Articles for tag: Animal Law, anthropocentrism, EU Charter, Europarecht, Rechtswissenschaft, Tierrechte, Umweltrecht

Animal Law Jurisprudence in the EU and Beyond

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Animals have largely been left out in EU law scholarship and environmental law studies. The role of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights has not been discussed to any greater extent. In this symposium, we discuss the pros and cons of the EU Charter for securing sufficient animal protection in the Member States. More specifically, the contributions in this symposium explore a number of questions such as that of the legal standing of animals and animal rights in the context of the EU, and reflecting on the relationship between animal rights and the EU.

30. Juni 2025

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In the End… Who Cares?

On 3 June 2025, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Justice delivered its judgment on the Kinsa-Case. At the core of the matter were the criminal charges of a third-country national for the facilitation of unauthorized entry of two minors in the territory of an EU Member State. With this ruling, the Court takes an important step towards the de-criminalization of care for migrant children who are seeking international protection. However, the Grand Chamber’s reasoning offers limited considerations on the relevant links between “actual care”, humanitarian assistance, and migrant children’s rights. This shortcoming may ultimately curb protection standards of migrant children in future cases

30. Juni 2025

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Text Messages, Transparency, and the Rule of Law

On 14 May 2025, the General Court of the EU ruled in favour of The New York Times in the much-awaited Pfizergate case, annulling the European Commission's decision to withhold the SMS text messages presumed to have been exchanged between EU Commission President von der Leyen and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla. While presented as another case concerning document access, potentially illuminating the informal negotiation process behind COVID-19 vaccine contracts and the management and archive of texts and other instant messages, this judgment largely defies this expectation.

21. Mai 2025

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Intellectual Property and the Human Right to a Healthy Environment

With the effects of climate change escalating, there has been a notable increase in discussions about the, at first glance, not obvious impact of IP protection on environmental sustainability. At the same time, considerations of human and fundamental rights in the context of IP protection are increasingly shaping the legal discourse. Given these two major trends in IP law – growing attention to environmental sustainability as well as to human and fundamental rights – it seems that the time is ripe to explore what the human right to a healthy environment might mean for IP.

3. April 2025

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Anonymity and Surveillance, Creativity and Copyright

The emergence of digital networks over the past decades has presented a problem for copyright exploiters. Thus, they resorted to strategic enforcement targeting individual users. However, the users would often remain anonymous due to the lack of access to traffic data revealing their identity. But the decision in La Quadrature du Net II – permitting retention and disclosure of traffic data for minor offences – has the adverse effect: it incentivises enforcement strategies targeting users and requiring platforms to hand over such data.

18. März 2025

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Politicizing Constitutional Review

In July, the Finnish Parliament passed the Act on Temporary Measures to Combat Instrumentalised Migration. The Constitutional Law Committee, a Parliamentary organ in charge of ex ante constitutional review of legislation, greenlighted the Act despite the fact that all of the 18 legal experts it consulted found it to be in conflict with the Constitution, human rights obligations and EU law. This sparked a discussion about the politicization of the Committee and the role its experts play both in the Committee and the media. In this blog, I argue that the Committee’s politicization is visible in how it dressed political arguments as legal when assessing the law.

16. Dezember 2024

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A Right to Anonymity in the Digital Age

Although digital anonymity is associated with a wide range of opportunities, it also stands in the way of successful criminal prosecution. The right to respect private and family life under the the EU Charter as well as the right to protection of personal data are of fundamental importance for natural persons. However, since life is increasingly taking place online, anonymity can be exploited to spread hate, discriminatory content, and fake news. Considering these risks, the ECJ has opened the door to data retention in Europe and thereby restricted digital anonymity.

2. Dezember 2024

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Data Retention Laws and La Quadrature du Net II

La Quadrature du Net II has been criticized for allowing generalized metadata retention measures. However, it is important not to lose sight of the fact that the law must not become a mechanism for protecting criminals. The scale of online rights violations are a real problem. P2P networks are not only a threat to copyright protection, but also an environment for the distribution of content related to serious crime. It is therefore necessary to strike a balance between these two concerns and to propose solutions that adequately protect users without guaranteeing impunity for criminals.

2. Dezember 2024

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The Long and Winding Road

The Court of Justice’s Quadrature du Net judgements mark another key moment in the complex and long-lasting legal debate on mass data retention in the European Union. This blogpost critically discusses the “constitutionalisation path” outlined by the EU Judges as well as the fragmented roads taken by Member States, with specific attention to Italy. Ultimately, it demonstrates the need for a decisive EU legislators’ intervention, able to draw the future path of data retention regimes.

28. November 2024

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Data Retention

The recent judgements of the CJEU on data retention should not be regarded as an authoritarian move towards a less fundamental rights-sensible position of the Court. Rather, the case law adapts the ever more complex development of the constitutional security law, which was originally dominated by the Member States. As a European court, the CJEU cannot simply ban certain police measures but must respect the complexity and heterogeneity of national law enforcement agencies.

27. November 2024

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