29 January 2015/
By Benedikt Pirker
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By Benedikt Pirker
Should EU secondary legislation be reviewed against the benchmark of the provisions of an international agreement? In 2012 the General Court answered this question in the affirmative and annulled two decisions of the Commission which were based on a regulation which was deemed incompatible with the Aarhus Convention. However, the EU institutions appealed against those judgments. Consequently, in cases C‑401 to 403/12, Council e.a. v. Vereniging Milieudefensie and C-404 and 405/12, Council v. Stichting Natuur en Milieu e.a., the Grand Chamber of the Court was confronted with the same question. There is already quite some case law on the topic of review of legality within the EU legal order in light of international obligations of the EU, typically with the Court being hesitant to undertake such review. In the cases involving the Vereniging Milieudefensie and the Stichting Natuur en Milieu, the General Court and the Advocate General made, in my view, some valuable suggestions in favour of reviewing EU law against international agreements. Unfortunately, the Court decided to stick to its guns, thus continuing in the line of its own previous jurisprudence, and annulled the General Court’s judgments. The result leaves a somewhat sour taste for those who think that EU institutions and their legal acts should be amenable to judicial review under reasonable conditions. Not only is the very purpose of the EU regulation at issue to implement the obligations arising from the Aarhus Convention, but the Grand Chamber’s view also leads to a lacuna in legal protection in EU law exactly where the central aim of the Aarhus Convention would in theory be to provide individuals with access to justice.Continue reading
20 January 2015/
By Benedikt Pirker
Conference : Alternatives to Immigration Detention in the EU – The Time for Implementation
Université Libre de Bruxelles, 6 February 2015. Deadline for (free) registration : 2 February 2015.
Workshop “Drones and Targeted Killings: Defining a European Position”
Aarhus University, 5-6 March 2015. Deadline for abstract submissions : 1 February 2015.Continue reading
8 January 2015/
By Angelo Marletta
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By Angelo Marletta
Ne bis in idem is a fundamental principle of EU criminal law, protecting citizens against double prosecution, even in transnational situations. Yet what is more, since the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, the ne bis in idem principle has become a yardstick of the systemic impact of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (CFREU) on secondary EU law.
One reason for this is that the ne bis in idem principle in Article 50 CFREU differs in some aspects from the principle as laid down in the Convention implementing the Schengen Agreement (CISA), which introduced transnational ne bis in idem in the EU legal order. In particular, the CFREU neither provides for the “enforcement clause” (Article 54 CISA) nor for the exceptions foreseen by Article 55 CISA, such as the national security exception. According to the enforcement clause, the transnational ne bis in idem bars further prosecution provided that, if a penalty has been imposed: a) it has been enforced, b) it is actually in the process of being enforced or c) it can no longer be enforced under the laws of the Contracting State. Since none of these enforcement conditions are mentioned by Article 50 CFREU, the question arose, when the CFREU became a source of primary EU law, whether those limiting conditions in the CISA are compatible with the CFREU, taking into account that the CFREU is a lex superior and posterior.
In the Spasic case (C-129/14 PPU, 27 May 2014) the Grand Chamber of the Court of Justice (CJEU) provided a partial and to a certain extent striking answer to this question, as this contribution will show. Continue reading
With the end of the third year of operation of the European Law Blog approaching, it is once again time to take a brief look back at the most popular posts of the year. Based on our Google Analytics statistics and keeping in mind that there is a certain bias in favour of older posts which have had more time to become popular, we receive the following little tour d’horizon of EU law…Continue reading
22 December 2014/
By Michal Kutlík
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By Michal Kutlík
A perceptive follower of the development of the case-law on access to court and justice in general might have noticed that the less willing the Court of Justice to loosen up the constraints in regard of the locus standi for non-privileged applicants, the more generous it seems to be towards the actual acts which can be amenable to judicial review. Be it for the reasons of democracy and rule of law or for the broadening of its competences, it is apparent that the Court is following this path.
This post shall provide a concise view on one of such cases, namely the recent judgment of the Grand Chamber of the Court of Justice in case C-261/13 P Schönberger v Parliament, where the Court assessed the decisions adopted by the Petitions Committee of the European Parliament (Parliament), by which a petition is either found admissible and further processed or declared inadmissible, in view of the possibility to challenge such decisions before the EU Courts.Continue reading
22 December 2014/
By Benedikt Pirker
Call for Papers CJICL 2015 Conference: Developing Democracy – Conversations on Democratic Governance in International, European and Comparative Law
University of Cambridge, 8-9 May 2015. Deadline for paper proposals: 16 January 2015.
Call for Papers: Democratic Standards of and for Free Trade Agreements
Berlin, 24 April 2015. Deadline for paper proposals: 30 January 2015.
Call for Papers: Chasing Criminal Money in the EU: New Tools and Practices?
University of Luxembourg, 15-16 June 2015. Deadline for paper proposals: 31 January 2015.
17 December 2014/
By Paul Gragl
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By Paul Gragl
At the time of writing, EU scholars and lawyers are still eagerly awaiting the Court’s verdict on the compatibility of the EU/ECHR Accession Agreement with the Union Treaties (Opinion 2/13 is to be delivered on 18 December 2014 and hopes are high that accession may proceed as smoothly as possible and without any major amendments to the agreement). In the meantime – pre-Christmas stress allowing – I can only recommend the latest academic contribution to this topic, a volume co-edited by Vasiliki Kosta, Nikos Skoutaris and Vassilis P. Tzevelekos, concisely entitled The EU Accession to the ECHR (Hart Publishing, 2014). Even though the issue of the EU’s accession to the European Convention on Human Rights is almost as old as the Union itself, this book aptly brings the debate again to the spotlight and discusses the intricate nitty-gritties of this historically unprecedented step in a clear and precise manner. And whatever the outcome of Opinion 2/13 might be, human rights in Europe undoubtedly form part and parcel of the European ‘constitutional’ public order – a development to which the case law of the Court of Justice and the entry into force of the Charter of Fundamental Rights have successfully contributed. Accession remains the missing building block in the edifice of European human rights law, which is intended to close the last gaps in the protection of individual rights by subjecting the EU and its institutions to the external supervision of the European Court of Human Rights. Thus, as the editors correctly state, ‘the post-accession order will be structured on a vertical basis confirming that the last say in human rights will rest with the Strasbourg Court’ (p. 4).Continue reading
12 December 2014/
By S Chelvan
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By S Chelvan
The recent 2 December judgment in the A, B and C case, provides guidance on prohibited steps in determining an asylum claim based on sexual identity. Where was the positive guidance? Is the Court’s failure to provide guidelines on how a claim is to be determined a blessing in disguise?
Continue reading