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In this paper, I assess what EU data protection and ePrivacy law might say about Apple’s on-device CSAM Detection system. I provide a high-level overview of the CSAM Detection system (hopefully accessible to non-tech people), an analysis of how it relates to EU data protection law (hopefully accessible to non-legal people), and some further discussion based on this analysis. I conclude that EU law currently presents obstacles that might slow or preclude the deployment of this on-device CSAM Detection system in the EU. However, these barriers may be removed by future EU or Member State legislation

In April 2021, the European Commission proposed a Regulation on Artificial Intelligence, known as the AI Act. We present an overview of the Act and analyse its implications, drawing on scholarship ranging from the study of contemporary AI practices to the structure of EU product safety regimes over the last four decades. Aspects of the AI Act, such as different rules for different risk-levels of AI, make sense. But we also find that some provisions of the Draft AI Act have surprising legal implications, whilst others may be largely ineffective at achieving their stated goals. Several overarching aspects, including the enforcement regime and the risks of maximum harmonisation pre-empting legitimate national AI policy, engender significant concern. These issues should be addressed as a priority in the legislative process., Comment: 16 pages, 1 table

In recent years a substantial literature has emerged concerning bias, discrimination, and fairness in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. Connecting this work to existing legal non-discrimination frameworks is essential to create tools and methods that are practically useful across divergent legal regimes. While much work has been undertaken from an American legal perspective, comparatively little has mapped the effects and requirements of EU law. This Article addresses this critical gap between legal, technical, and organisational notions of algorithmic fairness. Through analysis of EU non-discrimination law and jurisprudence of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and national courts, we identify a critical incompatibility between European notions of discrimination and existing work on algorithmic and automated fairness. A clear gap exists between statistical measures of fairness as embedded in myriad fairness toolkits and governance mechanisms and the context-sensitive, often intuitive and ambiguous discrimination metrics and evidential requirements used by the ECJ; we refer to this approach as “contextual equality.” This Article makes three contributions. First, we review the evidential requirements to bring a claim under EU non-discrimination law. Due to the disparate nature of algorithmic and human discrimination, the EU's current requirements are too contextual, reliant on intuition, and open to judicial interpretation to be automated. Many of the concepts fundamental to bringing a claim, such as the composition of the disadvantaged and advantaged group, the severity and type of harm suffered, and requirements for the relevance and admissibility of evidence, require normative or political choices to be made by the judiciary on a case-by-case basis. We show that automating fairness or non-discrimination in Europe may be impossible because the law, by design, does not provide a static or homogenous framework suited to testing for discrimination in AI systems. Second, we show how the legal protection offered by non-discrimination law is challenged when AI, not humans, discriminate. Humans discriminate due to negative attitudes (e.g. stereotypes, prejudice) and unintentional biases (e.g. organisational practices or internalised stereotypes) which can act as a signal to victims that discrimination has occurred. Equivalent signalling mechanisms and agency do not exist in algorithmic systems. Compared to traditional forms of discrimination, automated discrimination is more abstract and unintuitive, subtle, intangible, and difficult to detect. The increasing use of algorithms disrupts traditional legal remedies and procedures for detection, investigation, prevention, and correction of discrimination which have predominantly relied upon intuition. Consistent assessment procedures that define a common standard for statistical evidence to detect and assess prima facie automated discrimination are urgently needed to support judges, regulators, system controllers and developers, and claimants. Finally, we examine how existing work on fairness in machine learning lines up with procedures for assessing cases under EU non-discrimination law. A ‘gold standard’ for assessment of prima facie discrimination has been advanced by the European Court of Justice but not yet translated into standard assessment procedures for automated discrimination. We propose ‘conditional demographic disparity’ (CDD) as a standard baseline statistical measurement that aligns with the Court's ‘gold standard’. Establishing a standard set of statistical evidence for automated discrimination cases can help ensure consistent procedures for assessment, but not judicial interpretation, of cases involving AI and automated systems. Through this proposal for procedural regularity in the identification and assessment of automated discrimination, we clarify how to build considerations of fairness into automated systems as far as possible while still respecting and enabling the contextual approach to judicial interpretation practiced under EU non-discrimination law.

