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Within the European Union, border regions represent 40% of its territory and they are home to a third of the EU’s population. Located at the edge of national borders (i.e. the EU’s internal borders), these regions provide opportunities to reap benefits from interactions of different cultures, languages, markets, and societies. However, from a law-making point of view, these regions – and particularly their cross-border 'conglomerates' – provide rather challenging subjects. The article's central question is how a cross-border impact assessment during the legislative process can ensure better regulation in the light of regional policy. The first section reflects on the nature and origins of obstacles to mobility and cooperation experienced by cross-border regions. It will provide concrete case examples of EU policies where so-called ‘cross-border effects’ can be analysed. The second section presents existing approaches and methods for identifying and assessing possible effects for cross-border regions. In addition, the practice of a bottom-up regulatory cross-border impact assessment will be discussed. The third section elaborates further on what the current state of affairs in EU’s policy-making and impact assessment looks like. Finally, we will discuss how a cross-border impact assessment would fit within the procedure of EU’s policy-making and other initiatives and conclude with some policy recommendations.

This essay examines how EU criminal law, which regulates certain aspects of criminal procedural law of the twenty-seven EU member states, addresses the situation of persons with disabilities who come into contact with the criminal justice system. EU law on victims and on suspects and accused persons (partially) addresses disability through the prism of “vulnerability.” This essay argues that associating persons with disabilities with “vulnerability” can be stigmatizing. Moreover, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), which requires that persons with disabilities have effective access to justice and receive appropriate accommodations, does not link these rights to a prior recognition of “vulnerability.” Even though the EU is a party to the CRPD, the 2013 Recommendation from the European Commission on Procedural Safeguards for Vulnerable Persons Suspected or Accused in Criminal Proceedings, frames disability in terms of “vulnerability.” In contrast, parts of the EU Victims’ Rights Directive address the situation of individuals with disabilities without using the language of vulnerability.

Mutual recognition is the rule which guides cooperation in criminal matters within the European Union. Whilst intended to facilitate and make cooperation faster, the Court of Justice has done exactly the opposite in its case law. It has raised the thresholds for cooperation between the Member States by creating more formalities, causing delay and it does so without strengthening effective legal remedies for the citizen. Member States must assess detention circumstances elsewhere, the status of the issuing judicial authority, as well as make an assessment of the judicial independence of the judiciary of the issuing Member State. These three cumulative developments have led to a situation in which Member States mutually supervise each other. The concept of dual level of protection, as introduced by the Court, triggers two procedures that will be necessary: one, in the issuing Member State, before the European Arrest Warrant (EAW) is issued, and another in the executing Member State when it must be executed. However, the requested person does not benefit from effective judicial protection because of their absence when the EAW is issued. This would only be the case when it would be possible for the requested person to challenge the need for the EAW in the context of the existence of alternatives to surrender that might be less violative of the freedoms and rights of the requested person. Such an overall assessment of the legal position of the requested person would require a single joint level of protection, involving both Member States and the requested person in one procedure in order to safeguard that all interests at stake are considered, impunity is prevented and thus a fair administration of justice is ensured.​

Het Verdrag betreffende de werking van de Europese Unie kent aan iedere onderdaan van een van de lidstaten van de Europese Unie de status van EU-burgerschap toe (art. 20 VWEU). Nationaliteit is daarom een voorwaarde voor individuen om van de status als EU-burger gebruik te kunnen maken en van de rechten die aan het EU-burgerschap verbonden zijn. Het gaat dan om het vrije verkeer binnen de EU (art. 21 VWEU), maar ook onder andere actief en passief kiesrecht voor gemeentelijke verkiezingen in een gastlidstaat. Hoewel uitsluitend lidstaten bevoegd zijn om de nationaliteit toe te kennen en in te trekken, moeten dergelijke besluiten en nationaliteitsregelingen wel voldoen aan de eisen die het EU-recht daaraan stelt, met name aan het evenredigheidsbeginsel. In de zaak JY staat intrekking van het voornemen om nationaliteit toe te kennen centraal. Het gaat in deze zaak dus niet om het intrekken van een toegekende nationaliteit, maar wel om het vertrouwen dat de betreffende nationaliteit zou worden toegekend.HvJ 18 januari 2022, C-118/20, ECLI:EU:C:2022:34 (JY/Wiener Landesregierung).

