The European Union Criminal Law is now developing rapidly, but apparently the development of the rights of the suspect goes at a far more modest pace. This is partly due to uncertainties regarding the distribution of the responsibility between the member states, which here is exemplified by the suspects right to damages for being surrendered on an European Arrest Warrant followed by acquittal or pre-trial termination of the criminal case.

By Henning Fuglsang Sørensen

A man enters the Schengen Area, but is immediately arrested because a European Arrest Warrant (EAW) with his name has been issued by another member state. He is however released already the next day, as the issuing member state has apologized to the arresting member state for having forgotten to withdraw the EAW since it is no longer valid.

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Hungary is walking off the road of constitutional democracy, the rule of law and the protection of fundamental rights, which it has firmly endorsed since its transition in 1989 from one-party system to a democratic society with checks and balances. While this is a worrying phenomenon in itself, it constitutes a major challenge to the European Union’s evolution towards a constitutional and political entity. This blog will first, briefly sketch the main changes in the Hungarian constitutional system. Then, it will analyze the EU’s legal toolkit for such situations and its likely course of action vis-à-vis Hungary.

By Kati Cseres

Those who have been following the last three years’  legal and political developments in Hungary will have witnessed a reckless constitutional turmoil since the elections of 2010, when the Fidesz (Federation of Young Democrats–Hungarian Civic Alliance, centre-right Hungarian political party) – KDNP (Christian Democratic People’s Party) coalition took two-thirds of the seats in the Hungarian parliament. During the first year in  office, the winning coalition used its constituent majority to amend the Hungarian Constitution twelve times.

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Many EU researchers combine the study of rules and practices, in an attempt to grapple with, and do justice to the complexity of European integration. Indeed, whether in legal studies or the social sciences, it is deemed good practice to make this distinction. But what does it mean? And are we using it in a suitable manner? 

By Maarten Hillebrandt

These were the central questions of a workshop that was organized by Maarten Hillebrandt (ACELG) in Amsterdam on 8 March 2013. EU researchers from different disciplinary backgrounds convened to discuss the usefulness of research approaches that distinguish between rules and practices in European integration. This blog discusses some of the workshop’s central insights.

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With 2/3 of the people in Cyprus preferring to leave the Eurozone (Cyprexit or Cexit?), one wonders what the legal avenue would be to give up the Euro.

By Marijn van der Sluis

Much has been said about the economic and political pros and cons of a member state leaving the Euro. Legal academics however, have mostly been silent on this issue (see however here and here). This is deplorable because the legal possibilities and details shape the bargaining process and the strategy of the players involved in this crisis.

There are basically three ways of exiting the euro area: 1) through exit from the Union (and re-entry), 2) through Treaty amendment and 3) through Council decision.

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Elaine Fahey and Marija Bartl of ACELG and ACSECL examine politico-legal aspects of the Transatlantic Trade Partnership under negotiation between the EU and US currently in an Opinion in the EUObserver.com, on 18 March.

The Transatlantic Partnership (TP) poses fundamental politico-legal questions with potentially far reaching implications for our future. They ask what is being created, wittingly or otherwise? Who controls it? Who adjudicates its disputes? What are the democratic credentials of such an entity?

Dr. Marija Bartl and Dr. Elaine Fahey conduct their research in the framework of the “Architecture of Postnational Rule-Making”-Project, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Dr. Elaine Fahey is Postdoctoral Researcher, Amsterdam Centre for European Law and Governance. Her personal page can be accessed here.

Dr. Marija Bartl is Postdoctoral Researcher, Centre for the Study of European Contract Law. Her personal page can be accesssed here.

Law, politics and the economy are core determinants of the success of the European integration project and of the welfare of Europeans. None of these three determinants can be made sense of in an isolated national or European context. The recent Italian elections demonstrate the particular political temptation of opposition in a compound Union of fate and the difficulty of making a constructive message attractive in a crisis.

By Christina Eckes and Sara Lorenzon

In law, European integration leads to the incremental interlocking of the national and the European legal spheres, not only superficially but also at a deep level – a legal Union. National law gives effect to and is predetermined by EU law. The force of EU law depends on national law and even more importantly on national courts. Indeed, the interlocking of legal authority makes disobedience to EU law legally very difficult to justify for any individual national court. Disobedience would require both (lower) national courts and citizens to also defy the authority of national (constitutional) law and higher national courts.