This article analyses the new challenges the ECB faces in implementing its monetary policy and asks to what extent judicial review can help address these.The ECB mandate provides no clear guidance for many of the ECB’s recent challenges, which include a sovereign bond market panic, technical limits to the efficacy of its tools, and questions concerning the environmental impact of its operations. For this reason, the ECB’s decisions suffer from democratic authorization gaps; it makes choices with far-reaching consequences for which there is no clear basis in the mandate. In this context, courts can either opt to accept choices made by the ECB, as the ECJ has mostly done, or, as the Bundesverfassungsgericht decided to do, itself weigh in on monetary policy. Neither approach, we argue, can improve the tenuous democratic legitimacy of the ECB in the absence of proper democratic guidance. There are, however, ample ways the Member States and the EU’s political institutions can provide the ECB with guidance on how to deal with its new choices.

This contribution explores how the Council of Europe (CoE) – and the European Court of Human Rights (Strasbourg Court), in particular – have addressed the increasing number and complexity of applications involving sexual minority asylum claims (SMACs). The law and policy produced by the CoE and the jurisprudence of the Strasbourg Court immensely influence how domestic authorities address SMACs, so it is crucial to have a thorough understanding of this framework. Indeed, the CoE has acquired a progressively significant role in the field of asylum. Although it does not have an asylum policy as such, several of its bodies have taken a noteworthy role in this field, such as the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT). The Strasbourg Court, above all, along with the now extinct European Commission of Human Rights, developed a strong line of jurisprudence that applies the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) to asylum claimants, despite the ECHR not possessing any norm explicitly related to asylum. More specifically, the Strasbourg Court was the first judicial instance at a European level to decide on cases relating to SMACs. It has so far dealt with at least 23 separate cases of asylum on grounds of sexual orientation. Many of these cases led to contentious and inadequate decisions, such as the 2014 judgment in M.E. v. Sweden, which gave legitimacy to the idea that applicants can be sent back to their countries of origin and asked to be ‘discreet’ about their sexuality. This approach reflects a worrying detachment from the realities of sexual minorities in many countries around the world and from their experiences when claiming international protection in Europe. This contribution thus critiques the CoE policy and Court’s jurisprudence in this field, whilst advancing policy and legal recommendations that can adequately address the socio-cultural and sexual diversity of asylum claimants from a queer intersectional perspective.

Présentation des différents projets de la collection des sources du droit suisse et explication du fonctionnement de ces éditions numériques TEI/XML et de bases de données qui y sont liées.

La codification du droit civil n’est pas une évolution naturelle, bénéfique et unanimement plébiscitée. La plupart, sinon la totalité de ces entreprises, ont rencontré des oppositions.Afin de mieux comprendre ce phénomène, Adrien Wyssbrod analyse près de trois siècles de résistances dans la principauté de Neuchâtel. Le règne de Frédéric II en constitue le point culminant. Après avoir défini qui résiste, pourquoi et comment, il utilise ses résultats comme un miroir de la société d’Ancien Régime. Des parallèles très variés, notamment avec l’élaboration du Code civil français, la révolution kémaliste ou encore la restauration de Meiji ouvrent la réflexion sur le rapport des individus au droit et à sa formulation.L’ouvrage porte un regard nouveau sur la codification, les relations entre le prince, son administration et ses sujets, ainsi que la gestion d’un État à distance.

This paper provides an outline of the talks presented at the webinar event “The Law of Facebook: Borders, Regulation and Global Social Media” on 15 May 2020, jointly hosted by the City Law School Jean Monnet Chair of Law & Transatlantic Relations, the Institute for the study of European Law (ISEL) and the International Law and Affairs Group (ILAG).

