16 März 2021
The Conference on the Future of Europe – Finally, an opportunity for more top-down bureaucracy?
On Wednesday, 10 March, the Presidents of the European Institutions signed the Joint Declaration on the Future of Europe. It establishes a Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE), which is advertised as a "citizens-focused, bottom-up exercise”. However, from the start, the Conference has been everything but that. Continue reading >>
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02 März 2021
The Digital Services Act and the Reproduction of Old Confusions
While intended to refit the 20-year-old E-Commerce Directive, the Digital Services Act reproduces a central confusion in its predecessor: The interplay between a lack of knowledge or awareness of illegality remains a precondition to enjoy liability exemptions, however, the Digital Services Act encourages platforms proactive investigation of hosted content, which might trigger aforementioned knowledge or awareness. The inclusion of a Section 230-like ‘good Samaritan clause’, meant to facilitate proactive, own-initiative investigations of user speech by platforms, complicates matters further. Continue reading >>04 Januar 2021
Mitigating Brexit through Bilateral Free-Movement of Persons
Rather than bemoaning the Brexit choice the UK made, it is time to start thinking about living with it in a way that would cause as little disruption as possible for all those concerned. How to mitigate, at least to some degree, the sudden, unprecedented loss of rights that Brexit caused? EU citizenship not any more on the table, bilateral freedom of movement of persons agreements with the EU Member States, EEA countries and Switzerland could offer a way forward. This solution is fully in line with EU law and has already been tested. Continue reading >>09 Dezember 2020
LawRules #12: We need to talk about Financial Sanctions
As our podcast comes to an end, the year and the German presidency of the European Council do too. One of the foremost projects of the German presidency has been to link EU funding and compliance with rule of law standards. The mechanism is going to be a part of the next long-term budget of the Union, starting from 2021 – that is, if Hungary and Poland vote in favor of it, which is increasingly unclear at the moment, or if a way is found to circumvent their veto. The connection of rule of law violations and EU money, the advantages and shortcomings of financial sanctions for member states as well as how things stand on the current proposal – that’s what we discuss in this week’s final episode of We Need to Talk About the Rule of Law that we wrap up with an outlook on the current state of the Union, rule of law wise. Continue reading >>
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05 Oktober 2020
German Legal Hegemony?
The German legal discourse on Europe solemnly professes the idea of a Europeanized Germany: Kooperation, Verfassungsgerichtsverbund, Europafreundlichkeit, Integrationsverantwortung. However, some cast doubt on these assertions. Continue reading >>28 September 2020
The External Dimension of EU Migration and Asylum Policy
This online symposium is being held just before the ACES-Asser conference on ‘Migration deals and their damaging effects’, which will take place online on 8-9 October. The conference and the contributions in this symposium aim to examine the legal and policy implications of the increased informalisation of the EU’s external action in the field of migration and asylum. The use of informal instruments in EU external relations is nothing new. At the same time, the increasing recourse to such instruments in the past few years has been a growing cause of concern over their potential detrimental effects on the rights of migrants and refugees, the EU’s institutional balance, the rule of law, as well as the global regime for protection of refugees. Continue reading >>
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03 September 2020
The Contingency of Governance in the EU
Administrative lawyers are of course aware that the techniques they study and use have existed in different historical periods and have been deployed in different political regimes. But these comparative referents tend to disappear too quickly when it comes to deriving from the governance virtues of the EU, practiced by its institutions and agencies, and the law that may incorporate them, the ability to transform the constitutional characteristics of a political system. Continue reading >>
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18 Juni 2020
Who is ultra vires now?
For decades, and until a few weeks ago, Article 310 TFEU has been seen as prohibiting the EU from borrowing to finance its expenditure. The Commission’s Next Generation EU proposal reverses that interpretation and raises fundamental questions of EU law and its dynamic interpretation. With such a sudden change of heart, are the Member States under a duty to follow? What constitutional limits remain to their membership obligations? Continue reading >>18 April 2020
Testing the Limits of EU Health Emergency Power
Due to their inherent cross-border spillovers, many of the national responses to COVID-19 raise major concerns under EU law. Yet only a few of them have been timidly denounced by the EU Commission as the Guardian of the Treaty. How long will this last? Continue reading >>
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14 April 2020
Not a Safe Place?
In an unprecedented move, the Italian government has declared Italy’s ports “unsafe” due to the COVID-19-pandemic. It did so by issuing an executive decree late Tuesday last week, seemingly in response to the rescue of 150 shipwrecked by the Sea-Eye’s Alan Kurdi. This is not the first time that the Italian government has used decrees to close its borders for sea-rescue ships. However, given the extraordinary circumstances of this case in the midst of the on-going Corona-crisis and the novel argument made by the Italian government, the decision warrants closer examination. Continue reading >>
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