The 2019 Work-life Balance Directive creates a new right for parents and carers to request flexible working arrangements for caring purposes. The significance of this innovation has been heightened by the pandemic because it includes the right to request remote working arrangements. This article undertakes a contextual and comparative analysis in order to understand better the strengths, limitations and opportunities created by the Directive. It compares the right to request flexible working arrangements to provisions found in existing Directives on parental leave and part-time work, as well as protections that may be derived from EU equality law. It looks also at examples of existing legislation in two jurisdictions, the Netherlands and Australia, in order to illustrate the options available to Member States when they implement this right within domestic law. The article concludes that the full potential of this right can only be understood when it is viewed as part of a wider range of legal provisions that assist in the reconciliation of work and family life.

A growing movement of illegally adopted individuals request remedies and reparations for the human rights violations that they and their biological families had suffered. This article explores a number of measures that the stakeholders in the receiving countries can use in an effort to repair the human rights violations caused by illegal intercountry adoptions, borrowing ideas from transitional justice. In order to effectively redress the harm inflicted upon victims of illegal adoptions, a policy on remedies should combine instruments of retributive justice, aimed at holding wrongdoers accountable, with measures of restorative justice that focus on the victims’ needs and interests.

This chapter explores whether the ‘traditional’ reasonable accommodation duty is ‘fit for purpose’ in times of crisis and whether variations of this duty might be better suited to the task. The reasonable accommodation obligation requires duty-bearers to take disability into account, and to make an adjustment, alteration, or accommodation to their standard practices, policies, and structures in order to meet the needs of a particular disabled individual. One limitation of the ‘traditional’ reasonable accommodation duty is that it is ex post, in that it is triggered only when an individual indicates that they are facing a barrier. Other types of reasonable accommodation duties adopt a more pro-active or ex ante approach. One example is the anticipatory reasonable adjustment duty in the Equality Act 2010. This requires duty-bearers to consider the foreseeable needs of disabled people in advance of an individual request being made. There is little evidence of Covid-19-related litigation based on the ‘traditional’ ex post reasonable accommodation duty. In contrast, the ex ante anticipatory reasonable adjustment duty in the Equality Act 2010 has been heavily used during the Covid-19 crisis. The fact that it focuses attention on what duty-bearers should have been doing to avoid creating disadvantage, rather than on simply what they can do to remove it once in place, is perhaps more useful in times of crisis. The chapter nevertheless finds that there is much more that needs to be done to build a legal framework that robustly embeds disability equality.

Within the second half of the twentieth century, a transnational adoption market has emerged. Numerous reports document the illegal practices whereby which children are obtained and then trafficked to meet the high Western demand for adoptable children. This market is organised into a structure of relations between kidnappers, orphanages, youth welfare offices, lawyers, doctors, adoption agencies and sometimes even adopters. Child trafficking for adoption (CTFA) can therefore be considered as a form of organised crime. This chapter explores and discusses four features of this kind of trafficking in human beings and draws comparisons with other transnational organised criminal trades: the commodification of what is culturally considered to be separate from the economic sphere, the criminogenic asymmetries which the transnational adoption market is based on, the need for a laundering process and wilful ignorance of the stakeholders on the demand side of the market.

In deze klinische les gaan we het hebben over zorgverlening aan niet-Nederlandse EU-inwoners. Binnen de EU is het makkelijker geworden om naar andere landen te reizen en er te werken. Daardoor kan het vaker voorkomen dat mensen uit een ander EU-land, gepland of ongepland, gebruikmaken van de Nederlandse gezondheidszorg. Dat gaat gepaard met enkele praktische uitdagingen.

Platformwerkers hebben weinig tot geen arbeidsrechtelijke en socialezekerheidsrechtelijke bescherming. Door het online - en per definitie ook mogelijk grensoverschrijdend - karakter van platformwerk én het gebrek aan nationaalrechtelijke wetgevende kaders, heeft de EC een voorstel tot Richtlijn voor meer bescherming van platformwerkers gedaan. Dit ex-ante dossier is gericht op de mogelijke grenseffecten van de voorgestelde Richtlijn.

