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The Draghi Report is now published, outlining the “existential challenge” of European competitiveness going forward. In view of the geopolitical developments of the last several years, the scale of the challenge is difficult to deny, and the need for collective action at the EU level is commensurately intense. Despite these “compelling” reasons and the hoped-for “strength to reform”, however, the Report is hesitant on one crucial point: the EU is apparently not strong enough to undertake Treaty change to fulfil the Report’s ambitious objectives. We believe this approach is legally dubious, politically unwise and, eventually, helps constructing a diffused governance architecture that will fail to tackle the very real challenges the continent indeed faces.

In 2020, at the height of the Covid crisis, the EU had its 'Hamiltonian Moment'. To overcome the pandemic's economic shock, Member States agreed to back an unprecedented, capital markets-based 750 billion Euro funding scheme to kickstart the European economy. However, since then, it proved surprisingly hard to make sense of where all the money went. Apparently, one main oversight body is a rather informal committee of Member States. Now, internal documents paint a picture of peer scrutiny that remains at a general level, is conducted under tight deadlines, and is strongly limited by scarce resources. They also reveal an evolution of the process to a point what looks much like a mere formality.

There is an old adage in the world of official transparency that “sunlight is the best disinfectant”. But when it comes to Europe’s recovery transformation via the NextGenerationEU (NGEU) programme and related instruments, the Commission insists on conducting as much of it as possible in the dark. As concerns grow about both the effectiveness and even potentially corruption in the use of recovery funds, this lack of transparency is particularly worrying.

This article deals with a selection of contemporary texts by Swiss authors that address the theme of the family in various ways. The question put forward is whether such literary representations still represent today’s families or whether they miss the mark. The variety of literary forms and the spectrum of perspectives in this selection proved far more diverse than expected. Nevertheless, auto-fictional narration is still fundamental, whereby retrospectives of a life lived are conveyed from within the narrator’s own family circle. The discourse of memory continues to dominate substantial parts of the narrative, and a preoccupation with father-son and mother-daughter relations within family constellations still remains relevant. However, humour and irony are also important as a means of creating distance at moments where reality verges on the absurd and the narrator’s own family is shown in a comic light, or where the terrain is delicate, as for example when the action takes place in a nursing home.

In 2020, at the height of the Covid crisis, the EU embarked on a new path. It extensively borrowed money at capital markets and handed it out to member states. After two years of implementation, it is now possible to make some preliminary conclusions about how that money is being spent. Reading the reports and listening to the hearings in the European Parliament, it becomes abundantly clear that most of it has very little to do with European policies. Rather, spending goes into mundane national budgetary expenditures that may be useful as such but have little genuine European value and little transformational potential. In a time with pressing common European needs, this is not how it should be.

In Brussels, something remarkable has happened in the last four years. Cohesion policy—which had heretofore been a policy backwater, aimed at addressing regional disparities—has emerged as the EU’s primary vehicle for reshaping economic and related fiscal policies in the Member States. As a result, any economic or fiscal policy measure that can be plausibly described as a structural reform (primarily an area of Member State competence, subject to Union coordination) can now be reframed as a measure of EU cohesion policy (a shared competence) that can be supported by EU funds to incentivize compliance. How did this happen?

Over the last 30 years, work at Cardiff University by my colleagues and I have identified and shaped the study of law and religion in England and Wales and have explored its interdisciplinary interaction with theology, history and sociology. This article draws upon, summaries and develops my previous work on the interaction between law and religion and the sociology of religion to focus in on particular on what could be achieved by employing a sociological perspective to the internal laws of religions. It falls into two sections. The first will explore the merits of a sociological approach to religious law generally while the second will focus on how the internal laws of religion can be better understood through application of social systems theory.

This year’s most heated topic of constitutional contestation is likely to be the Commission’s recent proposal for nature restoration. While nature restoration has an innocent sound, the matter actually involves a broad spectrum of constitutional issues. In this debate, political undesirability has turned into claims about the EU’s lacking competence in regulating forests and a general failure to respect the principle of subsidiarity. Last Friday the Finnish Parliament’s Constitutional Law Committee approved an interesting statement of principle, which is likely to affect the country’s stance on EU (fiscal) integration far beyond the question of nature restoration.

