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The purpose of this paper is to investigate to what extent the European Court of Justice (ECJ) decides strategically on preliminary references in matters of access to social benefits by economically inactive EU migrants, and to what extent national courts decide to comply with ECJ preliminary rulings in these issues. In doing so, this paper attempted to contribute to a better understanding of judiciaries' impact on public policy through the EU preliminary reference procedures. Knowing that the field of social policy is highly conflictladen, this paper assumes that the ECJ activity in this area will largely reflect a strategic balancing between deeper EU integration through case law and respect for national (fiscal) interests and competences. The paper draws on an intergovernmental, rational-choice theoretical perspective and applies it in a case study on Germany, where three cases (Dano C-333/13, Alimanovic C-67/15 and García-Nieto C-299/14) regarding the access to social benefits (i.e. special non-contributory benefits) have recently been referred to the ECJ. To draw conclusions, the author traces political circumstances, previous ECJ case law, ECJ reasoning in the case studies and final verdicts by national courts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The right of children to be heard is acknowledged as a fundamental human right, as the European Court of Human Rights in the case Iglesias Casarrubios and Cantalapiedra Iglesias v Spain of 11 October 2016 emphasized. In the Brussels IIa Regulation this right plays a crucial role. On 30 June 2016, the European Union Commission issued a Recast Proposal of this Regulation, which suggests amending it in several aspects including the hearing of the child. This paper analyzes how the Brussels IIa Regulation addresses the right of the child to be heard and the amendments suggested by its Recast Proposal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Service of proceedings on the defendant must be effected in such a way that he is able to adequately defend his legal position and is therefore directly linked to Article 6(1) of the European Convention on Human Rights and to Article 47 of the Charter of the Fundamental Rights of the European Union (EU). The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has dealt with service-related issues on many occasions, and so has also the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), especially when dealing with difficulties detected by national courts facing the application of EU legislation. Indeed, the EU lawmaker has been aware of the relevance of first service of process and has afforded it a very significant attention: when regulating cross-border service of the claim; in the context of specific "EU" civil proceedings (like the EU order for payment procedure, the EU small claims procedure or the EU account preservation order); and in the framework of recognition and enforcement of foreign decisions. It is the aim of this paper to analyse the way in which first service of process has been addressed in European legislation, and also, from the point of view of case-law, the way in which the ECtHR and the CJEU have approached this issue. By analysing both Regulations and case-law it may be possible to extract minimum European standards regarding this procedural safeguard which, undoubtedly, can serve as a starting point for EU legislative implementation and, in a perhaps not-so-distant future, to standardize national codes of procedural law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the administrative remedy provided by the Administrative Board of Review (ABoR) of the European Central Bank (ECB), as part of the broader issue of the right of defence of natural and legal persons vis- à- vis ECB supervisory decisions within the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM). After presenting an overview of the review panels established in the financial sector in the EU, the article describes the experience with the ABoR by analysing its composition, its mandate and scope of review, the main procedural aspects and the relationship with judicial proceedings before the European Court of Justice. Particular attention is given to the substantial issues dealt with by the ABoR in its Opinions and to some of the major challenges faced in the first 2 years of practice. Among them is the assessment of the correct application of national laws implementing EU legislation by the ECB. The paper identifies two aspects giving particular cause for concern and requiring legislative reforms: (1) the assessment of the suitability of the members of management bodies (fit and proper assessment) and (2) the inclusion of bank holding companies within the scope of banking supervision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Parliament and the Council of the European Union adopted on 9 March 2011 the Directive on the application of patients' rights in cross-border healthcare. This Directive emerged as a result of the Court of Justice's jurisprudence on social security coverage of healthcare obtained outside the Member State where the patient has social security protection. The aim of this paper is to investigate the Directive and determine whether it will add (once transposed into national legal systems) to the current set of patient entitlements and make it easier for patients to obtain socially covered healthcare outside the state of social protection, and to discuss the