of expert knowledge. This has the potential to create unequal power dynamics between the marine scientists and the fishers. Today in San Pietro tuna tastes are diverse. Tuna is delicate, smooth, and rich ventresca, raw tartare clean on the palate, novel at the Girotono, hearty tuna al forno, and salty dry bottarga. Tasting tuna in San Pietro offers a material and affective starting point to follow the socio-cultural, political, and ecological contours and contentions that are part of tuna traditions and their transformations. By thinking of gustatory and aesthetic tastes as part of wider taste networks, which involve human and non-human entities, we can begin to unpack and detail better what these changes encompass and figure forms and moments of power and agency. At the centre of tastes and transformation in San Pietro are the tonnara and the mattanza. Although in its long existence the tonnara has endured many changes, those in the past 15 years are unprecedented. Several major global events have provided conditions for change and widened the network from its once mainly local setting to its current global span. First, Japanese and global tastes set a demand for tuna and introduced different tuna production and preparation techniques and new styles of serving tuna raw or lightly cooked tuna. Later, the decline of Bluefin stocks and the increasing involvement of European and international monitoring bodies introduced catch limitations along with new processes and types of knowledge and authorities. Coinciding with this was the development of relationships with middle companies, which again introduced new techniques and technologies, namely the gabbie (cage) and ranches, to the taste network. In the cultural setting of Italy where the conservation of tradition is of particular importance, as I have explained earlier through the notion of provenance, the management of a highly regulated endangered marine species is a complex project that causes much conflict. Because of the dire state of the stocks and continual rise in global demand, solutions are complex. Yet it would seem useful to recognise that tuna tastes are situated within a network of knowledge, know-how, technology, and practices that are not simple modes of production and consumption but also ways of stewarding the sea and its species. Ethics Approval Original names have been used when participants gave consent on the official consent form to being identified in publications relating to the study. This is in accordance with ethics approval granted through the University of Sydney on 21 March 2013. Project number 2012/2825. References Barclay, Kate, and Koh Sun-Hui “Neo-liberal Reforms in Japan’s Tuna Fisheries? A History of Government-business Relations in a Food-producing Sector.” Japan Forum 20.2 (2008): 139–170. Bestor, Theadore “Tsukiji: The Fish Market at the Center of the World.” Foreign Policy 121 (2000): 54–63. Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Harvard UP, 1984. Callon, Michael “Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation: Domestication of the Scallops and the Fishermen of St Brieuc Bay” Power, Action, Belief: a New Sociology of Knowledge? Ed. John Law. London: Routledge, 1986. 196–223. Emery, Katherine “Tonnare in Italy: Science, History and Culture of Sardinian Tuna Fishing.” Californian Italian Studies 1 (2010): 1–40. Hennion, Antoine “Those Things That Hold Us Together: Taste and Sociology” Cultural Sociology 1 (2007): 97–114. Longo, Stefano “Global Sushi: A Socio-Ecological Analysis of The Sicilian Bluefin Tuna Fishery.” Dissertation. Oregon: University of Oregon, 2009. Morgan, Kevin, Marsden, Terry, and Johathan Murdoch. Worlds of Food: Place, Power, and provenance in the Food Chain. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006. Palsson, Gisli. Coastal Economies, Cultural Accounts: Human Ecology and Icelandic Discourse. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1991. Probyn, Elspeth “In the Interests of Taste & Place: Economies of Attachment.” The Global Intimate. Eds. G. Pratt and V. Rosner. New York: Columbia UP (2012). Zukin, Sharon “The Social Production of Urban Cultural Heritage: Identity and Ecosystem on an Amsterdam Shopping Street.” City, Culture and Society 3 (2012): 281–291.

Mobile In many countries, more people have mobile phones than they do fixed-line phones. Mobile phones are one of the fastest growing technologies ever, outstripping even the internet in many respects. With the advent and widespread deployment of digital systems, mobile phones were used by an estimated 1, 158, 254, 300 people worldwide in 2002 (up from approximately 91 million in 1995), 51. 