Articles for category: Regionen

»Völkerrecht des Netzes«: welche Rolle für die Menschenrechte?

Die Bundesregierung hat vor kurzem ihre „Digitale Agenda 2014-2017“ veröffentlicht. Ein Bestandteil dieser Agenda ist auch die Erarbeitung eines „Völkerrecht des Netzes“. Welche Rolle spielen die Menschenrechte dabei? Drei Phasen der Diskussion zu Menschenrechten im digitalen Zeitalter lassen sich unterscheiden: In einer ersten Phase stand das Internet als Mittel zur informatorischen Emanzipation im Vordergrund. Daran schloss sich eine zweite Phase an, die den Fokus auf die Informationsfunktion als zu eng wahrnahm. Vielmehr werde durch das Internet gleichsam ein neuer Typus Mensch geschaffen, der „digitale Mensch“, dessen soziale Aktivitäten in ebensolchen Netzwerken stattfänden. Allerdings hat „der Staat“ nur zu deutlich gezeigt, dass ein Abgesang auf ihn auch in der digitalen Welt zu früh kommt. Die NSA-Affäre und ihre Weiterungen haben das Bewusstsein für die Gefahr staatlicher Repression im Netz wieder deutlich geschärft und – dies ist die dritte Phase – dementsprechend zur Formulierung von neuen Erwartungen an den Schutz von Daten und der Privatsphäre geführt.

12. September 2014

Scotland and the EU: Comment by NEIL WALKER

The presence of the EU both offers a spur to new projects of national sovereignty but also, and in my view more emphatically, it supplies a set of considerations which makes the project of new statehood less pressing, less consequential, and provided we can trust in continuing UK membership of a continuing EU (both of which statuses, of course, need careful attention) less relevant and ultimately unnecessary.

11. September 2014

Scotland and the EU: Comment by STEPHEN TIERNEY

I agree with Sionaidh that the accession of an independent Scotland to the European Union is not in any serious doubt. I develop this point in a paper written with Katie Boyle here. In this blog I argue that although accession will no doubt take time, there is unlikely to be any period within which Scotland is effectively cast out of the EU. More speculatively I would like to ask whether there might in fact a duty on the part of the EU to negotiate Scotland’s membership, and whether the Secession Reference to the Supreme Court of Canada may provide an interesting analogy supportive of this argument.

10. September 2014

Scotland in the EU: Comment by DIMITRY KOCHENOV

the Union cannot be possibly expected to throw its weight behind ensuring that there is no choice for the nations seeking independence within Europe – it is not the Union’s realm. The contrary would amount to turning the EU into an instrument of blackmail of the emerging states by the existing state entities which is radically deprived of any purpose and is in strong contradiction with the values of democracy and the rule of law which the Union espouses.

10. September 2014

The Timing of Dialogue: Slovenian Constitutional Court and the Data Retention Directive

On 3rd July 2014, the Slovenian Constitutional Court struck down Articles 162 - 169 of the Act on Electronic Communications (ZEKom-1) which regulate data retention and were adopted in order to implement the Directive 2006/24/EC. The case is of interest not so much for the legal argumentation presented in the judgment but because of the positioning of the Slovenian court in the Europe-wide judicial response to the Data Retention Directive. In that sense, it’s a contribution to the discussion on the role of an individual constitutional court in a multi-level network of courts, especially in cases when a number of constitutional or other high courts in the member states are seized with issues stemming from the same piece of legislation.

10. September 2014

Scotland and the EU: Comment by BRUNO DE WITTE

Whereas the Article 48 route has major advantages over the Article 49 route, and would be feasible – in my view at least – as a matter of legal principle, it would create many complications all the same, both for the Scots and for the rest of Europe.

10. September 2014

Scotland and the EU: Comment by MICHAEL KEATING

To suggest that a nation that has followed the Scottish route should not be allowed into the European family while others with more dubious pedigrees are, would violate basic democratic principles. Effectively, Scotland would be expelled from the union for exercising a widely-recognized democratic right.

9. September 2014

Scotland and the EU: Comment by KALYPSO NICOLAIDIS

With the Treaty of Lisbon, the EU formalised and entrenched a right of exit (article 50) which is at the heart of its nature as a polity: the peoples of Europe have come together and will remain together by choice, not under duress. In the same way as the exit clause proclaims loudly and clearly that EU member states and their citizens remain in the EU by choice, leaving the EU should be a collective choice too. It should not be a choice inferred from another choice, that of one part of a country to leave the whole.

9. September 2014

Scotland and the EU: Comment by JO MURKENS

Sionaidh Douglas-Scott’s reliance on Article 48 is far from persuasive on technical legal grounds (is it the correct legal basis to accommodate a new Member State?) as well as for strategic reasons (the negotiation process may well be dominated by the UK’s negotiating team pursuing its own agenda). But even if an independent Scotland’s continued membership in the EU were ‘smooth and straightforward’, Douglas-Scott provides no answer to the question as to what kind of member an independent Scotland would be.

8. September 2014