Category: EU constitutional law

Neues aus dem Elfenbeinturm: April 2019

US – EU Environmental Law Colloquium

Rome, 30 May 2019. Registration necessary.

Conference  From Tampere 20 to Tampere 2.0: Towards a new programme (2020-2024) for EU migration and asylum policies 20 years after the Tampere conclusions?

Helsinki, 24-25 October 2019. Deadline for submissions: 10 May 2019.

5th Annual TAU Workshop for Junior Scholars in Law – Rethinking Law and Boundaries

Buchmann Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv, 17 November 2019. Deadline for abstract submissions: 10 May 2019.

4th European Privacy Law Scholars Conference

University of Amsterdam, 24-25 October 2019. Deadline for abstract submissions: 23 May 2019.

Workshop on Feminist Data Protection

Berlin, 20 November 2019. Deadline for abstract submissions: 15 June 2019.

Academy of European Public Law

Athens/Sounion, 26 August-14 September 2019. Deadline for applications: 29 June 2019.

XXIX FIDE Congress 2020

The Hague, 20-23 May 2020. Registration opens in summer 2019.

2019 Odysseus Summer School on EU Immigration and Asylum Law and Policy

Brussels, 1-12 July 2019.

Association of American Law Schools Annual Meeting – European Law Section Works in Progress Panel

Washington, 2-5 January 2020. Deadline for abstract submissions: 1 August 2019.

EU Equality Law: Looking Ahead after 20 Years of Policymaking*

By Sara Benedi Lahuerta and Ania Zbyszewska

The adoption of the European Pillar of Social Rights (‘the Pillar’) in 2017 and the 20-year anniversary of the entry into force of the Treaty of Amsterdam in 2019 provide an auspicious moment for not only take stock of accomplishments in the field of EU equality law and critically reflect on the past, but also to look forward. The Treaty of Amsterdam expanded the legal base (current Article 19 TFEU) for adopting EU legislation to six new anti-discrimination grounds (race or ethnic origin, religion or belief, disability, age and sexual orientation) and the recent adoption of the Pillar suggests that EU equality law and policy could now be at a pivotal point. In this brief blog post, we reflect on what, in our view, is one of the key current problems of EU equality law, namely, its (in)coherence at different levels (see Figure 1), and whether the Pillar carries the potential to -at least partially- address this issue. Continue reading →

Bold and Thoughtful: The Court of Justice intervenes in nationality law Case C-221/17 Tjebbes

By Stephen Coutts

Introduction

 Tjebbes is a bold and yet thoughtful judgment. It pushes the boundaries of the role of EU law in nationality matters and yet does so in a manner that both respects the primacy of the Member States in regulating this area of law, and acknowledges the genuine Union-interest in the manner in which denaturalisation decisions impact on Union citizens. It provides a follow-up and elaboration of the judgment in Rottmann, confirming the applicability of Union law in nationality law and detailing the nature of its intervention. This intervention is of both a procedural and a substantive kind, requiring an individual examination of any decision withdrawing nationality having regard to a set of consequences linked to the status of Union citizenship. Continue reading →

How to turn subsidiarity into an effective tool ? – Reflections on the Communication of the European Commission on the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality

By Vincent Delhomme

After its State of the Union address of 13 September 2017, in which he presented his vision for the future of the Europe Union, President Juncker announced the creation of a Task Force to reflect on the application of the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality in EU policymaking and to make propositions to strengthen their role (see the President’s Decision). After several meetings and consultations, the Task Force published its findings in a final Report and the Commission released a Communication in October 2018 in which it commits to follow several of the propositions made.

This commentary presents some of these recommendations and sketches some (rough) reflections on the place of the principle of subsidiarity in the EU legal order and how to improve its role as a tool to control EU legislative activity. Continue reading →

Neues aus dem Elfenbeinturm: March 2019

Conference “European Union Law Enforcement: The Evolution of Sanctioning Powers”

University of Turin, 28-29 March 2019.

Young Researchers Colloquium “Enforcement Challenges in Multi-level Regulatory Systems: Mapping the Landscapes”

University of Luxembourg, 21-22 May 2019. Deadline for abstract submissions: 31 March 2019.

Conference “Diversity in Unity: The Succession Regulation in Hungary and Beyond”

Budapest, 12 April 2019. (Free) registration necessary.

Seminar “EU Blocking Regulation and extraterritorial US sanctions”

University of Utrecht, 18 April 2019. (Free) registration necessary.

Conference “10 Jahre Vertrag von Lissabon. Reflexionen zur Zukunft der europäischen Integration”

Berlin, 21 June 2019. Deadline for proposal submissions: 26 April 2019.

