10 December 2025
The Ghost of Dublin Still Among Us
On 11 November, the European Commission inaugurated the first Annual Migration Management Cycle, marking one of the first concrete steps toward implementing the New Pact on Migration and Asylum. The Pact promises a renewed balance between solidarity and responsibility, but the details matter. Whereas a final evaluation might be too early at this stage, the Commission’s recent Implementing Decision already raises some concerns. Several implementation choices risk reinforcing existing dynamics of distrust between the Member States that also negatively affect fundamental rights obligations and access to asylum. Continue reading >>
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17 November 2025
The Omnibus Package of the EU Commission
The European Commission is planning a fundamental overhaul of European digital regulation, and it wants to move quickly. On 19 November, it intends to publish draft legislation for an omnibus package designed to simplify, reduce bureaucracy, and harmonise various legal acts. The draft was leaked last week, and it is a tough one for everyone who appreciates fundamental rights-oriented regulation. If the proposals obtain the necessary majorities in the legislative process, the cornerstones of data protection law would be fundamentally changed. Continue reading >>12 November 2025
The Omnibus Road to Constitutional Drift
The European Union is undergoing a fundamental transformation in the way it makes law. Responding to calls for simplification and competitiveness, echoed and amplified by demands of the US Administration, the Commission has embraced omnibus legislation – single acts that amend multiple legal instruments across disparate regulatory domains – as the principal mechanism for systematic deregulatory reform. Once limited to technical consolidation, the omnibus has become a vehicle for substantive policy change. This shift fundamentally alters the procedural architecture through which regulatory change occurs. Continue reading >>21 October 2025
Rainbow Europe or Rainbow Washing?
A growing number of EU Member States have proposed or introduced legislation that directly targets LGBTIQA+ individuals. What a decade ago seemed to be Hungary’s isolated case is today a growing trend across the Union. Against this backdrop, the European Commission just published its new LGBTIQ+ Equality Strategy (2026-2030). In my view, however, this initiative represents a downgraded commitment of the European Commission towards the protection of Queer individuals. Continue reading >>
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06 May 2025
Anatomy of a Fall
On 11 February 2025, the Commission published its 2025 work programme and revealed the likely withdrawal of the Proposal for an Artificial Intelligence Liability Directive (‘AILD proposal’), citing “no foreseeable agreement” among Member States. This blog post highlights the proposed AILD’s main merits and shortcomings and it explores the implications of its likely withdrawal for EU tech regulation by clarifying the interplay between AI liability rules, the AI Act, and the PLD. Continue reading >>
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21 March 2025
Efficiency, but at What Cost
The Commission’s proposal to reform the EU’s legal framework on return is presented as a necessary step to establish a “clear, modern, simplified [system of] […] common rules for managing returns effectively.” This blog post examines whether the proposal lives up to this objective. It assesses the extent to which the proposed changes address the deficits that currently hamper returns and illustrates how the reform would undermine the safeguards of the individuals concerned. Continue reading >>
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20 March 2025
Simplification Promised, Uncertainty Delivered
The EU’s Green Deal had an ambitious goal: to make Europe the world’s first climate-neutral continent. Now, the Commission shifted its focus to instruments like the ‘Clean Industrial Deal’ and prioritizes the EU’s competitiveness: It proposes to drastically cut back core Green Deal instruments in the so-called ‘Omnibus Packages’. This blog post will concentrate on the changes proposed in the field of sustainability reporting in the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive and show why the Omnibus Packages now impose substantial uncertainty on companies. Continue reading >>
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18 March 2025
Left Behind
The recently introduced EU Omnibus package aims at “simplifying” corporate sustainability reporting and due diligence requirements envisaged under the European Green Deal. Reflecting on its wider effects on sustainability and human rights for the Global South, this article argues that the reform overlooks the realities of informal economies and risks diminishing the EU’s credibility as the global forerunner for corporate governance. Continue reading >>
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20 February 2025
EU Citizenship Should Not Be Sold
The CJEU is soon to decide upon Malta’s citizenship for investment scheme. Upholding the Commission’s challenge would not deprive Malta of power to confer Maltese citizenship. Instead, it would build on settled jurisprudence that EU law constrains national rules conferring EU citizenship and follow the longstanding direction of travel of the Court’s jurisprudence, which has already overcome objections that it is too radical. Continue reading >>25 September 2024
La Commission, c’est moi?
Contrary to cartoonish portrayals of Ursula von der Leyen as a latter-day Caesar, who may be illegitimately presidentialising the Commission, the current Commission President is merely furthering a more centralised vision of the institution that is implicit in the extent of her organisational powers under Article 17(6) TEU. While there are strong legal and constitutionally moral arguments for an alternative, more plural executive understanding of the Commission, the Treaties leave room for a contest between presidentialist and pluralist visions to take place across time in the political arena. Moreover, a more presidential conception of the Commission, while it may raise some questions regarding the mode of election of the Commission President and the role of the Commission, may also possess some positives. Continue reading >>
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