4% of total telephone subscribers (ITU). One of the reasons for this is mobility itself: the ability for people to talk on the phone wherever they are. The communicative possibilities opened up by mobile phones have produced new uses and new discourses (see Katz and Aakhus; Brown, Green, and Harper; and Plant). Contemporary soundscapes now feature not only voice calls in previously quiet public spaces such as buses or restaurants but also the aural irruptions of customised polyphonic ringtones identifying whose phone is ringing by the tune downloaded. The mobile phone plays an important role in contemporary visual and material culture as fashion item and status symbol. Most tragically one might point to the tableau of people in the twin towers of the World Trade Centre, or aboard a plane about to crash, calling their loved ones to say good-bye (Galvin). By contrast, one can look on at the bathos of Australian cricketer Shane Warne’s predilection for pressing his mobile phone into service to arrange wanted and unwanted assignations while on tour. In this article, I wish to consider another important and so far also under-theorised aspect of mobile phones: text. Of contemporary textual and semiotic systems, mobile text is only a recent addition. Yet it is already produces millions of inscriptions each day, and promises to be of far-reaching significance. Txt Txt msg ws an acidnt. no 1 expcted it. Whn the 1st txt msg ws sent, in 1993 by Nokia eng stdnt Riku Pihkonen, the telcom cpnies thought it ws nt important. SMS – Short Message Service – ws nt considrd a majr pt of GSM. Like mny teks, the *pwr* of txt — indeed, the *pwr* of the fon — wz discvrd by users. In the case of txt mssng, the usrs were the yng or poor in the W and E. (Agar 105) As Jon Agar suggests in Constant Touch, textual communication through mobile phone was an after-thought. Mobile phones use radio waves, operating on a cellular system. The first such mobile service went live in Chicago in December 1978, in Sweden in 1981, in January 1985 in the United Kingdom (Agar), and in the mid-1980s in Australia. Mobile cellular systems allowed efficient sharing of scarce spectrum, improvements in handsets and quality, drawing on advances in science and engineering. In the first instance, technology designers, manufacturers, and mobile phone companies had been preoccupied with transferring telephone capabilities and culture to the mobile phone platform. With the growth in data communications from the 1960s onwards, consideration had been given to data capabilities of mobile phone. One difficulty, however, had been the poor quality and slow transfer rates of data communications over mobile networks, especially with first-generation analogue and early second-generation digital mobile phones. As the internet was widely and wildly adopted in the early to mid-1990s, mobile phone proponents looked at mimicking internet and online data services possibilities on their hand-held devices. What could work on a computer screen, it was thought, could be reinvented in miniature for the mobile phone — and hence much money was invested into the wireless access protocol (or WAP), which spectacularly flopped. The future of mobiles as a material support for text culture was not to lie, at first at least, in aping the world-wide web for the phone. It came from an unexpected direction: cheap, simple letters, spelling out short messages with strange new ellipses. SMS was built into the European Global System for Mobile (GSM) standard as an insignificant, additional capability. A number of telecommunications manufacturers thought so little of the SMS as not to not design or even offer the equipment needed (the servers, for instance) for the distribution of the messages. The character sets were limited, the keyboards small, the typeface displays rudimentary, and there was no acknowledgement that messages were actually received by the recipient. Yet SMS was cheap, and it offered one-to-one, or one-to-many, text communications that could be read at leisure, or more often, immediately. SMS was avidly taken up by young people, forming a new culture of media use. Sending a text message offered a relatively cheap and affordable alternative to the still expensive timed calls of voice mobile. In its early beginnings, mobile text can be seen as a subcultural activity. The text culture featured compressed, cryptic messages, with users devising their own abbreviations and grammar. One of the reasons young people took to texting was a tactic of consolidating and shaping their own shared culture, in distinction from the general culture dominated by their parents and other adults. Mobile texting become involved in a wider reworking of youth culture, involving other new media forms and technologies, and cultural developments (Butcher and Thomas). Another subculture that also was in the vanguard of SMS was the Deaf ‘community’. Though the Alexander Graham Bell, celebrated as the inventor of the telephone, very much had his hearing-impaired wife in mind in devising a new form of communication, Deaf people have been systematically left off the telecommunications network since this time. Deaf people pioneered an earlier form of text communications based on the Baudot standard, used for telex communications. Known as teletypewriter (TTY), or telecommunications device for the Deaf (TDD) in the US, this technology allowed Deaf people to communicate with each other by connecting such devices to the phone network. The addition of a relay service (established in Australia in the