Call for Papers “The City in Constitutional Law”

European Yearbook of Constitutional Law. Deadline for proposal submissions: 30 April 2019.

Conference “Synergies between International Criminal Law and UN Agenda 2030”

International Nuremberg Principles Academy, 3-4 May 2019. (Free) registration necessary.

The Butterfly Effect of Publishing References to Harmonised Standards in the L series

By Annalisa Volpato and Mariolina Eliantonio

A small change can have big consequences. Some of these changes may be unplanned and unpredictable. Some represent welcome developments that complement and contribute to long-running narratives of progress. Arguably, the recent publication of a reference to a harmonised standard in the L series of the Official Journal of the European Union belongs to the latter category. It may yet, however, prove to have unintended consequences that go beyond that which was originally envisioned.

Technical standards have long played a fundamental role in the regulation of the internal market. According to the regulatory technique of the “New Approach”, EU directives establish only the essential requirements of general interest of a product, while referring the detailed definition of technical aspects to private organizations composed of experts and representatives of the business sector, i.e. the European standard-setting organisations (ESOs). To this end, the European Commission makes a request to one of these ESOs and, where a standard satisfies the requirements set out in the request and in the corresponding Union harmonisation legislation, it publishes a reference to it in the Official Journal. Through this procedure, these standards elaborated by private European standardisation bodies are granted a presumption of conformity with the secondary EU law measures they are aimed at complementing. Consequently, they are endowed with the qualification of ‘harmonised standards’.

Recent developments in EU legislation (see Regulation EU) No 1025/2012) and in the case law (see, inter alia, Case C-171/11, Fra.bo. v DVGW) have progressively changed the view of standardization as a purely non-binding, private phenomenon. In particular, the James Elliott case established the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice with regard to the interpretation of harmonised standards in a preliminary reference under Article 267 TFEU, clarifying that harmonised standards shall be considered as “measures implementing or applying an act of EU law” and, therefore, “part of EU law”. This ruling of the Court has thus contributed to strengthen the claims of an unstoppable “juridification” of harmonized standards, fostering the debate on their legal qualification under EU law (as discussed here, here and here). Continue reading →

Neues aus dem Elfenbeinturm: February 2019

Radboud Economic Law Conference “New Directions in Competition Law Enforcement”

Radboud University, 24 May 2019. Deadline for abstract submissions: 22 February 2019.

Doctoral Workshop “Bilateralism versus Multilateralism”

University of Geneva, 19-20 September 2019. Deadline for abstract submissions: 15 March 2019.

Summer School “Human Rights in Theory and Practice”

University of Leipzig, 1-7 September 2019. Deadline for early bird registration: 31 March 2019.

American Society of Comparative Law Annual Meeting “Comparative Law and International Dispute Resolution Processes”

University of Missouri, 17-19 October 2019. Deadline for abstract submissions: 20 May 2019.

A Parallel Universe: Advocate General Bot in Opinion 1/17

By Harm Schepel

Introduction

All is clear, then: CETA’s Investment Chapter is perfectly compatible with EU Law. According to Advocate General Bot, the agreement is wholly separate from the normative (as opposed to the factual) universe of EU law, and merely protects readily identifiable ‘foreigners’ investing in the EU in the same way as it protects readily identifiable ‘European’ investors in foreign lands. From what we know of the hearing, the Advocate General provides not much more than a useful summary of the talking points offered by the Council, the Commission and the vast majority of the 12 intervening Member States, remarkably united in a bid to save the EU’s new external trade and investment policy. Clearly, the pressure on the Court to follow suit will be enormous. And yet. It is true, CETA builds strong fences to make good neighbors. But let spring be the mischief in me: CETA cannot wall out what EU Law walls in.[i]

Continue reading →

AG Bot in Opinion 1/17. The autonomy of the EU legal order v. the reasons why the CETA ICS might be needed

By Szilárd Gáspár-Szilágyi

  1. Background

The EU’s exercise of its post-Lisbon competences over foreign direct investment (FDI) has been anything but smooth. In Opinion 2/15 the CJEU clarified the EU and Member State competences over the EU’s new generation free trade and investment agreements, resulting in the splitting of the EU‑Singapore agreement into a separate trade and investment agreement. Then, in Achmea the Court found investor-state arbitration (ITA) clauses under intra-EU BITs to be incompatible with EU law, which will result in the termination of almost 200 intra-EU BITs and the non-enforcement of ITA awards rendered under them within the EU. Now, everyone is anxiously awaiting the outcome of Opinion 1/17 – requested by Belgium under the insistencies of Wallonia – and whether the Investment Court System (ICS) under CETA is compatible with EU law. This opinion will not only affect the entry into force and conclusion of the trade and investment agreements with Canada, Singapore, Vietnam and Mexico, but it will have broader implications for the multilateral ISDS reform process and the EU’s investment policy.