Directive's application in Croatia once the country joins the EU. The paper analyses the Patient Mobility Directive by focusing on the issue of whether the Directive actually contributes to patient mobility in the EU and also its relationship with national social security legislation, especially in Croatia. The paper argues that the Patient Mobility Directive's impact on the actual movement of patients across borders might prove to be counterproductive in some areas, due to its limiting certain entitlements to access socially covered healthcare abroad. On the other hand, the Directive will also add to some patients' entitlements in accessing healthcare abroad and improve (from the patients' point of view) certain aspects of the overall framework for obtaining cross-border healthcare. Therefore, the Directive's impact in terms of facilitating patients' ability to obtain socially covered healthcare outside the Member State of social protection remains ambivalent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses harmonization of non-economic rights of Copyright law known as moral rights of by the European Union (EU) for its member states. Due to the differences in the civil law and common law copyright law differed in EU's members. It mentions that EU's unification of its economic rights and less emphasis on moral rights is creating contrast among the member states over moral rights. The passing of the White Paper on Completing the Internal Market in 1985 and publish of Green Paper on Copyright and the Challenge of Technology in 1988 depicted the ultimate goal of the EU. It details the Article 3 of the EC Treaty and analyzes the judgement by European Court of Justice (ECJ). It concluded by stating the need for unification of moral rights and protection of authors.

One of the lesser noted elements of the Lisbon Treaty (and Treaty on a Constitution for Europe that preceded it), was the limited but significant influence that Europe's regions were able to exert of the process. Regional successes at Lisbon included the inclusion of local and regional levels into the concept of subsidiarity and the right of the Committee of Regions (CoR) to challenge the Commission before the European Court of Justice (ECJ). This regional renaissance came as something of a surprise as although the early 1990s had seen the brief flowering of the concept of the "Europe of Regions", these hopes were to prove short lived. Even as regional governments in western Europe were flexing their political muscles, the European Union (EU) was looking to expand into areas where sub-national regional governance was weak or non-existent. This weakening of the regional tier, combined with the ineffective nature of EU regional access, particularly the Committee of Regions, led to disenchantment with the European project and turned some regional governments from Europhiles to mild sceptics. However, as the regional successes at Lisbon confirm, Europe's regions are back. This paper traces the rise and fall of the regional tier with particular reference to the changing nature of the expanded EU. As the paper explores, the expansion to the east has changed the very nature of the regional level with the eastern European Member States developing very limited forms of regional governance. In fact, the limited regional successes achieved at Lisbon obscures a continuing paradox within the EU. Although there continues to be pressure for greater regional involvement at the European level, the regional level is not a pan-European phenomenon. It is largely driven by autonomous "legislative" regions, which are a feature of western European states alone. This paper concludes by briefly examining this imbalance and its consequences in a post-Lisbon Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the role and function of the right to a fair trial in Brussels I. Particular emphasis will be placed on how the European Court of Justice balances the right to a fair trial against the free movement of judgments. This question will be answered in terms of whether the ECJ perceives the right to a fair trial to constitute an autonomous source of obligations or whether it interprets (and if so, how it does so) PIL mechanisms in the light of the requirements of a fair trial. In particular, the paper will analyse to what extent the courts in the Member State addressed may review compliance with the right to a fair hearing of the court originally seized. Finally, the proposal of the European Commission to abolish the exequatur will be examined from a fundamental rights perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The general principle of equality in European law is often held to be inconsistently applied by the European Court of Justice ( ECJ) and insufficiently supported by methodology. Contrary to this assessment, this paper argues that there is substantial coherence and theoretical underpinning to the court's equality reasoning. First, it shows that the respective case-law can be subdivided into three groups, depending on the level of scrutiny applied. Second, it establishes that the prevailing accounts have difficulty in explaining the court's choice of scrutiny due to their limited selection of analytical parameters. Third, it concludes that comparative institutional analysis offers an alternative framework to make the ECJ's testing approaches in equality matters more intelligible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1995 ruling of the European Court of Justice in Bosman