mid-1990s after much government resistance) allows Deaf people to communicate with hearing people without TTYs (Goggin & Newell). Connecting TTYs to mobile phones have been a vexed issue, however, because the digital phone network in Australia does not allow compatibility. For this reason, and because of other features, Deaf people have become avid users of SMS (Harper). An especially favoured device in Europe has been the Nokia Communicator, with its hinged keyboard. The move from a ‘restricted’, ‘subcultural’ economy to a ‘general’ economy sees mobile texting become incorporated in the semiotic texture and prosaic practices of everyday life. Many users were already familiar with the new conventions already developed around electronic mail, with shorter, crisper messages sent and received — more conversation-like than other correspondence. Unlike phone calls, email is asynchronous. The sender can respond immediately, and the reply will be received with seconds. However, they can also choose to reply at their leisure. Similarly, for the adept user, SMS offers considerable advantages over voice communications, because it makes textual production mobile. Writing and reading can take place wherever a mobile phone can be turned on: in the street, on the train, in the club, in the lecture theatre, in bed. The body writes differently too. Writing with a pen takes a finger and thumb. Typing on a keyboard requires between two and ten fingers. The mobile phone uses the ‘fifth finger’ — the thumb. Always too early, and too late, to speculate on contemporary culture (Morris), it is worth analyzing the textuality of mobile text. Theorists of media, especially television, have insisted on understanding the specific textual modes of different cultural forms. We are familiar with this imperative, and other methods of making visible and decentring structures of text, and the institutions which animate and frame them (whether author or producer; reader or audience; the cultural expectations encoded in genre; the inscriptions in technology). In formal terms, mobile text can be described as involving elision, great compression, and open-endedness. Its channels of communication physically constrain the composition of a very long single text message. Imagine sending James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake in one text message. How long would it take to key in this exemplar of the disintegration of the cultural form of the novel? How long would it take to read? How would one navigate the text? Imagine sending the Courier-Mail or Financial Review newspaper over a series of text messages? The concept of the ‘news’, with all its cultural baggage, is being reconfigured by mobile text — more along the lines of the older technology of the telegraph, perhaps: a few words suffices to signify what is important. Mobile textuality, then, involves a radical fragmentation and unpredictable seriality of text lexia (Barthes). Sometimes a mobile text looks singular: saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’, or sending your name and ID number to obtain your high school or university results. Yet, like a telephone conversation, or any text perhaps, its structure is always predicated upon, and haunted by, the other. Its imagined reader always has a mobile phone too, little time, no fixed address (except that hailed by the network’s radio transmitter), and a finger poised to respond. Mobile text has structure and channels. Yet, like all text, our reading and writing of it reworks those fixities and makes destabilizes our ‘clear’ communication. After all, mobile textuality has a set of new pre-conditions and fragilities. It introduces new sorts of ‘noise’ to signal problems to annoy those theorists cleaving to the Shannon and Weaver linear model of communication; signals often drop out; there is a network confirmation (and message displayed) that text messages have been sent, but no system guarantee that they have been received. Our friend or service provider might text us back, but how do we know that they got our text message? Commodity We are familiar now with the pleasures of mobile text, the smile of alerting a friend to our arrival, celebrating good news, jilting a lover, making a threat, firing a worker, flirting and picking-up. Text culture has a new vector of mobility, invented by its users, but now coveted and commodified by businesses who did not see it coming in the first place. Nimble in its keystrokes, rich in expressivity and cultural invention, but relatively rudimentary in its technical characteristics, mobile text culture has finally registered in the boardrooms of communications companies. Not only is SMS the preferred medium of mobile phone users to keep in touch with each other, SMS has insinuated itself into previously separate communication industries arenas. In 2002-2003 SMS became firmly established in television broadcasting. Finally, interactive television had arrived after many years of prototyping and being heralded. The keenly awaited back-channel for television arrives courtesy not of cable or satellite television, nor