07 August 2025
Game, Set, Review
The long-standing tension between private sports arbitration and the EU’s system of fundamental rights came to a head on 1 August 2025, when the Court of Justice of the European Union delivered its judgment in RFC Seraing v. FIFA. The case addresses whether arbitral awards rendered by the Court of Arbitration for Sport can be insulated from review by EU national courts when EU law is at stake. The judgment represents a restrained but meaningful intervention by the CJEU into the autonomy of sports arbitration, seeking to balance the authority of CAS with the imperative of protective fundamentals rights under EU law. Continue reading >>
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30 July 2025
“We Were Just Cooperating!”
On June 12th 2025, Advocate General (AG) Ćapeta delivered her Opinion in Case WS v Frontex (C-746/23 P), concerning Frontex’ responsibility for violations of fundamental rights in joint return operations (JROs). The AG first exposes serious logical and legal flaws in the General Court’s approach before explaining why Frontex can be held directly accountable for fundamental rights violations when acting in cooperation with Member States; a question that was central to the applicants’ case but one that the General Court failed to address entirely. Continue reading >>
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01 July 2025
The Legal Form of Animals in Global Value Chain Law
The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union makes no mention of animals—a silence that reflects a broader pattern across EU law, including in Global Value Chain Law (GVC Law), which governs the legal infrastructures of global economic activity. Animals hold no particular legal status in this domain, revealing striking parallels in how law has historically shaped and domesticated both human and animal life. Rethinking this shared legal trajectory sheds new light on the social condition underpinning the fundamental values of EU law. Continue reading >>
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12 March 2025
Balancing on the Edge of Loyalty and Legality
At the end of 2024, the current Dutch government proposed new legislation in the shape of the “asylum crisis measures legislation” and a “two-status-system legislation”. Through advisory reports by the Council for the Judiciary, the broader public was properly introduced to the government’s plans. The reports strongly urge the government not to pursue these proposals for their potential consequences on the judiciary and implementation of the new EU Asylum Pact. Although some of these individual measures may be legal, a holistic approach shows that it is the sum of these parts that finds itself at odds with EU law, balancing on the edge of loyalty and legality. Continue reading >>
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20 January 2025
The Hidden Reach of the EU AI Act
The EU AI Act not only regulates artificial intelligence but also triggers the application of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, embedding EU principles of procedural justice into national administrative law. This development advances the Europeanisation of domestic legal systems and reshapes the balance between EU and national public law in the digital age. Continue reading >>
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10 June 2024
Waiting for Kinsa
On 18 June 2024, the Court of Justice of the European Union will sit as a Grand Chamber in a hearing addressing the compatibility of the so-called Facilitators Package with the principle of proportionality set out in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (CFR). The Kinsa case (previously named Kinshasa) provides an opportunity for the CJEU to counteract the trend towards overcriminalisation of humanitarian action that has taken hold across the EU. This blog highlights the ways in which the Facilitator Package fails to take account of important fundamental rights and why the criminalization of solidarity that it has facilitated is not an inevitability but a political choice. Continue reading >>
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15 December 2023
Escaping Jurisdictional Blackholes
There is a lack of effective judicial protection in the field of EU Common Foreign and Security Policy. In a recent opinion, AG Ćapeta has suggested that the solution rests with asserting the possibility of establishing the non-contractual liability of the EU for breach of fundamental rights in CFSP cases, regardless of whether the measure imposes restrictions. However, the Council also has a positive duty stemming from the Charter to include a jurisdictional clause in all CFSP measures indicating the national court which has jurisdiction in those cases. Continue reading >>
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20 July 2021
Pride or Prejudice?
The joined cases IX v Wabe and MH Müller Handels GmbH offered the CJEU a second chance to heed the arguments raised against Achbita and reconsider its decision. Hopes that the Court would be willing to revise Achbita diminished significantly after AG Rantos’s disappointing Opinion in the case. Last week's decision in IX v Wabe to largely uphold Achbita was then also unsurprising, but nevertheless disappointing. Continue reading >>19 October 2020
Towards a European Court of Fundamental Rights
With its judgments on bulk data retention issued at the beginning of this month, the European Court of Justice has entitled itself to examine virtually all surveillance measures in the digital sphere. In doing so, it has once more clarified its positioning as the decisive Fundamental Rights Court in Europe. In the midst of the ultra vires-storm caused by the PSPP-judgement of the Bundesverfassungsgericht – and questions arising with regard to German Legal Hegemony in Europe – a true shift of power to the ECJ can be spotted which is, surprisingly, supported by the national constitutional courts. Continue reading >>
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31 August 2020
Technology and Law Going Mental
On 28 August 2020, Neuralink gave a much anticipated update on their progress to connect humans and computers. In the near future, the activities within our brain will be recorded, analysed, and altered, shaking our conception of inaccessible mental processes. A multitude of legal issues will arise, in particular to what extent fundamental and human rights protect mental processes and neurological data collected by (therapeutic or enhancing) brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) from being accessed by states without the individual’s consent. To date, however, there remains a significant gap as neurological data does not enjoy absolute protection from any interference within the existing European human and fundamental rights frameworks. This gap could be remedied by introducing new mental rights. Continue reading >>
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