Articles for tag: EU, Europarecht

EU Law Through the State Lens

The conceptual apparatus that frames our knowledge of EU administrative law today has its origins in the legal scholarship that established a new field in the turn of the 1980s and during the 1990s. This scholarly field owes much of its uncontested existence to a series of major handbooks, which systematized materials that hitherto had been sparse and scattered, first in German, then in English and later still in French. Revisiting the past may provide some clues as to the role legal scholars can and should have in a period in which we may be witnessing an epochal transition in Europe.

20. März 2024

,

The Fall of The Great Paywall for EU Harmonised Standards

In case C-588/21 P, the CJEU dismantled a foundational axiom of the European Standardisation System: the paywall of harmonised standards. The Court confirmed that harmonised standards are an integral part of EU law, mandating their free accessibility. In this commentary, I posit that the Court’s decision imposes a proactive publication obligation and challenges the existing copyright protection afforded to harmonised standards.

19. März 2024

, , , ,

EU Law and Legal Theory

European law is a very strange creature. It is something that has been created, produced, mostly by jurisprudence and doctrine, and this makes European law especially challenging and interesting for scholars, because it has been, in many respects, a product of scholars. How should we approach the study of European law? How could we approach in a sensible way the study of European law?

19. März 2024

,

Reconnecting EU Legal Studies to European Societies

EU legal studies suffer from a disconnect with social reality. If we need a method, it is one that allows us to reconnect with European societies as a bustle of unsettled forms of life, from both an existential and social perspective. Departing from classic institutional and constitutional approaches to EU law, while endorsing the critical turn in the EU legal studies, I will argue in favour of a new “anti-transcendental” perspective.

19. März 2024

,

FIFA Transfer System Rules in front of the Court

The governance of professional football is facing turbulent times. After three verdicts on 21 December 2023 (ESL, RAFC and ISU), the next case potentially sanctioning football governance is already well underway. In the pending Diarra case (C-650/22), the validity of the FIFA transfer system is at stake. Transfers are among the bread and butter of daily football practice. Any flaw in the transfer system will affect the whole industry. This blog post explores Diarra from a competition law perspective.

18. März 2024

, , , ,

Becoming a (Critical) EU Law Scholar Today

Turning the existential crisis of Europe into critical knowledge, called for by Loïc Azoulai, requires – among other things – critical scholars. The question is, however, whether the present conditions allow for such people to emerge. I discuss only four of the many obstacles that critical scholarship faces today and conclude with a call for something that might be called “critical scholarship about legal scholarship”.

18. März 2024

,

Controversies over Methods in EU Law

Methodological issues pervade contemporary debates in EU law. There are many reasons for this. Some are specific to the subject matter of EU law itself. The multiple crises that the European Union is experiencing lead EU law scholars to question their classical conception of EU law: a law of integration that should more or less naturally lead to a constitutional or federal order. These crises may also lead scholars to question their relationship with the European institutions, which have been central to the development of the core concepts of EU law and of EU law as a disciplinary field. 

18. März 2024

,

The Sovereign Protection Office as the Tip of the Iceberg

In December 2023, the Hungarian Parliament passed a law establishing a Sovereign Protection Office—a state administration which now possesses unfettered access to personal data to find and sanction supposed foreign agents among the Hungarian populace. This office operates at will and without oversight, offers no avenue for legal redress, and wields prison time upwards of three years. In recent weeks, the European Commission launched an infringement proceeding over the law, and the European Parliament called on the European Council to consider Article 7(2) procedures.

15. März 2024

, , ,

Understanding European Border Management

This contribution highlights how European border management disrupts conventional state-centric understandings thereof, while fostering impunity for human rights violations in its enforcement. EU borders are increasingly controlled in a supranational fashion by a panoply of different actors with different legal mandates and obligations, expanding within and beyond the physical frontiers of Member States. In addition, new technologies and the political turn to the logic of ‘crisis governance’ are contributing to changing the traditional practice of border controls, with a multiplicy of actors being involved in a complex dynamic of securitization. The actors, practices and the legal framework governing European border controls are rapidly changing; yet underlying linear and territorial assumptions and liability regimes remain unchanged perpetuating serious human rights shortcomings.

27. Februar 2024

, ,

How the EU Death Machine Works

Since 2015, more than 27.500 innocent people died or ‘went missing’ in the Mediterranean. They drowned by themselves thanks to villain smugglers, the Council submits; accountability for the death toll is a complex matter, the Court of Justice finds; besides the geopolitical times are complex – the Commission is right. But what an accident: mare nostrum, a great thoroughfare, turned itself into a racialized grave. Yet, these deaths at EU borders, just as mass abuse and kidnappings by EU-funded and equipped thugs in Libya do not happen by chance. The EU-Belarus border is another locus of torture and violence. All this is a successful implementation of well-designed lawless policies by the Union in collusion with the Member States. In this post, we map key legal techniques deployed by the designers of the EU’s death machine.

27. Februar 2024

, , ,