an extra fixed-phone line. It’s the mobile phone, stupid! Big Brother was not only a watershed in reality television, but also in convergent media. Less obvious perhaps than supplementary viewing, or biographies, or chat on Big Brother websites around the world was the use of SMS for voting. SMS is now routinely used by mainstream television channels for viewer feedback, contest entry, and program information. As well as its widespread deployment in broadcasting, mobile text culture has been the language of prosaic, everyday transactions. Slipping into a café at Bronte Beach in Sydney, why not pay your parking meter via SMS? You’ll even receive a warning when your time is up. The mobile is becoming the ‘electronic purse’, with SMS providing its syntax and sentences. The belated ingenuity of those fascinated by the economics of mobile text has also coincided with a technological reworking of its possibilities, with new implications for its semiotic possibilities. Multimedia messaging (MMS) has now been deployed, on capable digital phones (an instance of what has been called 2.5 generation [G] digital phones) and third-generation networks. MMS allows images, video, and audio to be communicated. At one level, this sort of capability can be user-generated, as in the popularity of mobiles that take pictures and send these to other users. Television broadcasters are also interested in the capability to send video clips of favourite programs to viewers. Not content with the revenues raised from millions of standard-priced SMS, and now MMS transactions, commercial participants along the value chain are keenly awaiting the deployment of what is called ‘premium rate’ SMS and MMS services. These services will involve the delivery of desirable content via SMS and MMS, and be priced at a premium. Products and services are likely to include: one-to-one textchat; subscription services (content delivered on handset); multi-party text chat (such as chat rooms); adult entertainment services; multi-part messages (such as text communications plus downloads); download of video or ringtones. In August 2003, one text-chat service charged $4.40 for a pair of SMS. Pwr At the end of 2003, we have scarcely registered the textual practices and systems in mobile text, a culture that sprang up in the interstices of telecommunications. It may be urgent that we do think about the stakes here, as SMS is being extended and commodified. There are obvious and serious policy issues in premium rate SMS and MMS services, and questions concerning the political economy in which these are embedded. Yet there are cultural questions too, with intricate ramifications. How do we understand the effects of mobile textuality, rewriting the telephone book for this new cultural form (Ronell). What are the new genres emerging? And what are the implications for cultural practice and policy? Does it matter, for instance, that new MMS and 3rd generation mobile platforms are not being designed or offered with any-to-any capabilities in mind: allowing any user to upload and send multimedia communications to other any. True, as the example of SMS shows, the inventiveness of users is difficult to foresee and predict, and so new forms of mobile text may have all sorts of relationships with content and communication. However, there are worrying signs of these developing mobile circuits being programmed for narrow channels of retail purchase of cultural products rather than open-source, open-architecture, publicly usable nodes of connection. Works Cited Agar, Jon. Constant Touch: A Global History of the Mobile Phone. Cambridge: Icon, 2003. Barthes, Roland. S/Z. Trans. Richard Miller. New York: Hill & Wang, 1974. Brown, Barry, Green, Nicola, and Harper, Richard, eds. Wireless World: Social, Cultural, and Interactional Aspects of the Mobile Age. London: Springer Verlag, 2001. Butcher, Melissa, and Thomas, Mandy, eds. Ingenious: Emerging youth cultures in urban Australia. Melbourne: Pluto, 2003. Galvin, Michael. ‘September 11 and the Logistics of Communication.’ Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 17.3 (2003): 303-13. Goggin, Gerard, and Newell, Christopher. Digital Disability: The Social Construction of Digital in New Media. Lanham, MA: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003. Harper, Phil. ‘Networking the Deaf Nation.’ Australian Journal of Communication 30. 3 (2003), in press. International Telecommunications Union (ITU). ‘Mobile Cellular, subscribers per 100 people.’ World Telecommunication Indicators <http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/statistics/> accessed 13 October 2003. Katz, James E., and Aakhus, Mark, eds. Perpetual Contact: Mobile Communication, Private Talk, Public Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 2002. Morris, Meaghan. Too Soon, Too Late: History in Popular Culture. Bloomington and Indianapolis: U of Indiana P, 1998. Plant, Sadie. On the Mobile: The Effects of Mobile Telephones on Social and Individual Life. < http://www.motorola.com/mot/documents/0,1028,296,00.pdf> accessed 5 October 2003. Ronell, Avital. The Telephone Book: Technology—schizophrenia—electric speech. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1989. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Goggin, Gerard. "‘mobile text’" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture <http://www.media-culture.org.au/0401/03-goggin.php>. APA Style Goggin, G. (2004, Jan 12). ‘mobile text’. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 7, <http://www.media-culture.org.au/0401/03-goggin.php>