The dissertation "Brand Literature. The Literature Mediation Institution Literature House in Germany and Scandinavia" by Carolin Löher examines the development and function of literature houses in Germany and Scandinavia. The author analyzes eight case studies, considering the founding history, organizational structure, economic model, and event programs of each house. The study concludes that literature houses are more than just venues for author readings and reflects on the role of literature houses in the digital reality of life. It also addresses the differences between German and Scandinavian literature houses in terms of their function and structure. The book provides an important contribution to sociological and institutional analytical literary studies and raises the question of the positioning and significance of literature houses in society. [Extracted from the article]

Civil Law codices are analytic, abstract and removed from the specific influence of particular cases. When rules are codified In Common Law systems they reflect a collection of rulings and not a collection of analytic principles. These differences stem from the nature and the motivations of the legislative enterprise. Civil-continental legislation originates in a legislative initiative “from above”. It is driven by the aspiration for legal harmony and completeness, and was originally formulated by academics. Legislation in the common-law countries results from a "bottom up" effect in which reality dictates the nature of the developing rules, step by step.Civil law systems like Common Law systems accept the supremacy of the statutory law over judge-made law. Yet when the judiciary has the authority or the power to influence the legislative agenda there is a veritable role switch. In a manner resembling continental-style legislation, the court reviewing existing legislation determines an abstract principle, usually in reliance on a particular constitutional text, and it is the legislature that is required to distill the principles into specific legislative norms, a function normally fulfilled by the common law court. The question forming the basis of this paper is the nature of the legislative process and the legislation produced by this kind of relationship. The paper addresses this question through the narrow prism of a detailed examination of a particular Israeli test case in which the Israeli Supreme Court handed down a ruling on a fundamental principle but on its own initiative delegated to the legislature the task of implementing it and providing a specific legislative enactment of this principle, on the basis of which the Court would then rule on the concrete case. The result in this particular case was that the traditional roles of the respective branches were reversed. The practical result of the move to delegate the implementation of a far-reaching and fundamental ruling to the legislature was a subversion of the fundamental ruling and delayed justice for the parties who sought a resolution of the matter.The paper claims that this mechanism leads to the creation of a new variety of a "mixed-system". The judiciary abandoned its primary obligation, namely to serve as an instance for resolving disputes, while the legislature became an executor of judicially enunciated principles. The law thus enacted resembles, in its detailed and complex language, a common law text while the principle formulated in the judgment of the court resembles a section of an analytical "civil law" statute. When the motivation for legislation stems from the court's directives, rather than the governmental or legislative interests, the legislature or the executive branch has an interest in thwarting the court’s intention through the use of various tactics readily at its disposal. This process also affects the vague and detailed formulation of the legislation, which has a character rather different from the abstract nature of civil law legislation. The lesson that this episode teach us, which the court itself internalized, is that a court cannot really dictate a legislative agenda and that it should instead focus on its designated role – the resolving of concrete disputes.

The thematic section of the European Journal of Scandinavian Studies deals with the German circle in Copenhagen between 1751 and 1770. During this period, there was a lively cultural exchange between Germany and Denmark, which, however, has largely been forgotten due to the war and conflict history of both nations in the 19th century. The contributions in this volume examine various aspects of German-Danish cultural transfer, including the mediation of Danish literature by Heinrich Wilhelm von Gerstenberg and the connection between Gerstenberg and Johann Gottfried Herder. The question of a second generation of the Copenhagen circle and the role of Friedrich Leopold Stolberg and Friederike Bruns are also examined. [Extracted from the article]

REACH is the proposed new chemicals regulation in the European Union. It builds on existing legislation, parts of which have been operating for 40 years, while tackling the identified shortcomings of the current system. The main objective of REACH is to improve the knowledge on chemicals, their properties and uses. In order to achieve this objective it is essential that industry assumes its responsibility to hold the knowledge on the substances they are manufacturing or importing and to share this knowledge with the authorities and their downstream users. REACH will require all substances manufactured and imported at and above one tonne per year to be registered. Through the Registration procedure, the obligation of industry to hold and share with authorities their knowledge of chemicals will materialise. REACH aims also to control better the use of substances of very high concern, this obviously includes the restriction of certain substances or certain uses. Through the Authorisation procedure, REACH will allow controlled use of substances of very high concern, such as carcinogens, mutagens and reprotoxic substances, substances that are persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic, and substances that are very persistent and very bioaccumulative. Increased knowledge and increased control, supplemented by substitution of dangerous substances and the fostering of innovation, will have as clear results a higher level of protection of human health and the environment, but additionally will bring along the opportunity to rebuild confidence in chemicals.