was a pivotal point in the relationship between the European Union and sport. It has had an immense impact upon professional team sports, most notably football, in terms of liberalising the transfer system and abolishing player quotas. This paper will chart the development of a European sports law policy generally and will specifically discuss two current proposals concerning the reintroduction of playing quotas in football. We will examine the legality of these proposals with reference to Article 45 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and will evaluate the political context within which these proposals have been promulgated. It will be suggested that a possible solution, which should end legal uncertainty, could be the adoption of a collective agreement or directive based on the methodology of reflexive labour law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2005, the European Commission has examined the public financing of airport infrastructure under European Union (EU) state aid rules.This extension of the Commission's control followed the evolution of the sector as acknowledged by the Court of Justice of the EU in the Aéroports de Paris case in which airports were qualified as undertakings and thus submitted to European law. In March 2011 the Court of Justice confirmed the Commission's practice towards the financing of airport infrastructure in the Leipzig Airport case.The Court nevertheless reminded all parties that airport infrastructure dedicated to non-economic activities, such as safety and security, falls outside the scope of EU state aid rules.The aim of this paper is to provide airport managers and public authorities with a practical guide to the European legal constraints regarding the public financing of airport infrastructures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Currently the Member States' nationalities, short of being abolished in the legal sense, mostly serve as access points to the status of EU citizenship. Besides, they provide their owners with a limited number of specific rights in deviation from the general principle of non-discrimination on the basis of nationality, and-what is probably more important for the majority of their owners-trigger legalised discrimination in the wholly internal situations. Viewed in this light, the requirement to have only one Member State's nationality enforced in national law by 10 Member States seems totally outdated and misplaced. This paper focuses on the legal analysis of this controversial requirement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the issue of non-regression clauses, which, despite a twenty-year history, has been addressed by domestic and European case law only recently, and only with regard to the field of flexible employment. This essay argues that the Court of Justice case law on non-regression clauses (the Mangold and Angelidaki rulings) leads to a weakening of these instruments, rendering them ineffective. This ineffectiveness is due to the controversial idea of Fixed-Term Work in the era of flexicurity, and to the difficult justiciability of the particular clause in itself, as demonstrated by the most recent Court of Justice's ruling, Sorge. In addition, this essay provides an explanation of the difficult enforcement of non-regression clauses, in light of the new course of European employment policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent cases involving s 92 of the Constitution refer to economic considerations and principles relating to competition. The application of provisions of the Treaty Establishing the European Community (the 'EC Treaty') having similar effect, by the European Court of Justice, has led to a broader consideration of the effects of state regulation on the ideal of a common market and a lessening of the relevance of domestic protection. It has tested what is permissible state regulation by the doctrine of proportionality. This paper will compare the current Australian perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the provisional measures of the Brussels I Regulation in the European Union (EU). The author discourses the treatment of the provisional measures of the Regulation in the case law of the European Court of Justice (ECJ), in comparison to the provisional measures of the Brussels Convention. He explores the report and green paper of the European Commission on the enforcement of the provisional measures and its effect on the national procedural laws and jurisdictions of member states. He tackles some of the proposed amendments to the Regulation.

Will the welfare state survive European Integration? The paper seeks to put this currently intense debate into constitutional perspectives. It starts with a reconstruction of the débat fondateur in post-war Germany on the new Basic Law, which was focused on alleged or real tensions of welfarism with Rechtsstaatlichkeit, the commitment to rule of law. This is the background for the discussion in Section II on legal categories, which Fritz Scharpf has characterised as a de-coupling of economic integration from the various welfare traditions of Member States. The third section analyses the ECJ's recent labour law jurisprudence with its interpretation of the supremacy of European freedoms and its rigid interpretation of pertinent secondary legislation. These controversial moves are bound to provoke fierce opposition on the part of the protagonists of “Social Europe.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]