Therefore, Advocate General Bot’s extensive opinion delivered on 29 January 2019 (first commentaries here and here) in which it found the CETA ICS to be compatible with EU law deserves scrutiny. I will only focus on the AG’s arguments concerning the exclusive jurisdiction of the Court of Justice over the definitive interpretation of EU Law. In a separate post, Harm Schepel will focus on the AG’s arguments on non‑discrimination. Continue reading →

Neues aus dem Elfenbeinturm: January 2019

Conference “La coopération opérationnelle en droit pénal de l’Union européenne”

University of Nantes, 1 February 2019. Deadline for registration: 25 January 2019.

Workshop “Re-conceptualizing Authority and Legitimacy in the EU: New Architectures and Procedures to Reconnect the Union with its Citizens”

LUISS Guido Carli, 1 February 2019. Deadline for registration: 28 January 2019.

Conference “EU Law, Trade Agreements, and Dispute Resolution Mechanisms: Contemporary Challenges”

King’s College London, 21-22 March 2019. Deadline for abstract submissions: 10 February 2019.

Conference “Exit! Il recesso dai trattati multilaterali”

University of Milan, 1 April 2019. Deadline for abstract submissions: 11 February 2019.

Conference “The fight against impunity in EU law”

University of Turin, 14-15 February 2019.

Conference “Constitutional Challenges in the Algorithmic Society”

EUI/University of Florence, 9-11 May 2019. Deadline for abstract submissions: 15 February 2019.

Doctoral Workshop/Seminar “The Rule of Law”

University of Milan, 4-5 July 2019. Deadline for abstract submissions: 10 March 2019.

Part IV Mini-Symposium on EU Citizenship in the Shadow of Brexit: (EU Withdrawal) Texts, Pretexts and Epignosis in the United Kingdom

By Dora Kostakopoulou

In the domain of politics, trial and error are frequent occurrences. Through trial and error we tend to discover that political decisions, policy choices and even customary ways of doing things are no longer sustainable and thus in need of revision. There is nothing wrong in recognising mistakes or misjudgments and changing course. The doors of perception are not always fully open for human beings; information asymmetries, errors of judgement, ideological standpoints and self-interest often lead individuals to poor visualisations of the future and thus to imprudent actions. Continue reading →

Part III Mini-Symposium on EU Citizenship in the Shadow of Brexit: The Right of UK nationals to vote in European Parliament elections in the EU-27

By Oliver Garner 

Part II of the UK-EU Withdrawal Agreement provides extensive protection of the rights in the United Kingdom and the EU-27 that EU citizens currently derive from Article 21 TFEU. However, the Agreement is silent on the preservation of the rights to vote and stand as candidates in municipal and European Parliament elections that EU citizens derive from Article 22 TFEU. This ossifies a conception of EU citizenship as a status of passive ‘juridical objectity’ to the detriment of a conception of the status as one of political self-determination. This means that following the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union the voting rights of EU citizens within the United Kingdom and UK citizens within the EU-27 will revert to the discretion of the national legal orders. Therefore, I will argue in this piece that it would be more normatively desirable for the European Union’s legislature to adopt measures in order to preserve these electoral rights for UK citizens. The first section below will detail the arguments for why this would be acceptable, before the second section considers the legal methods by which this could be implemented. Continue reading →

Part II Mini-Symposium on EU Citizenship in the Shadow of Brexit: Political participation by EU citizens in Scotland after Brexit

By Mark Lazarowicz

Some have assumed that one of the consequences of Brexit is that EU citizens, who can currently vote in all elections in the UK except for those which choose MPs in the UK Parliament, will lose that right once, and if, the UK leaves the EU. In fact, Brexit will not automatically mean EU citizens in UK will lose the right to vote in elections for local government and the devolved legislatures. That is because the right of EU citizens to vote in local government elections is set out in the UK’s own domestic legislation. Therefore, all the rights of EU citizens to vote in other member states arises out of EU law, because that right is now contained with UK law, the fact that UK will no longer be a member of the EU does not change that provision giving EU citizens the right to vote in local elections. In that respect, they will join the citizens of many other countries who, although they have no right deriving from a treaty to vote in UK elections, nevertheless have such a right. For example Commonwealth citizens, if they have leave to enter or remain in the UK, or do not require such leave, can register, vote, and stand in all UK elections even though there may not be any reciprocal right for UK citizens to vote in elections in that Commonwealth country. Continue reading →

