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This article analyzes how Member States have used the opportunities and avoided the constraints of the EU's multilevel governance architecture to return unwanted migrants. Drawing on sociological approaches to the EU and a broad understanding of return policies, we investigate the ways in which the northern Member States, notably Germany and Austria, have increasingly relied upon the EU's operational and financial resources to achieve their goal of pursuing a bold return policy. A key 'usage' of Europe has been the pooling of political and financial power to externalize and informalize its return policy. At the same time, the northern Member States' deliberate -yet widely under-researched -'non-use' of Europe, such as using and maximizing national leeway, has been an equally important strategy to reduce migratory pressure and achieve higher return rates.

The Austrian Parliament has at its disposal the strongest participation rights enabling it to influence European Union (EU) affairs. But does this guarantee a more powerful parliament in real terms? It turns out that the original intention of providing the Austrian Parliament with a strong instrument to contribute to the EU decision-making process has been shattered by party-dominated parliamentary life. After a promising start, the use of this device has decreased significantly. Today, the instrument is mainly used by the opposition parties to obtain information and - to a limited extent - to control the government. Copyright Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2003.

The policy instrument of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions trading has gained prominence since the early 2000s. At the end of 2016, twenty-one distinct GHG emissions trading systems (ETSs) covering thirty-five countries were operating worldwide (ICAP 2017). China has announced the launch of a national ETS for the second half of 2017, which is expected to become the world's largest carbon market. A number of other countries and subnational jurisdictions, including Thailand, Mexico, and Oregon, are considering the adoption of a GHG ETS. Hence, it is increasingly important to improve our knowledge about the forces that shape the initiation, design, and functioning of such systems, whether internal or external to the jurisdictions. This includes the interactions among individual systems and the precise ways in which ETS policy diffuses. With the increasing spread of GHG ETSs around the world over the past decade, sufficient empirical cases and variation are now available to provide a good knowledge base, and these warrant a thorough analysis.This special issue of Global Environmental Politics contributes to our knowledge and understanding of the expanding turn to GHG emissions trading. In particular, we aim to investigate the role and detailed unfolding of diffusion processes in the emergence of various GHG ETSs globally, with a particular focus on the interaction between external influences and domestic

Despite an increased level of legalization of JHA, academic literature has paid little attention to the role of law in this field. It is the objective of this article to assess the EU's attempt to reconcile its current practices of extraterritorial border control coordinated by Frontex in the Mediterranean with international human rights law, notably the principle of non-refoulement. By drawing on insights on both rationalist and constructivist accounts, we argue that international human rights principles such as non-refoulement are usually broad enough for everyone to identify and agree with and to provide state actors sufficient leeway to interpret the rules according to their interest. However, thanks to the activities of numerous inter-, supra-, and transnational actors offering various and competing legal interpretations, EU member states feel compelled to react by triggering several rounds of rule-specification that have the power to clarify pertinent law and strengthen fundamental rights standards.