Netherlands takes up the EU Presidency amidst both ambitions and concerns over transparency
14 January 2016
Last week, the European Commission met the Dutch chambers of parliament behind closed doors, at the latter’s request.
Posted by acelg
Autonomous EU law concepts or deference to national law? The unsteady ground of CJEU judgments
27 November 2015
Recent legal development, involving opinion 2/13 on the accession of the EU to the ECHR, have put the relation between the EU and its Member States’ legal systems centre stage again. As important as the discussions around human rights are, there are many more, smaller pieces to this puzzle. Indeed, it is time we learn… » read more
Posted by acelg
On 6 November 2015 Judge and Professor Sacha Prechal from the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) delivered a presentation on the concept of ‘mutual trust’ before the CJEU at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. According to her the biggest challenge for the principle of mutual trust lies in providing limitations to it without upsetting… » read more
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Jürgen Neyer on Normative Realism
6 November 2015
On Monday 2 November, Professor Jürgen Neyer delivered an Architecture Lecture at the University of Amsterdam’s law faculty carrying the simple but evocative title “What is wrong with EU decision-making?”. According to Neyer, it is the lack of contestation that eventually becomes unsustainable for the European Union: “Discourse and conflict are two sides of the… » read more
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C-62/14 Gauweiler: How the ECJ avoided Stockholm syndrome but risks either a standoff or a stalemate
26 October 2015
By Tomi Tuominen The European Court of Justice (ECJ) delivered its judgment in the much followed case Gauweiler in last June, where it found the European Central Bank’s (ECB) Outright Monetary Transactions programme (OMT) to be legal in light of the Treaties and the Statute of the ECB. Although the outcome of the case and… » read more
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The EU Commission has recently announced that investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) will no longer be part of its proposals on TTIP. This was the Commission’s response to public contestation and fears that such a mechanism could place unjustified constraints on democratic institutions and on the capacity of states and of the EU to preserve… » read more
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SBC (C-355/10) vs Europol (C-363/14): What does the Court do with fundamental rights and essential elements?
24 September 2015
A little while ago, the judgement in case C-355/10 (Schengen Borders Code (SBC)) received much attention. In this judgement the Court appeared to find an act’s interference with human rights to be an objective factor determining whether it regulated ‘essential elements’ – something that non-legislative acts must not do under Union law. Last week’s judgement… » read more
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By Eljalill Tauschinsky On July 6, Austria has gone to Court over EU funding for a nuclear power plant in Britain. According to the Austrian public media, Austria argues that nuclear power is a bad policy choice, inherently unsafe and not future-worthy. The case argued before the Court will likely be more about competition policy,… » read more
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By Nik de Boer and Chris Koedooder Over the past week, UK Prime Minister David Cameron and his Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, made a fuss about emergency funding for Greece. The source of their grievances is that some of the funding comes from the European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism (EFSM). Use of this rescue… » read more
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By Marc de Werd, judge in the Amsterdam Court of Appeal and professor of European Justice (Maastricht University) Back to the drawing board Much has already been written in the blogospere about the CJEU’s Opinion 2/13 on the draft accession agreement on the accession of the European Union to the European Convention for the… » read more
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