Introduction In November 2020, upon learning that the company’s Covid-19 vaccine trial had been successful, the head of Pfizer’s Vaccine Research and Development, Kathrin Jansen, celebrated with champagne – “some really good stuff” (Cohen). Bubbles seem to go naturally with celebration, and champagne is fundamentally associated with bubbles. Yet, until the late-seventeenth century, champagne was a still wine, and it only reached the familiar levels of bubbliness in the late-nineteenth century (Harding). During this period and on into the early twentieth century, “champagne” was in many ways created, defined, and defended. A “champagne bubble” was created, within which the “nature” of champagne was contested and constructed. Champagne today is the result of hundreds of years of labour by many sorts of bubble-makers: those who make the bubbly drink, and those who construct, maintain, and defend the champagne bubble. In this article, I explore some elements of the champagne bubble, in order to understand both its fragility and rigidity over the years and today. Creating the Champagne Bubble – the Labour of Centuries It is difficult to separate the physical from the mythical as regards champagne. Therefore the categorisations below are always overlapping, and embedded in legal, political, economic, and socio-cultural factors. Just as assemblage – the mixing of wine from different grapes – is an essential element of champagne wine, the champagne bubble may be called heterogeneous assemblage. Indeed, the champagne bubble, as we will see below, is a myriad of different sorts of bubbles, such as terroir, appellation, myth and brand. And just as any assemblage, its heterogeneous elements exist and operate in relation to each other. Therefore the “champagne bubble” discussed here is both one and many, all of its elements fundamentally interconnected, constituting that “one” known as “champagne”. It is not my intention to be comprehensive of all the elements, historical and contemporary. Indeed, that would not be possible within such a short article. Instead, I seek to demonstrate some of the complexity of the champagne bubble, noting the elaborate labour that has gone into its creation. The Physical Champagne and Champagne – from Soil to Bubbles Champagne means both a legally protected geographical area (Champagne), and the wine (here: champagne) produced in this area from grapes defined as acceptable: most importantly pinot noir, pinot meunier (“black” grapes), and chardonnay (“white” grape). The method of production, too, is regulated and legally protected: méthode champenoise. Although the same method is used in numerous locations, these must be called something different: metodo classico (Italy), método tradicional (Spain), Methode Cap Classique (South Africa). The geographical area of Champagne was first legally defined in 1908, when it only included the areas of Marne and Aisne, leaving out, most importantly, the area of Aube. This decision led to severe unrest and riots, as the Aube vignerons revolted in 1911, forcing the inclusion of “zone 2”: Aube, Haute-Marne, and Seine-et-Marne (Guy). Behind these regulations was a surge in fraudulent production in the early twentieth century, as well as falling wine prices resulting from increasing supply of cheap wines (Colman 18). These first appellations d’origine had many consequences – they proved financially beneficial for the “zone 1”, but less so for the “zone 2”. When both these areas were brought under the same appellation in 1927, the financial benefits were more limited – but this may have been due to the Great Depression triggered in 1929 (Haeck et al.). It is a long-standing belief that the soil and climate of Champagne are key contributors to the quality of champagne wines, said to be due to “conditions … most suitable for making this type of wine” (Simon 11). Already in the end of the nineteenth century, the editor of Vigneron champenois attributed champagne’s quality to “a fortunate combination of … chalky soil … [and] unrivalled exposure [to the sun]” (Guy 119) among other things. Factors such as soil and climate, commonly included in and expressed through the idea of terroir, undoubtedly influence grapes and wines made thereof, but the extent remains unproven. Indeed, terroir itself is a very contested concept (Teil; Inglis and Almila). It is also the case that climate change has had, and will continue to have, devastating effects on wine production in many areas, while benefiting others. The highly successful English sparkling wine production, drawing upon know-how from the Champagne area, has been enabled by the warming climate (Inglis), while Champagne itself is at risk of becoming too hot (Robinson). Champagne is made through a process more complicated than most wines. I present here the bare bones of it, to illustrate the many challenges that had to be overcome to enable its production in the scale we see today. Freshly picked grapes are first pressed and the juice is fermented. Grape juice contains natural yeasts and therefore will ferment spontaneously, but fermentation can also be started with artificial yeasts. In fermentation, alcohol and carbon dioxide (CO2) are formed, but the latter usually escapes the liquid. The secret of champagne is its second fermentation, which happens in bottles, after wines from different grapes and/or vineyards have been blended for desired characteristics (assemblage). For the second fermentation, yeast and sugar are added. As the fermentation happens inside a bottle, the CO2 that is created does not escape, but dissolves into the wine. The average pressure inside a champagne bottle in serving temperature is around 5 bar – 5 times the pressure outside the bottle (Liger-Belair et al.). The obvious challenge this method poses has to do with managing the pressure. Exploding bottles used to be a common problem, and the manner of sealing bottles was not very developed, either. Seventeenth-century developments in bottle-making, and using corks to seal bottles, enabled sparkling wines to be produced in the first place (Leszczyńska; Phillips 137). Still today, champagne comes in heavy-bottomed bottles, sealed with characteristically shaped cork, which is secured with a wire cage known as muselet. Scientific innovations, such as calculating the ideal amount of sugar for the second fermentation in 1836, also helped to control the amount of gas formed during the second fermentation, thus making the behaviour of the wine more predictable (Leszczyńska 265). Champagne is characteristically a “manufactured” wine, as it involves several steps of interference, from assemblage to dosage – sugar added for flavour to most champagnes after the second fermentation (although there are also zero dosage champagnes). This lends champagne particularly suitable for branding, as it is possible to make the wine taste the same year after year, harvest after harvest, and thus create a distinctive and recognisable house style. It is also possible to make champagnes for different tastes. During the nineteenth century, champagnes of different dosage were made for different markets – the driest for the British, the sweetest for the Russians (Harding). Bubbles are probably the most striking characteristic of champagne, and they are enabled by the complicated factors described above. But they are also formed when the champagne is poured in a glass. Natural impurities on the surface of the glass provide channels through which the gas pockets trapped in the wine can release themselves, forming strains of rising bubbles (Liger-Belair et al.). Champagne glasses have for centuries differed from other wine glasses, often for aesthetic reasons (Harding). The bubbles seem to do more than give people aesthetic pleasure and sensory experiences. It is often claimed that champagne makes you drunk faster than other drinks would, and there is, indeed, some (limited) research showing that this may well be the case (Roberts and Robinson; Ridout et al.). The Mythical Champagne – from Dom Pérignon to Modern Wonders Just as the bubbles in a champagne glass are influenced by numerous forces, so the metaphorical champagne bubble is subject to complex influences. Myth-creation is one of the most significant of these. The origin of champagne as sparkling wine is embedded in the myth of Dom Pérignon of Hautvillers monastery (1638–1715), who according to the legend would have accidentally developed the bubbles, and then enthusiastically exclaimed “I am drinking the stars!” (Phillips 138). In reality, bubbles are a natural phenomenon provoked by winter temperatures deactivating the fermenting yeasts, and spring again reactivating them. The myth of Dom Pérignon was first established in the nineteenth century and quickly embraced by the champagne industry. In 1937, Moët et Chandon launched a premium champagne called Dom Pérignon, which enjoys high reputation until this day (Phillips). The champagne industry has been active in managing associations connected with champagne since the nineteenth century. Sparkling champagnes had already enjoyed fashionability in the later seventeenth and early eighteenth century, both in the French Court, and amongst the British higher classes. In the second half of the nineteenth century, champagne found ever increasing markets abroad, and the clientele was not aristocratic anymore. Before the 1860s, champagne’s association was with high status celebration, as well as sexual activity and seduction (Harding; Rokka). As the century went on, and champagne sales radically increased, associations with “modernity” were added: “hot-air balloons, towering steamships, transcontinental trains, cars, sports, and other ‘modern’ wonders were often featured in quickly proliferating