Articles for category: AAA General

»Never Again«

“Never again” is, first and foremost, a story. It’s a story about our collective fears, anxieties, and aspirations, those moments and events that we have promised ourselves that will never be repeated. The Jewish story is interwoven with the Holocaust—the killing of six million Jews in Europe and the urgency of the re-establishment of a Jewish state to solve the problem of Jewish homelessness. Yet the constitutional and international meaning of “never again” depends on one’s position and point of view, and it changes over time. The chain reaction that began with the horrors of WWII continues to drive constitutional and international agendas. It is clear that “history talks,” but in which direction?

22. Juli 2024

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A Historic Verdict Against Chiquita Brands

A jury in a small town in Florida has set a milestone in the fight for international justice. After more than 25 years and 17 years of litigation, survivors of violence in Colombia have secured a victory in their pursuit of financial compensation. The verdict determined that Chiquita Brands International illegally financed the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, a designated terrorist paramilitary organization, and thus contributed to the murder of hundreds of civilians. The Chiquita case is the first to hold a U.S. company accountable for financing human rights violations in Colombia.

22. Juli 2024

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Proximity, Amicable Settlements, and how the EU Guts GDPR Enforcement

The EU legislator is working on a new Regulation to modify the GDPR. Unfortunately, the reform features deeply troubling elements. It seeks to mainstream a controversial Irish approach to dealing with data protection complaints, namely “amicable settlements” between individuals and digital corporations. Further, and rather problematically, the reform foreshadows the end of the principle of proximity. Gutting – or at least eroding – the proximity principle should ring alarm bells for anyone concerned with effective judicial remedies in the EU.

19. Juli 2024

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Germany’s Filibuster

Filibuster and debt brake contribute to legislative failure on both sides of the Atlantic. This failure is one of the causes of anti-democratic tendencies. The developments of recent years in the USA should serve as a warning to everyone in the democratic spectrum. Those who, in light of these developments, prioritize a symbolic balanced budget over addressing the real challenges of the 21st century are paving the way for German Trumpists. The European election was just a warning shot.

16. Juli 2024

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Ensuring the Mission of Public Service Broadcasters

Public Service Broadcasters (PSBs) are publicly organised and funded broadcasters, organised by each of the EU’s Member State with a great degree of discretion and under a unique legal framework. Politicised interventions and the decline of PSBs’ independence threaten their ability to adequately perform their role and offer citizens a high-quality public service which meets the public’s democratic and cultural needs. The politicisation of PSBs by national authorities, coupled with the increasing concerns about media freedom, shows that some type of regulatory intervention is necessary.

16. Juli 2024

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Biting More Than It Can Chew

Among (too) many other things, the recently adopted European Media Freedom Act (EMFA) introduced an assessment of the impact of media market concentration on media pluralism and editorial independence. It thereby aims to address the growing economic threats media pluralism and freedom have been facing all across Europe. However, when considering recent media merger cases in Poland as well as the substantive and institutional competition law framework, it is uncertain whether the Act will provide efficient solutions.

16. Juli 2024

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Digital News Aggregators, Media Plurality and the Right to Information

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The advent of the digital economy has brought many challenges to traditional business models, leading to new issues that go beyond pure market problems. This is also true for the news media industry since the emergence and rapid expansion of digital platforms like Google and Facebook. While the latter, in contrast to press publishers, do not produce any news content themselves, they have become digital news aggregators and first contact points for readers of online news. In this post, we reflect on the existing approaches towards addressing the bargaining imbalance between press publishers and digital news aggregators. We argue that the most adequate measure in addressing this imbalance would be a regulatory instrument such as a bargaining code.

16. Juli 2024

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Taking Extra Care of the Media?

The adoption of the European Media Freedom Act broke new ground in the EU’s approach to media law. Amongst other goals, the EMFA seeks to address the risk of restricting media content by online platforms by envisaging the special, privileged, treatment of media service providers in the area of content moderation. This post discusses the extent of the privilege granted to media service providers and the relationship between the EMFA and the DSA.

16. Juli 2024

Why and How the Hungarian Presidency Must Be Stopped

It took less than a week for Viktor Orbán to make the worst predictions about the Hungarian Presidency of the Council become true. Yet with a twist. If many had warned about the danger that such a Presidency would have paralysed the internal operation of the EU, nobody expected this could also cause confusion and damage to the Union’s foreign policy. How the EU Member States will react to it may define the overall credibility of the Union on the international stage, particularly at a time when it increasingly faces significant challenges both from within and the outside.

15. Juli 2024

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