Heavy Artillery, Light Reasoning
In its judgment of 21 April 2026 in Commission v. Hungary (C-769/22), the CJEU took the decisive step: its “value turn”. The Court for the first time applied Article 2 TEU as an autonomous and standalone review standard. The judgment deploys what might be called heavy artillery. Yet, the firepower of the instrument stands in uneasy tension with the lightness of the reasoning marshalled to justify its use. Nonetheless, the critical observations advanced by Riedl ultimately underestimate both the structural logic of the EU legal order and the functional mandate of the Court.
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Copyrighting Voice and Image
With the increasing proliferation of deepfakes, Denmark has become the first country in the EU to specifically protect one’s image and voice through a new legislative initiative. As of 31 March 2026, a new intellectual property right is expected to enter into force, modelled as a neighbouring right to copyright and specifically designed to protect a person’s voice and physical appearance. Traditionally, voice and image have been protected as personality rights. The new legislation reconceptualises them as intellectual property rights, making them potentially transferable and commercially exploitable.
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