In Defense of Academic Freedom and Autonomy

We, members of the academic community, hereby express our full support to the Editors-in-Chiefs, the Editorial and Scientific Advisory Board who resigned en masse from the European Law Journal, owned by Wiley. The conduct of the publishing house has shown total lack of appreciation of the values of academic integrity and autonomy. The Scientific Board’s brave move seeks not to be praised as heroic, but it firmly posits decency and respect for these principles above all other considerations.

The Territorial Expansion of Frontex Operations to Third Countries: On the Recently Concluded Status Agreements in the Western Balkans and Beyond…

This blog post first sketches out the agency’s successive mandate expansions allowing for a broader geographic theatre of operations. It then examines the law currently governing the exterritorial activities of Frontex, in particular the recently concluded status agreements with Western Balkan countries.

You Can’t Forbid Judges to Think

The Polish judiciary is split apart. One part adheres to the ruling of the Court of Justice of the EU of 19th November 2019, another does not. This legal chaos and catastrophe was caused by the recent judicial reforms and it deprives citizens of the most important right – to be certain what their legal situation in court is.

Wiley and the European Law Journal

We want to believe that no self-respecting scholar will allow himself or herself to be used in any way by Wiley to defeat the principled stand taken by the Editors and Boards of the ELJ. It is we, scholars of European Law, who actually give commercial value to such a journal by submitting and publishing our work in its pages. We should not be complicit in undermining the most basic values of the scholarly world.

Contextualising Frontex: A Long-Term Perspective on Database Monitoring of Migrants

This blogpost contextualises Frontex by discussing a pioneer database in Europe, the German Central Foreigner Register that presumably served as a model when establishing the European databases, and by drawing some lessons from the German case for the European context regarding the effectiveness of database surveillance.

What a Journal Makes: As we say goodbye to the European Law Journal

On January 31st, the Editorial and Advisory Boards of the European Law Journal resigned en masse from their positions in protest after the publisher, Wiley, decided that it was not willing to ‘give away’ control and authority over editorial appointments and decisions to the academics on the journal’s Boards. We recount our small act of resistance here because we think there may be lessons for the wider academic community.