EU Presidencies between Politics and Administration

Lobbying cycles in Brussels: Evidence from the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union

“…This rotation can have notable implications for national interest groups’ activities and representation at the European level, since the Council presidency represents the most direct link between interest groups and the European institutions (i.e. via the national government holding the presidency; Hix and Høyland, 2011; Jensen and Nedergaard, 2017). Three main arguments can be brought forward to support this general proposition and develop empirical predictions about the nature of the presidency’s effect on national interest groups’ EU-level representation.…”

“…Second, from a demand-side perspective, the considerable workload attached to holding the Council presidency (Batory and Puetter, 2013; Hayes-Renshaw, 2009) may stimulate government actors’ reliance on national interest organisations to increase their capacities (Lewis, 2016) or tap into a natural and accessible source of relevant (technical) information and expertise (Jensen and Nedergaard, 2017). Government actors may also attract national interest groups to the European level during their presidency by acting as entrepreneurs for causes of particular concern to their national constituencies (Mahoney and Baumgartner, 2014), or via expectations of increased goodwill at the national level in return for interest groups’ support during the presidency (Jensen and Nedergaard, 2017). Finally, national interest groups are likely to have well-established long-term relationships with government officials in their home countries, which may ‘travel’ to – and become formalized at – the EU level during the Council presidency.…”

Dust generation in powders: Effect of particle size distribution

“…Airborne aerosol particles from the test-tube is carried to the respirable cyclone (50% cut point of 4µm) by the inlet flow (Qv) of 4.2L/min (7e-05m 3 /s). While the cyclone separates the larger particles, the respirable aerosol particles permeates through the cyclone and is diluted with (QD) of 7.4L/min (1.2e-04m 3 /s) of filtered air before splitting into 2 channels for measurement and characterization [13]. The aerosol number concentration NCPC over the 4nm to 3µm size range was measured using a condensation particle counter (CPC TSI 3775, TSI Inc.), whereas the aerosol number concentration NAPS and mass MAPS over the size range of 0.54µm to 20µm were measured by an aerodynamic particle sizer (APS TSI 3321, TSI Inc.).…”

“…The total respirable aerosol number concentration measured by the CPC (4nm to 3μm) and the APS (3μm to 19.5μm) were combined to calculate the total number of generated particles such as adapted from Jensen [13], whereby (1) ( 2)where, (1s) and (5s) are the time-step set for the CPC and the APS, respectively. and are the aerosol number concentration (#/cm 3 ) for the i th time interval measured by the CPC and the APS, respectively.…”

“…An aerosol particle sampler, the mini-particlesampler (MPS®) [13] could be used to capture and deposit aerosol particles on copper grids for off-site transmission electron microscope (TEM) analyses. This might provide evidence of the role of attrition in the generation of respirable aerosols.…”