Part I Mini-Symposium on EU Citizenship in the Shadow of Brexit: The Brexit effect – European Parliamentary Elections in the UK

By Ruvi Ziegler

The UK is scheduled to leave the EU on 30th March 2019 at midnight, Brussels time, by automatic operation of EU law (Article 50(3) of the Treaty on European Union(TEU) and, indeed, according to section 20(1) of the UK’s EU (Withdrawal) Act 2018. Consequently, the UK will not be participating in the May 2019 European Parliamentary (EP), Elections. Its 73 MEPs, including the 3 MEPs representing Northern Ireland, will be gone. This post appraises, first, the ramifications of Brexit for electoral rights of EU-27 citizens resident anywhere in the UK as a ‘third country’ and, second, the unique electoral predicament of residents in Northern Ireland. It argues that, unless Member States (MS) act promptly, hundreds of thousands of their citizens, qua Union citizens, stand to be disenfranchised this coming May – a democratic outrage that can and should be averted. Continue reading →

Introduction to the Mini-Symposium: EU Citizenship in the Shadow of Brexit

By Oliver Garner

On 22 October 2018, New Europeans and the Federal Trust held the event ‘EU citizenship rights in the shadow of Brexit’. Since that date, the end-game of Brexit has gathered pace. On 14 November, the Draft Withdrawal Agreement and political declaration on the future relationship between the UK and the EU was published. The UK government announced that a ‘meaningful vote’ would be held in the House of Commons on 11 December, before postponing on the eve of the vote leading to the Prime Minister weathering a vote of no confidence by Conservative MPs and the announcement that the vote would be held in the third week of January. Part 2 of this Agreement provides extensive protection for the legal rights of UK nationals in the EU-27 and EU citizens in the UK; however, it may be argued that this ossifies  a conception of EU citizenship as one of juridical objectity rather than political self-determination. At the European level, the Court of Justice of the European Union held in its Wightman judgment on 10 December that the United Kingdom would be free to unilaterally revoke its notification under Article 50 in accordance with its own constitutional requirements.   Continue reading →

Dispute Settlement and Interpretation in the Draft Framework Agreement between Switzerland and the EU

By Benedikt Pirker

All eyes were on the Wightman case in recent days. This may have somewhat overshadowed a second interesting development: On Friday 7 December the Swiss government (the Federal Council) decided to publish the result of its negotiations with the European Union on a Framework Agreement (FA) for their bilateral relationship. Such an agreement would form a sort of governing structure for the most important of the Bilateral Agreements that currently link the EU and Switzerland.

There is a complex political context to the negotiations of this draft agreement that I will deliberately leave aside for the present post (see for a recent overview over Swiss-EU relations here). To put it in a nutshell, since 2008 the EU requests this step from Switzerland, and since 2014 the EU and Switzerland have been negotiating a special agreement to cover the most crucial current and future (market-access oriented) agreements among the Bilateral Agreements currently in force between Switzerland and the EU. The goal is to create a more reliable framework (1) for Switzerland’s incorporation of EU legal acts in the relevant domains, (2) for the uniform interpretation and application of the Agreements and the EU law referenced therein, (3) for the surveillance of the application of those norms and (4) for the settlement of disputes (Article 1 (3) FA). Presently, I want to highlight two elements that seem to be of relevance beyond the confines of Swiss-EU relations: the solution found for the interpretation and dispute settlement of the FA and the law it covers. Continue reading →

Case C-621/18, Wightman v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union: The European Court of Justice confirms that Article 50 notification can be unilaterally revoked

By Oliver Garner

This piece is cross-posted by kind permission of the DCU Brexit Institute blog. The original version of the post may be accessed here.

Introduction

On 10 December 2018, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) delivered its judgment in the Wightman case on the revocation of a notification of an intention to withdraw from the EU under Article 50 TEU. Extraordinarily, the expedited process adopted by the CJEU upon the request of the referring Scottish Inner Court of Session has seen a judgment delivered barely three months after the original preliminary reference request was made in the domestic judgment on 21 September 2018. This is a reaction to the time-sensitivity of the political end-game of Brexit. The UK House of Commons had been scheduled to hold its ‘meaningful vote’ on adoption of the Withdrawal Agreement and political declaration on the future relationship on 11 December before the postponement of this vote by the government. This vote provided the factual background to the dispute in the case. The petitioners, including Scottish MPs, sought an answer to the question of whether legally there existed the third option of revocation rather than the dichotomy of either accepting the Withdrawal Agreement or else exiting the EU via the automatic operation of Article 50(3) TEU upon the elapse of the two-year time period on 29 March 2019.  The full-court judgment has upheld the Advocate-General’s Opinion of 4 December that a Member State is free to revoke unilaterally a notification of intention to withdraw from the EU made under Article 50(2) TEU. Indeed, the final judgment has recognised a right to revoke that is even more receptive to the sovereign discretion of the withdrawing Member State than in the Opinion. This post will first summarise the judgment, before providing some comments thereupon. The Wightman decision has filled a lacuna in EU law; it remains to be seen whether this legal clarity will help to assuage the political chaos currently engulfing the United Kingdom. Continue reading →

