Our paper tackles the development of media reporting during the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on the January - November 2020 time span, in France, Germany, Romania, Spain, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. We aim to make media reporting transparent on two dimensions: the coverage of COVID-19-related topics and the negativity of the COVID-19 media reporting. To achieve this goal, we analysed a large news dataset with 841,415 pieces of news—including 202,608 COVID-19 media reports—on an LSTM neural network. The news sentiment data and the corresponding coverage are set in relation to the WHO data on COVID-19 and to Google Trends. This compares the reality, that is WHO data, the perceived and reported reality, that is news data, and the actions based on the perceived and the actual reality, that is Google Trends. The results show that media reporting on COVID-19 is unprecedented in terms of coverage and negativity. Furthermore, the study quantifies how far media reporting detached from the facts after the first wave of COVID-19 and how an Infodemic spread across Europe.<br>
The commitment to an activity always requires the assurance of the quality of the result. Article 8 of the Energy Efficiency Directive 2012/27/UE of the European Parliament (EED) requires large companies in all member states to carry out an energy audit at least every four years. An energy audit follows the standard EN-16247-1, but this standard does not take into account a possible reluctance of the company carrying out the audit and thus compliance with a minimum qualitative standard. The various national implementations therefore define further rules for carrying out these audits. In Romania, Article 8 of the EED was implemented in the National Energy Efficiency Action Plan (NEEAP). The coordinating authority for the energy audits is the Autoritatea Nationala de Reglementare în domeniul Energiei (ANRE). In Germany, the Erneuerbare Energien Gesetz (EEG) was created for this purpose, with the Bundesamtes für Wirtschaft und Ausfuhrkontrolle (BAFA) being responsible for coordination. This study compares the differences in the respective regulations. In a comparative review, we analyze the national rules that companies in Romania and Germany have to follow when carrying out audits. Factors such as minimum sizes, balance sheet limits, calculation of measures, qualification of the auditor and also sanctions in the event of violation of the audit obligation are compared. This is intended to enable conclusions to be drawn as to whether there are differences in the requirements and minimum quality of energy audits in different countries and what influence the mandatory audit has on companies.
Besides my supervisor, I would like to thank Prof. Dr. Marieta Olaru for her continuous support and for guiding me through the process at the Bucharest University of Economic Studies.Together with my main advisors, I would like to thank my supporters and the thesis committee, Prof. Dr. Rodica Pamfilie, Prof. Dr. Doru Plesea, and Lect. Dr. Raluca Grosu, for their insightful comments and encouragement, and, importantly, for the hard questions that helped me widen my research to cover various perspectives.I thank my fellow students for the stimulating discussions. I remain indebted to them for sharing sleepless nights before deadlines and for all the fun in the last three years. I also thank my other friends at the Bucharest University of Economic Studies. In particular, I am grateful to Dr. Mathias Scheiblich for giving me encouragement to write this thesis.Further, I would like to thank my wife, Amina, my children, Laila and Younes, my parents, Ingeborg and Bernd, and my sister, Sina, for supporting me through thick and thin.Finally, yet importantly, I want to thank Ramon Schiwek and the rest of the Stellwerk crew for keeping me grounded and for challenging my ideas in the most uncomfortable ways.
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