K32 - Energy, Environmental, Health, and Safety LawReturn

The aim of the paper is to characterise the system of social insurance in France and to show the role of combined social and health care insurance companies called "mutuelles" in the framework of compulsory complementary health insurance in France. Historical roots of this non-profit organisation based on a system of solidarity, participation in expenses and management are mentioned, a wide range of coverage of health care as well as the way of reimbursement of expenses for care provided for their members are described, and its future prospects are outlined. The paper tries to point out the differences in terminology and content as there are analogical institutions with a different role or only partial content equivalence besides specific legal institutions. This relates to different social traditions in the given communities during their development. The goal is to bring operation of French institutions closer to the Czech legal system.

This article focuses mainly on the environmental costs connected with legislative compliance in the Czech Republic, possibilities of their identification and observation in corporations and suggestions for cutting them down. First, we present an overview of theoretical concepts regarding determination of costs connected with environmental protection in companies and possible difficulties with identification of this kind of costs; however, there are various methods depending both on the authors' opinions and purposes of environmental cost identification in companies. Then, the article discusses particular inputs and outputs of companies and tries to identify possible environmental costs on both sides. Generally, both the simplest and cheapest way for the companies is to concentrate on such environmental costs that are connected with legislation in force; therefore, the Czech Republic's current environmental protection law is analyzed for this purpose. After that, the article focuses briefly on suggestions for possible corporate savings and environmental cost reduction, based on the legislation in force in the Czech Republic. Finally, the key element of this article is a case study based on the information obtained from a real company. The case study presents results of both identification and quantification of particular environmental costs connected with legislation in force in a small business in the Czech Republic in 2010.

The existence of world trade regime under the WTO and the environmental regime under the UNFCCC and Kyoto Protocol can create several conflicts. The various norms of both regimes can confirm or contradict each other. In the case of a conflict, the Dispute Settlement Mechanism of the WTO is probably to be applied. The regime interplay theory offers suitable tools for analyses of potential areas of conflict and can lead to an adoption of an appropriate regime management that would enhance the regime synergies. This paper tries to outline the differences of the trade rules and climate change regime norms in regard to the overlaps of their norms. It is based on the characteristic of both regimes and on the regime interplay analyses applied on this model case of two international regimes.