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Last week we have witnessed an interesting and positive development in the sustainability of Irish public finance. On February 7, 2013 the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (IBRC) – an Irish Bad Bank that came into being in July 2011 after a merger between the failing Irish Banks Anglo Irish and Irish Nationwide – was liquidated. The promissory notes held by IBRC, a burden on the Irish budget considered too heavy by many, were changed into long term bonds. Since the promissory notes had functioned as collateral for loans provided by the Irish Central Bank, the liquidation of IBRC meant that they came into the hands of the central bank. Because of the debt swap, the central bank ended up with long term government bonds instead of promissory notes, greatly reducing the financial burden on Ireland in the short term. To put it in economic terms, the repayment is no longer front-loaded. The European Central Bank (ECB) unanimously ‘took note of the Irish operation’.

By Thomas Beukers

Ireland and the ECB

The most recent developments represent yet another interesting element in the relationship between Ireland and the ECB. It is no secret that the European Central Bank played an important role in the Irish decision to ask for financial assistance to the EFSF and IMF in November 2010. Its Risk Control Framework constitutes a powerful tool to provide, but also withdraw funding, allowing it according to Irish economist Karl Whelan ‘to control events at a number of key junctures in the euro crisis’. Through the Securities Markets Programme (SMP) the ECB has bought Irish government bonds on the secondary market, reducing the costs of Irish government borrowing.

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Transatlantic relations are perceived in non-legal scholarship as being “institutionally-light”. Legal scholarship has similarly viewed transatlantic relations as being dominated more by conflict than law. New scholarship in European Public Law presented in Amsterdam recently suggests that a reformulation of these views is warranted.

By Elaine Fahey

A workshop entitled “Transatlantic Relations: the nature of rule-making” was held on 21 January 2013 in Amsterdam at the KNAW, organised by Elaine Fahey and Deirdre Curtin (ACELG). This workshop examined contemporary legal issues of transatlantic relations from multidisciplinary perspectives, including, European Public Law, European Constitutional Law and European Criminal Law scholars, political scientists, international relations theorists and political theorists. A keynote address was given by Sophie in’t veld, a member of the European Parliament, a leading politician, negotiator and litigator in the area of transatlantic relations, who provided a thought-provoking perspective on the nature and state of transatlantic relations. The panels were chaired by Mark Pollack (Temple University), Jonathan Zeitlin, (University of Amsterdam) and Deirdre Curtin (ACELG), providing a diversity of disciplinary perspectives throughout.

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The European Union and its people are being pushed towards yet another ‘constitutional moment’.  Rather than letting it pass by, or worse, allowing it to be hijacked by Member State or EU institutional politics, European citizens could use this moment to change their conception of the EU to a polycentric one, allowing more autonomy for the many different intra-European groups for the common good of the EU.

By Josephine van Zeben

The financial woes of the European Union, and especially the Eurozone, have caused an undercurrent of frustration regarding the (constitutional) future of the EU to come to the fore once again. When the ‘Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe’ (also know as the Constitutional Treaty) died a premature death in 2005, many Europeans – be they citizens, politicians, or academics – believed that the EU’s ‘transformative constitutional moment’ had passed. The Treaty of Lisbon still succeeded in enacting most of the changes proposed in the Constitutional Treaty but the public’s engagement with the European Union appears to be more difficult to reinstate. Colleagues Nik de Boer and Maarten Hillebrandt recently submitted that the European Union has become something to be ‘for or against’ and that their hope for the EU’s future would be one of real democracy.

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Over the past years several EU Member States decided to integrate their competition authorities with their consumer protection agencies. The Danish Competition Authority and the Danish Consumer Agency merged into the Danish Competition and Consumer Authority in 2010, the new Finnish Competition and Consumer Authority has begun operating on 1^st January 2013, the Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) will merge the Netherlands Competition Authority (NMa) with the Dutch Consumer Authority (CA) and the Netherlands Independent Post and Telecommunications Authority (OPTA) from February 2013. In Ireland the government  has also announced that  the Competition Authority will be amalgamated with the National Consumer Agency.

By Kati Cseres

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