Distributed Ledger Technology can be an effective tool for resource distribution. As individuals and organisations explore innovations which allow to redefine the rules of access, possession and sharing these developments also become important for the future of self-determination. Demonstrated through credit scoring and ‘social credit systems’, the identity of an individual is intertwined with resource access, possession and transferability. A key pre-requisite for participation is formal legal status, which translates to citizenship. However, many proponents of Distributed Ledger Technology focus predominantly on technological features and capabilities, which might enable the implementation of concepts such as decentralised governance, ‘self-sovereign identity’ management, and trust-less transactions based on ‘zero-knowledge proof’. Nevertheless, such narrow consideration overlooks existing legal and political realities. Considering the lessons learned from citizenship, it becomes questionable whether Blockchain as player in the area of identity management will ultimately increase human dignity, or further manifest traditional patterns of discrimination and inequality.

This report discusses the data gathered through two surveys carried out in the context of the SOGICA project. SOGICA – Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Claims of Asylum: A European human rights challenge – is a four-year (2016-2020) research project funded by the European Research Council (ERC) that explores the social and legal experiences of people across Europe claiming international protection on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity (SOGI).

Licensing is one of the essential means of exploiting the monetary value of a musical work, and yet it is an area fraught with many issues and transactional costs which make it a difficult process for individuals and organizations. Many issues in music licensing arise from the legal complexity (e.g., national and international copyright law), business complexity (authentication, tracking, accounting, etc.), value web complexity (transparency of relationships among stakeholders), and technical complexity (e.g., establishing a global repertoire database for music, sufficient metadata standards) of working with music. Then, in addition to these issues, there are specific transactional costs (identification, negotiation, monitoring, and enforcement) associated with the licensing process. To mitigate the complexity and transactional costs associated with music and the licensing process, researchers and technologists have been investigating how new technologies and design models from the Web3 space, such as blockchain, linked data and Ricardian Contracts, can automate processes to reduce complexity, speed up payments, improve tracking, and provide other benefits in the music industry. In our report, we make our own attempt to reduce the complexity and transactional costs in the licensing process by developing an automated music license. In doing so, we first conducted a literature review scoping the intersection of music complexity and Web3 technologies to provide background and context to automating music licensing. Then we developed the Practical Tokenized Drafting (PTD) method, a set of core principles and practices for drafting Ricardian Contracts that interact with Web3 technologies (RC-Web3 Templates), and the Tokenized Music License (TML), an RC-Web3 Template standard form for music licensing on the OpenLaw platform. Both the PTD and TML can be adapted to meet the needs of music industry stakeholders and provide guidance to legal practitioners in drafting RC-Web3 Templates.

The paper focuses on the current legal barriers to text and data mining (TDM) in the context of smart disclosure systems (SDSs) whose aim is to provide consumers with improved access to the data needed to make informed decisions. The use of intellectual property rights and contracts, combined with technological protection measures, can hinder TDM and the deployment of SDSs.Further, those legal constraints can negatively impact artificial intelligence innovation that requires improved access to data. There are thus various arguments for enhanced “machine legibility”.However, the TDM exception included in the draft Copyright in the DSM Directive and the various amendments proposed by the European Parliament or the Council do not appear to clear the way for enhanced “machine legibility”. In relation to SDSs, we also argue that the principle of transparency, embedded in consumer and data protection laws, can serve as a last line of defence against prohibition of TDM.

De récents travaux de recherche en mathématiques prédisent la possibilité de mettre un terme à l'épidémie de Covid-19 en procédant au traçage géographique des citoyens au moyen de leur téléphone mobile. Face au défi éthique que constitue le choix de recourir ou non à un tel traitement de donnés à caractère personnel, c'est aux autorités publiques qu'il appartient, en toute responsabilité, de trancher. Néanmoins, la marge d'appréciation dont celles-ci disposent ne doit pas les conduire à remettre en cause certains fondements de la démocratie libérale.

