18 July 2013/
By Clemens Kaupa
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The case Giersch, decided on the 20th of June, dealt with residence-based restrictions on financial aid for students. According to Luxembourg law, students received financial aid if they were residents in Luxembourg, regardless of nationality. The measure was challenged on the basis of Article 7(2) of Reg No 1612/68 (now Reg No 492/2011), which requires equal treatment in regard to social advantages, which also includes financial grants for children of workers who are students (Bernini).
The plaintiffs were children of frontier workers employed in Luxembourg, who would not receive student aid, however, because they had not resided in Luxembourg. The Court found the residence requirement to be indirectly discriminatory. Luxembourg replied that the measure was justified as a means of „increasing the proportion of residents with a higher education degree in order to promote the development of the economy“. The Court accepted this as a legitimate objective able to justify differential treatment, and also recognized that a residence requirement could be an appropriate instrument to achieve that goal.
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17 July 2013/
By Marek Zilinsky
Infringements of antitrust law can cause serious harm to consumers and businesses in the European Union. Under EU law the victims of infringements of antitrust law can claim compensation for the actual loss, for loss of profit and payment of interest accruing from the moment of time the harm occurred until the moment compensation is paid. Actions for damages for an infringement of national and EU antitrust law are governed by the national law of the Member States. To ensure the effectiveness of the right of the victims to claim damages the European Commission presented on 11 June 2013 a proposal for a directive on certain rules governing actions for damages under national law for infringements of the competition law provisions of the Member States and of the European Union (COM (2013) 404 final).Continue reading
16 July 2013/
By Wolf Sauter
Proportionality is a legal principle that allows (or requires) balancing between competing values. This enables judges to decide whether a measure has gone beyond what is required to attain a legitimate goal and whether its claimed benefits exceed the costs. Originating most clearly in German 19th century administrative law, proportionality has become a standard feature of constitutional analysis: since the Second World War it has gradually spread worldwide.[1] With the work of in particular Robert Alexy a common theoretical framework has become available.[2] Yet at the same time the way in which proportionality is actually applied varies widely – not just between jurisdictions, but within them. For instance, instead of strict balancing between values a necessity test is often applied.[3]
In his book, based on his PhD thesis at the Graduate Institute of Geneva, Benedikt Pirker claims that such differences can be explained by the institutional context of the balancing. Determining the nature of the test required is done by means of pre-balancing, an exercise looking at the particular situation of the reviewing tribunal. In his opening theoretical chapter Pirker argues that this in turn leads to the adoption of either of two models: (i) equal representation review; or (ii) special interest review. The essential difference is whether the values that are balanced are a priori deemed to be of comparable significance, in which case strict balancing is feasible, or whether one of the interests is from the outset held to be of preponderant value, in which case an alternative test like necessity becomes the judicial norm.
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3 July 2013/
By Orla Lynskey
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What obligations does EU data protection law impose on search engines such as Google vis-à-vis individuals who wish to suppress information about them which is lawfully available online? None according to the Advocate General as Google does not fall within the material scope of data protection law in the context of its role as a provider of free search engine services. In any event, according to the Advocate General, individuals cannot derive a ‘Right to be Forgotten’ from the current data protection rules. These were only some of the issues on which the Court was asked to adjudicate in a preliminary reference from the Spanish Audencia Nacional. Given that only a handful of cases concerning the interpretation of EU data protection rules have appeared on the Court’s docket to date, the Opinion of Advocate General Jääskinen – delivered on 25 June 2013 – was eagerly anticipated.
The facts of this case are as follows. In 1998, a newspaper published an article containing details of insolvency proceedings relating to social security debts. The relevant article was later made available online. An individual implicated in these insolvency proceedings asked the newspaper to erase this piece arguing that the proceedings had been concluded and were therefore no longer of relevance. The publisher refused to erase the data on the basis that the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs had ordered its publication. The individual then redirected his request for erasure to Google Spain asking it to no longer show links to the newspaper in its search results when his name was entered as a search term in the search engine. The individual also addressed a complaint to the Spanish Data Protection Authority (DPA). The DPA rejected the complaint against the newspaper on the grounds that the publication of such data in the press was legally justified. However, the DPA upheld the complaint against Google Spain and Google Inc, requesting that the contested search results be removed from Google’s index of search results. Google sought the annulment of this decision before the Audencia Nacional which stayed the proceedings in order to refer a number of questions to the Court of Justice. The referred questions deal with three primary issues: the territorial application of the EU Data Protection Directive (Directive 95/46 EC), the notion of ‘data controller’ in the context of search engines and the controversial ‘right to be forgotten’.
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Today Croatia officially became the EU’s 28th Member State. We would like to take this occasion to welcome our new fellow EU citizens, as well as give you a short update of the implications of the accession to the EU legal system.
Basically, there will be some transitional provisions and there will be some institutional modifications. As regards the transitional arrangements the Commission has made a useful guide which you can find here.
Institutionally speaking, Croatia will be given an EU Commissioner, a place within the Council and European Council, a number of seats in the European Parliament, and last but not least two judges at the CJEU. Other institutional changes (for example in relation to the ECB) can be found in the Act of Accession which simultaneously amends the EU Treaties as well.
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25 June 2013/
By Laurens Ankersmit
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In some American movies prison dialogues often go like this: Question: ‘What are you in for?’ Answer ‘Lawyer screwed me, I’m innocent!’ In C-681/11 Schenker & Co and others this was more or less the defence a couple of Austrian transport companies came up with after being fined for infringing competition rules. Those companies had received some dubious legal advice which effectively gave them the green light for a price fixing agreement. The case contains some pretty interesting questions on whether undertakings can be fined if they have not culpably infringed competition law. In other words, if companies have taken the necessary precautions to assure themselves that their conduct was legal, can they still be fined because the authorities made a different assessment? The particularly noteworthy feature of this case are the different approaches taken by the CJEU (focussing more on what people should know about the law) and the AG (focussing more on what people can expect from legal experts and authorities).
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The future judgement in Joined Cases C-204-208/12 Essent Belgium N.V. v. Vlaamse Reguleringsinstantie voor de Elektriciteits- en Gasmarkt could very well be one of those landmark cases in which the CJEU clarifies one of the fundamental doctrinal issues in internal market law: can Member States rely upon the rule of reason to justify distinctly applicable measures? In his Opinion, Advocate General Bot makes a convincing case that this should (under strict conditions) indeed be the case.
In this case, the Belgian government fined Essent Belgium for failure to comply with Belgian legislation requiring electricity suppliers to purchase a certain amount of green energy from Belgian suppliers. As many readers will no doubt notice, this case is very similar to PreussenElektra, however, the legislative context and European electricity market have undergone substantial changes since that judgment was handed down. Today, EU legislation enables Member States to verify whether electricity produced in other Member States is green. Also, EU legislation now requires Member States to reach certain national targets for contribution to green electricity production.
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22 May 2013/
By Benedikt Pirker
The moment has come to deliver on this blog’s promise of looking beyond the realm of the English language. For this POMFR post, I would like to present a recently published Festschrift which contains a number of contributions of interest to EU lawyers capable of reading German.
Der Staat im Recht is a Festschrift for Professor Eckart Klein, formerly Ordinarius at the University of Potsdam, which covers a broad range of topics – constitutional law, procedural law, international and human rights law and of course EU law. Now, while there are a number of non-EU law contributions which I found thought-provoking (if you have time, read the rather grim essay on the world dominance of human rights by Isensee, ‘Die heikle Weltherrschaft der Menschenrechte’), I will focus on the EU law contributions for this blog post.Continue reading