The Advocate-General Opinion in Wightman: Article 50 Notification to Withdraw from the European Union is Unilaterally Revocable

By Chloé Brière

A few days before the vote in the House of Commons on the Withdrawal Agreement, scheduled for December 11th, 2018, the debates are still vivid both in the United Kingdom and the European Union. The possibilities of holding a second referendum or stopping the withdrawal process have been repeatedly raised as alternatives should the Withdrawal Agreement be rejected by the House of Commons.

In this context, the pending case Wightman and others before the Court of Justice of the EU is of crucial importance. After the judgment of the UK Supreme Court in R (Miller) v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, which followed the submissions of counsel regarding the irrevocability of a withdrawal notification, the request for a preliminary reference from the Inner House of the Court of Session in Scotland could be a game changer. The Opinion of Advocate General Campos Sánchez-Bordona delivered on December 4th, 2018, invites the Court to rule in favour of the possibility for the UK to unilaterally revoke its notification of withdrawal, potentially opening up a third way. Continue reading →

The Pilatus Bank scandal: time to reconsider banking supervision, anti-money laundering and whistle-blower’s protection in the EU

By Dimitrios Kafteranis

On Monday 23 April 2018, the European Commission released its proposal on the protection of persons reporting on breaches of Union law. The proposal of the European Commission comes after pressure of the European Parliament and other organisations calling for a coherent protection of whistle-blowers at the EU level. This pressure results partially from different scandals that were revealed by whistle-blowers such as Panama Papers or the case of the Pilatus Bank in Malta. The Commission’s proposal aims to set common minimum standards to protect whistle-blowers when they report breaches of EU law. It has several legal bases and covers a wide-range of EU areas such as consumer protection, financial services and the protection of privacy and data. The reporting procedure follows the ‘classic’ three-tier model for whistle-blowing, that is reporting firstly internally, then to the designated authorities and as a last solution to the public. The text is innovative in the sense that it proposes a wide definition of the whistle-blower ranging from trainees to ex-employees. The European Commission regards whistle-blowing as an enforcement tool for the prevention, detection and prosecution of illegalities affecting EU law.

For the future, it is compelling to pursue the negotiations between the two co-legislators of the EU (European Parliament and Council) in order to follow the challenges on the question of whistle-blowing at the national and European level. These negotiations could take many years. This post aims to introduce the reader to the proposal for a Directive on the protection of whistle-blowers by cross-referring to the case of the Pilatus Bank where a journalist and a whistle-blower are involved. The purpose is to highlight that there is a need for an EU Directive on the protection of whistle-blowers and to demonstrate that the proposed EU Directive would have better protected the Pilatus Bank whistle-blower. Furthermore, this contribution will demonstrate the problematic nature of money laundering and banking supervision at the EU level. Following the creation of the Banking Union, the interconnectivity of banks is a fact and a problem in one country can create a domino effect to the others. For example, the Pilatus Bank scandal does not only concern Malta but the European banking system as a whole. Continue reading →

Antarctica: Has the Court of Justice got cold feet?

By Christina Eckes

In the period since the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, Member States have more and more often and more and more passionately challenged the Union exercise of external relations powers conferred to it under the Lisbon Treaty. In the words of Advocate-General Kokott in her Opinion in the Antarctica cases legal actions are fought with ‘astonishing passion’ and ‘allegation[s are made] that the Commission wished to do everything possible to prevent international action by the Member States’, as well as that ‘the Council [was] compulsively looking for legal bases that always permit participation by the Member States’ (para 75).

On 20 November 2018, the Court of Justice ruled in the Antarctica cases on two actions of annulment brought by the Commission against Council decisions approving the submission, on behalf of the Union and its Member States, to the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (‘the CCAMLR’) of a reflection paper and a common position on four proposals concerning the creation and study of marine protected areas. The Council was supported in its defence in the two cases by 9 and 10 Member States, respectively. The point of contention – as is the case in a growing body of post-Lisbon litigation – was not the substantive position but the question of on behalf of whom the paper and the positions at issue could be submitted: the Union alone or the Union together with its Member States. Continue reading →