champagne advertising” (Rokka 280). During this time, champagne grew both drier and more sparkling, following consumer tastes (Harding). Champagne’s most important markets in later nineteenth century included the UK, where the growing middle classes consumed champagne for both celebration and hospitality (Harding), the US, where (upper) middle-class women were served champagne in new kinds of consumer environments (Smith; Remus), and Russia, where the upper classes enjoyed sweeter champagne – until the Revolution (Phillips 296). The champagne industry quickly embraced the new middle classes in possession of increasing wealth, as well as new methods of advertising and marketing. What is remarkable is that they managed to integrate enormously varied cultural thematics and still retain associations with aristocracy and luxury, while producing and selling wine in industrial scale (Harding; Rokka). This is still true today: champagne retains a reputation of prestige, despite large-scale branding, production, and marketing. Maintaining and Defending the Bubble: Formulas, Rappers, and the Absolutely Fabulous Tipplers The falling wine prices and increasing counterfeit wines coincided with Europe’s phylloxera crisis – the pest accidentally brought over from North America that almost wiped out all Europe’s vineyards. The pest moved through Champagne in the 1890s, killing vines and devastating vignerons (Campbell). The Syndicat du Commerce des vins de Champagne had already been formed in 1882 (Rokka 280). Now unions were formed to fight phylloxera, such as the Association Viticole Champenoise in 1898. The 1904 Fédération Syndicale des Vignerons was formed to lobby the government to protect the name of Champagne (Leszczyńska 266) – successfully, as we have seen above. The financial benefits from appellations were certainly welcome, but short-lived. World War I treated Champagne harshly, with battle lines stuck through the area for years (Guy 187). The battle went on also in the lobbying front. In 1935, a new appellation regime was brought into law, which came to be the basis for all European systems, and the Comité National des appellations d'origine (CNAO) was founded (Colman 1922). Champagne’s protection became increasingly international, and continues to be so today under EU law and trade deals (European Commission). The post-war recovery of champagne relied on strategies used already in the “golden years” – marketing and lobbying. Advertising continued to embrace “luxury, celebration, transport (extending from air travel to the increasingly popular automobile), modernity, sports” (Guy 188). Such advertisement must have responded accurately to the mood of post-war, pre-depression Europe. Even in the prohibition US it was known that the “frivolous” French women might go as far as bathe in champagne, like the popular actress Mistinguett (Young 63). Curiously, in the 1930s Soviet Russia, “champagne” (not produced in Champagne) was declared a sign of good living, symbolising the standard of living that any Soviet worker had access to (at least in theory) (Gronow). Today, the reputation of champagne is fiercely defended in legal terms. This is not only in terms of protection against other sparkling wine making areas, but also in terms of exploitation of champagne’s reputation by actors in other commercial fields, and even against mass market products containing genuine champagne (Mahy and d’Ath; Schneider and Nam). At the same time, champagne has been widely “democratised” by mass production, enabled partly by increasing mechanisation and scientification of champagne production from the 1950s onwards (Leszczyńska 266). Yet champagne retains its association with prestige, luxury, and even royalty. This has required some serious adaptation and flexibility. In what follows, I look into three cultural phenomena that illuminate processes of such adaptation: Formula One (F1) champagne spraying, the 1990s sitcom Absolutely Fabulous, and the Cristal racism scandal in 2006. The first champagne bottle is said to have been presented to F1 grand prix winner in Champagne in 1950 (Wheels24). Such a gesture would have been fully in line with champagne’s association with cars, sport, and modernity. But what about the spraying? Surely that is not in line with the prestige of the wine? The first spraying is attributed to Jo Siffert in 1966 and Dan Gurney in 1967, the former described as accidental, the latter as a spontaneous gesture of celebration (Wheels24; Dobie). Moët had become the official supplier of F1 champagnes in 1966, and there are no signs that the new custom would have been problematic for them, as their sponsorship continued until 1999, after which Mumm sponsored the sport for 15 years. Today, the champagne to be popped and sprayed is Chanson, in special bottles “coated in the same carbon fibre that F1 cars are made of” (Wheels24). Such an iconic status has the spraying gained that it features in practically all TV broadcasts concerning F1, although non-alcoholic substitute is used in countries where sale of alcohol is banned (Barker et al., “Quantifying”; Barker