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Focuses on options for reforming European governance. White Paper of the European Commission.

The paper uses the opportunity afforded by the European Commission's Third Report of the Product Liability Directive to assess the present state of product liability in Europe. It notes that despite the maximal harmonisation character of the Directive there is a risk of divergence between Member States on key issues including the core concept of defectiveness. The Commission seems at times confused (for example, as regards the relationship between defect and fault liability) and more often complacent about the risks of divergence; but this sits uneasily with the espousal of maximal harmonisation. Ultimately there may be a need for a rethinking of product liability to ensure greater clarity as regards the underlying rationale supporting strict liability. This seems unlikely to materialise in the near future and so at the very least the Commission should act to clarify some core concepts that are proving difficult to interpret for the courts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the financing services of general economic interest that play an important role in the lives of the citizens of Europe. Increasingly such services have come under attack from the use of the competition and internal market law provisions of the EC Treaty, revealing that the European Union lacks a clear strategy to promote the role of such services in the new economy. Where the State finances activities which are not of an economic nature, for example, security, justice, social security and education, such activities are not caught by the EC Treaty. But when the State finances activities of an economic nature the direct finance, or other benefits, may be a State Aid which must be approved and monitored by the Commission.

This article offers a new interpretation - the 'constitutional constraint' model - of the duty the Human Rights Act imposes on the courts to give horizontal effect to European Convention rights through the common law. The model requires courts to develop the common law compatibly with the Convention, but only where compatibility can be achieved by incremental development. We argue that models requiring more than incremental development are unsustainable; that deep constitutional norms compel the constraint of incrementalism, which is preserved under the HRA; and that by virtue of section 2 of the HRA, Convention rights function as principles rather than hard-edged rights in this context. This further undermines the idea that the courts must strictly apply Convention rights and cannot allow them to be overridden by non- Convention factors. The final section explores the nature of incrementalism in this context and the impact of the model on the doctrine of judicial precedent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent legislation on migration and citizenship in Europe and the EU framework on integration require migrants to meet integration requirements in order to enter, reside, reunite with their families and naturalise in the host country. Mandatory language course attendance and examination tests are viewed as means of enhancing integration, which is now framed as a 'two way' process or a contractual agreement between migrants and the host society. Despite the deployment of the notion of a contract, integration is, in reality, a one way process aimed at procuring conformity, discipline and migration control. Civic integration rests on an artificial homogenisation and displays the same elements of paternalism and ethnocentricity that characterised past initiatives. The civic integration paradigm is a crucial feature of a renewed, albeit old-fashioned, nationpolitics used by political elites to provide answers to a wide range of issues and to elicit support for a controlling state in the first decade of the 21 century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Commission has for the first time issued a document expressing its official position on the enforcement of Article 102TFEU which prohibits the abuse of a dominant position on the Common Market. The Commission Guidance on enforcement priorities in applying Article 102TFEU to exclusionary abuses (adopted in December 2008) has ended a review of about four years. Given the increased enforcement of Article 102TFEU at the European level and the fact that many national provisions in the EU on unilateral conduct are modelled after Article 102TFEU, how the Commission intends to enforce Article 102TFEU is crucial for the application of competition law and the undertakings subject to it under European and/or national laws. The review period was preceded by severe criticisms of the Commission's approach to Article 102TFEU for protecting competitors instead of competition and for being insufficiently grounded in modern economic thinking. At the heart of the review and the discussions surrounding it lay the question of the objective of Article 102TFEU. Some, including the Directorate General for Competition claimed the objective to be ‘consumer welfare’, whereas some argued that ‘consumer welfare’ cannot be adopted as the objective at the expense of the protection of the competitive process. This article critically reviews the Commission Guidance, with an eye to assessing the ultimate objective of and the test of harm under Article 102TFEU. After discussing whether the Guidance indeed sets priorities, it examines the general approach of the Guidance to exclusionary conduct. It points out that despite there being some welcome novelties in the Guidance, there are also suggestions therein whose legitimacy and legality are questionable. Reflecting on the Guidance as a soft-law instrument, the article argues that although regarding the objective of Article 102TFEU, the Commission's apparent tendency towards ‘consumer welfare’ is not unlawful, the reform of Article 102TFEU to bring it more in line with modern economic and legal thinking seems to be far from complete. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This note discusses three cases which have considered objective justification for the apparent contradiction between rewarding age and length of service in redundancy payments and the need not to discriminate on the grounds of age. It considers the relevance of cases from the European Court of Justice about whether there can be a general exception to the need to justify using the criterion of length of service, or seniority, in equal pay cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the ‘Principles of the Existing EC Contract Law’ (Acquis Principles) published by the European Research Group on the Existing EC Contract Law (Acquis Group), a key player within the academic network charged with the preparation of a ‘Common Frame of Reference’. The Acquis Principles may therefore have a considerable impact on the shape and development of EC Contract Law. It is argued that the Acquis Principles do not constitute merely a restatement, or systematic revision, of existing EC private law. To a significant extent, the Acquis Group has drafted ‘desirable rules’, based on ‘political’ decisions that may even entail a transformation towards a regulatory model of private law. At the same time, the Acquis Principles clearly demonstrate that the acquis communautaire is not a coherent system of contract law that can be taken to have emancipated itself from the acquis commun. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on a Directive on General Product Safety in Europe in 1992. The aim of the directive is to establish technical standards for consumer products. In 2001 a revised Directive has been issued. Businesses need to comply with product safety requirements. They also have to inform regulators of problems.

Examines the ideas and norms of European citizenship. Institutional changes; Citizen status; Introduction of Union Citizenship by the Treaty on European Union; European constitutionalism; European democracy and legitimacy; Formation of European demos and the design of a public sphere.

Focuses on the emphasis on public involvement for environmental protection and its effect on European and domestic environmental law discussed in the Arhus Convention. Benefits of public participation; Importance of access to information in environmental protection; Stages of public involvement as discussed in Arhus Convention.

Focuses on individualism, cooperativism and ethic for the European contract law. Essential ethic of contract; Pursuit of economic self-interest.

Discusses the Human Rights Act 1998, a culmination of a campaign for the incorporation into domestic law of the European Convention on Human Rights. Transfer of political power from the executive and legislature to the judiciary; Re-structuring the political constitution; Difficulty of the Labour Party in Great Britain with the domestication of the Convention.

Examines conceptual problems and doctrinal uncertainty in the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights concerning the reconciliation of human rights and public interest. Incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights by the Human Rights Act 1998; Relationship between rights and public interest goals; Issues relating to the legitimacy of allowing unelected judges to decide whether particular policies are justified in the public interest.

Examines accountability and responsibility association with the operations and resignations at the European Commission. Details of a mass resignation on March 1999; Aspects and issues on governance; Reasons leading to the mass resignation; Brief history of the commission; Overview of the Commission's internal bureaucratic structure.

Analyzes the Community legal order in Europe. Internal logic of the Community legal order; Cultural theory approach to the Community legal order; Judicial relations within the European Community; Consociational model of governance; Management of judicial relations.