The ImprovEAW-project concerns European Arrest Warrant proceedings in seven Member States (Belgium, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, the Netherlands, Poland and Romania). Maastricht Law Series No. 23 contains the country reports for Greece, the Netherlands and Poland. ImprovEAW is a follow up to an earlier project that focused on In Absentia Judgments (Maastricht Law Series No. 12). This book looks at various other aspects of the EAW surrender procedure that are problematic in practice, such as the information to be provided in the European arrest warrant, the status of the issuing authority and differences in implementation in the Member States. It also goes more into detail as it aims to present an alternative to the European Commission’s outdated Handbook on how to issue and execute a European arrest warrant. This study ends with a proposal to create a procedure that complies with the demands of a dual level of protection, which takes place after arrest of the requested person in the executing Member State. The present research report is completed with a hands-on set of Common Practical Guidelines on issuing and executing EAWs for practitioners.

De centrale vraag in de in deze bijdrage te bespreken arresten is of, en zo ja, onder welke voorwaarden, ondernemingen gebruik kunnen maken van hun recht op verkeer om profijt te trekken uit verschillen in de socialezekerheidsbijdragen die zij voor hun werknemers moeten betalen. De arresten laten zien dat het Hof van Justitie bijzonder huiverig is voor ‘forumshopping’. De in artikel 12 en 13 Verordening (EG) nr. 883/2004 inzake de coördinatie van sociale zekerheid opgenomen aanwijsregels dienen strikt en op een ‘werknemersvriendelijke’ wijze te worden uitgelegd.HvJ 3 juni 2021, zaak C-784/19, ECLI:EU:C:2021:427 (Team Power), HvJ 20 mei 2021, zaak C-879/19, ECLI:EU:C:2021:409 (Format II), HvJ 16 juli 2020, zaak C-6101/18, ECLI:EU:C:2020:565 (AFMB).

The Constitution of China does not match China’s image as a great power, in the sense that it is silent on its spacial scope, in particular the extraterritorial aspects of fundamental rights articles. Currently, fundamental rights research in China has mainly focused on the relationship between a State and its residents, while over-looking the extraterritorial aspect of rights protection. This reflects an outdated approach of constitutional law based on a rigid idea of territoriality. This article, however, argues that the Chinese Constitution should reflect the horizon of a great power and that its fundamental rights articles should be interpreted as being capable of extraterritorial application. In doing so, it depicts the potential occasions where the extraterritorial approach of the Chinese Constitution is pertinent. It then reveals that the extraterritorial approach is neither implausible nor self-evident on the basis of comparative law study. It then explores the legal doctrine for the extraterritorial application of fundamental rights articles in the Chinese Constitution in the light of China’s role as a great power. Finally, it addresses how the extraterritorial approach of the Chinese Constitution might function in China’s legal practice and how such an approach might affect human rights discourse in China.

There is currently no empirical evidence on whether or not the use of childlike sex dolls would prevent or encourage sexual abuse of children. Yet, more and more countries prohibit or contemplate prohibiting these objects, and the EU Commission also announced it would consider this issue in the context of the fight against child sexual abuse. This article describes and compares the laws and policies of five countries in which childlike sex dolls are currently banned: Australia, Germany, Denmark, Norway and the UK. These countries have adopted different approaches to dealing with the newly emerging phenomenon of childlike sex dolls: While in Australia, Germany and Denmark dedicated laws prohibiting these dolls are introduced, in Norway and the UK existing laws are applied to these objects. By juxtaposing and critically assessing the different approaches to prohibiting childlike sex dolls, the article aims to inspire and guide other countries that also contemplate legislative action in this context.

Dutch legislation has prohibited disability discrimination with regard to post-secondary education since 2003, when the Equal Treatment of Disabled and Chronically Ill People Act came into force. The Act prohibits disability discrimination with regard to, inter alia, further and higher education. The Netherlands Institute for Human Rights (NIHR) plays an important role in interpreting and applying all Dutch equality legislation. It has a quasi-judicial task and, in this capacity, hears individual complaints and issues Opinions. The NIHR, and its predecessor, the Equal Treatment Commission, have issued numerous Opinions in the context of post-secondary education and (alleged) disability discrimination. For this reason, the Netherlands has been selected for a case study on disability discrimination in post-secondary education. This article examines 70 Opinions in this area and explores: whether individuals with particular forms of disabilities or chronic illnesses are over-represented in the cases brought; the main areas in which cases (alleging) disability discrimination in the context of post- secondary education have arisen; and the types of (alleged) discrimination which are at issue.

Traditional lecturing has traditionally been one of the most prevalent methods of instructions in law curricula. This tradition dates back a millennial. The method has also permeated into learning philosophies that stand at odds with this instruction method, such as Problem-Based Learning. In the article it is investigated why lecturing is used so widely, whether there are additional reasons to do so in the legal discipline and whether recent developments – most notably the Sars-COV-2 pandemic – would or should lead to a departure from this instruction method. It is concluded that lectures will probably prevail and that there is a place for this instruction method in Problem-Based Learning even more so in a legal curriculum.