et al., “Alcohol”). As disturbing as the champagne spraying might look for a wine snob, it is perfectly in line with champagne’s marketing history and entrepreneurial spirit shown since the nineteenth century. Nor is it unheard of to let champagne spray. The “art” of sabrage, opening champagne bottle with a sable, associated with glamour, spectacle, and myth – its origin is attributed to Napoleon and his officers – is perfectly acceptable even for the snob. Sparkling champagne was always bound up with joy and celebration, not a solemn drink, and the champagne bubble was able to accommodate middle classes as well as aristocrats. This brings us to our second example, the British sitcom Absolutely Fabulous. The show, first released in 1992, featured two women, “Eddy” (Jennifer Saunders) and “Patsy” (Joanna Lumley), who spent their time happily smoking, taking drugs, and drinking large quantities of “Bolly” (among other things). Bollinger champagne may have initially experienced “a bit of a shock” for being thus addressed, but soon came to see the benefits of fame (French). In 2005, they hired PR support to make better use of the brand’s “Ab Fab” recognisability, and to improve its prestige reputation in order to justify their higher price range (Cann). Saunders and Lumley were warmly welcomed by the Bollinger house when filming for their champagne tour Absolutely Champers (2017). It is befitting indeed that such controversial fame came from the UK, the first country to discover sparkling champagne outside France (Simon 48), and where the aspirational middle classes were keen to consume it already in the nineteenth century (Harding). More controversial still is the case of Cristal (made by Louis Roederer) and the US rap world. Enthusiastically embraced by the “bling-bling” world of (black) rappers, champagne seems to fit their ethos well. Cristal was long favoured as both a drink and a word in rap lyrics. But in 2006, the newly appointed managing director at the family owned Roederer, Frédéric Rouzaud, made comments considered racist by many (Woodland). Rouzard told in an interview with The Economist that the house observed the Cristal-rap association “with curiosity and serenity”. He reportedly continued: “but what can we do? We can’t forbid people from buying it. I’m sure Dom Pérignon or Krug would be delighted to have their business”. It was indeed those two brands that the rapper Jay-Z replaced Cristal with, when calling for a boycott on Cristal. It would be easy to dismiss Rouzard’s comments as snobbery, or indeed as racism, but they merit some more reflection. Cristal is the premium wine of a house that otherwise does not enjoy high recognisability. While champagne’s history involves embracing new sorts of clientele, and marketing flexibly to as many consumer groups as possible (Rokka), this was the first spectacular crossing of racial boundaries. It was always the case that different houses and their different champagnes were targeted at different clienteles, and it is apparent that Cristal was not targeted at black rap artists. Whereas Bollinger was able to turn into a victory the questionable fame brought by the white middle-class association of Absolutely Fabulous, the more prestigious Cristal considered the attention of the black rapper world more threatening and acted accordingly. They sought to defend their own brand bubble, not the larger champagne bubble. Cristal’s reputation seems to have suffered little – its 2008 vintage, launched in 2018, was the most traded wine of that year (Schultz). Jay-Z’s purchase of his own champagne brand (Armand de Brignac, nicknamed Ace of Spades) has been less successful reputation-wise (Greenburg). It is difficult to break the champagne bubble, and it may be equally difficult to break into it. Conclusion In this article, I have looked into the various dilemmas the “bubble-makers” of Champagne encountered when fabricating what is today known as “champagne”. There have been moments of threat to the bubble they formed, such as in the turn of nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and eras of incomparable success, such as from the 1860s to 1880s. The discussion has demonstrated the remarkable flexibility with which the makers and defenders of champagne have responded to challenges, and dealt with material, socio-cultural, economic, and other problems. It feels appropriate to end with a note on the current challenge the champagne industry faces: Covid-19. The pandemic hit champagne sales exceptionally hard, leaving around 100 million bottles unsold (Micallef). This was not very surprising, given the closure of champagne-selling venues, banning of public and private celebrations, and a general mood not particularly prone to (or even likely to frown upon) such light-hearted matters as glamour and champagne. Champagne has survived many dramatic drops in sales during the twentieth century, such as the Great Depression of the 1930s, and the post-financial crisis collapse in 2009. Yet they seem to be able to make astonishing recoveries. 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