European Papers - A Journal on Law and Integration, 2022 7(1), 87-108, I. EU's shifting borders: an introduction. - II. Protecting borders and respecting human rights. - II.1. How to reconcile diverging constitutional objectives in light of hybridity and informality? - II.2. Which way forward with accountability? - III. EU's external borders: of administrative integration and the physical and legal infrastructures of deflection. - III.1. Hotspots as incubators of liminality and of an emerging European integrated administration. - III.2. Beyond hotspots: securitisation and deflection of "risky" migrants. - III.3. Screening, border asylum procedures, and streamlined returns: what's "new" in the new pact on migration and asylum? - IV. Overview of contributions., Borders have gone far beyond their traditional static function of merely demarcating nation-states. Alongside physical border barriers, such as walls and barbwire fences, new technologies driven by sophisticated legal innovations have contributed to the multiplicity of border controls. These legal techniques have turned the border into an individualised moving barrier, conceptualized as a "shifting border" by Ayelet Shachar. Against this backdrop, this Article introduces, conceptually and thematically, the contributions to this Special Section which critically assess the paradigm of the shifting border in the EU and analyse its implications. We first map out intricate legal issues invoked by the rise of hybridity and informality in the EU's cooperation with third countries on migration and the resulting accountability deficit. Next, we scrutinize the physical and legal infrastructures of mobility regulation (and often deflection) that are currently employed at the EU's external territorial borders. We highlight the emergence of increasing horizontal (between the EU and national level) and vertical (across national levels) administrative integration as a prevailing mode of policy implementation at the EU's borders and reflect on the implications, including both challenges and opportunities, of this development. Finally, we scrutinise the Commission's proposals as part of a New Pact on Migration and Asylum with respect to the envisaged processes at the borders and the streamlining of external border control, asylum, and return in a seamless process finding that they create further risks for fundamental rights and procedural guarantees.

Disability assessments play a key role in welfare states but are increasingly contested, not least for their compatibility with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). This paper draws on evidence of global governance and assessment practices in 34 European countries, the largest international study to date. The paper reflects on the model of disability in the CRPD and its implications for disability assessment, drawing on the work of the CRPD Committee. The paper also examines examples of promising practice in assessment in European countries and concludes by identifying elements of a CRPD-compatible approach. Disability assessments must be underpinned by both a social-contextual concept of disability and a human rights approach. Administrative attribution of disability status based on categorical diagnosis or individual functioning alone is incompatible with this approach. This approach challenges the historic individualization of disability assessments and the knowledge relationships underpinning them.

Students' evaluations are used to measure teaching effectiveness of staff. As such they are used to assess and appraise staff. The article - taking a doctrinal rather than an educational science approach - shows that there are considerable problems with the hypothesis that students' evaluations measure teaching effectiveness. This is even more so in systems where an overarching teaching philosophy like problem-based learning (PBL) is applied. The article identifies a working hypothesis that students do not use the teaching philosophy as primary motivator to evaluate staff, leading to a perverted incentive. Changes made to the system of evaluation in the law faculty of Maastricht University are described.

The conflict rules enshrined in Regulation 883/2004 on the coordination of social security were created six decades ago to offer those who exercise free movement rights ‘constant social security protection’. The main idea was to ensure that beneficiaries are always subject to the legislation of a single Member State and to indicate which Member State that was. Because beneficiaries were above all ‘standard’ employees working on a full-time basis for an indefinite period of time, it was initially quite easy to determine the ‘competent’ Member State. The processes of flexibilization, digitalization, enlargement and globalization, however, have posed new and often formidable challenges. In today’s dynamic labour market it is often particularly difficult to identify the applicable legislation, issues arise as regards swift and frequent switches in the applicable legislation, increased worker and company mobility may affect social security rights and problems have arisen because of the possible fraudulent use of the rules determining the applicable legislation. This contribution analyses some of the recent CJEU case law on topics like working in to or more Member States, posting, abuse and fraud, employment and/or residence outside the EU and gaps in in social security protection by EU workers. The overarching question is how, in the view of the CJEU, the classic conflict rules are to be applied so as to ensure cross-border movers continue to enjoy constant social security protection.