Over the last decade, surgical robots have risen in prominence and usage. For surgical robots, connectivity is necessary to accept software updates, accept instructions, and transfer sensory data, but it also exposes the robot to cyberattacks, which can damage the patient or the surgeon. These injuries are normally caused by safety failures, as seen in accidents with industrial robots, but cyberattacks are caused by security failures instead. We create a taxonomy for both types of failures in this paper specifically for surgical robots. These robots are increasingly sold and used in the European Union (EU); we therefore consider how surgical robots are viewed and treated by EU law. Specifically, which rights regulators and manufacturers have, and which legal remedies and actions a patient or manufacturer would have in a single national legal system in the union, if injuries were to occur from a security failure caused by an adversary that cannot be unambiguously identified. We find that the selected national legal system can adequately deal with attacks on surgical robots, because it can on one hand efficiently compensate the patient. This is because of its flexibility; secondly, a remarkable absence of distinction between safety vs security causes of failure and focusing instead on the detrimental effects, thus benefiting the patient; and third, liability can be removed from the manufacturer by withdrawing its status as party if the patient chooses a separate public law measure to recover damages. Furthermore, we find that current EU law does consider both security and safety aspects of surgical robots, without it mentioning it through literal wording, but it also adds substantial liabilities and responsibilities to the manufacturers of surgical robots, gives the patient special rights and confers immense powers on the regulators., Comment: 43 pages, 3 figures, forthcoming in CLSR

Rating and review systems are a self-regulatory mechanism widely used by online platforms, especially in the smart mobility sector. Such systems have already been analysed in empirical studies and legal contributions, in particular in the fields of consumer law, labour law and competition law.This chapter aims to make an original contribution to the current debate from a relatively underinvestigated perspective: how rating and review systems interact with the European data protection framework. As a case study, the chapter will focus on the rating system adopted by Uber, one of the largest shared mobility platforms worldwide.

Using the concept of “constitutional identity” as a theoretical basis, this article analyses the potential transformative influence of the EU-Armenia Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement (CEPA) on the Armenian legal system. In particular, the author focuses on the Agreement’s capacity to stimulate the implementation of the EU’s “common values” and transpose the norms, general principles, and methodological approaches of EU law into the domestic legal order. It is argued that this potential depends on two elements of the “constitutional identity” of the Armenian legal order: its axiological core and its openness to external influences. KHVOROSTIANKINA, Anna. Europeanization Through EU External Agreements and the Issue of “Constitutional Identity”: The Case of the EU-Armenia CEPA. Kyiv-Mohyla Law and Politics Journal, № 4, p. 15–52, 2018. ISSN 2414-9942. Available at: . doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.18523/kmlpj153250.2018-4.15-52.

To download this paper please click https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10086921/The European Union’s 2013 Country-by-Country Reporting (CBCR) rules bring within the public domain information on corporate payments made to governments all over the world for the purpose of exploiting natural resources in the oil, gas, mining and logging sectors. In so doing, the CBCR rules enhance transparency in these sectors and aim to reduce tax avoidance and corruption in resource-rich countries. Arguably, they also contribute to the European Commission’s long-term strategy to secure sustained access to raw materials in the European Economic Area. The CBCR rules represent one of the only three binding regulatory frameworks that have been adopted at the EU level to implement the 2011 UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. Just as with the two other initiatives that came into existence (the Non-Financial Reporting Directive and the Conflict Minerals Regulation), the immediate impact on the competitiveness of corporations based in the EU was a key concern during the legislative process. This article uncovers the two strategies that were employed to overcome such concern and give the CBCR rules a ‘global’ character.

The stability and long-term survival of EU institutions should not be taken for granted, not even for a successful institution such as DG Competition. This point was underlined by the on-going crisis. Thus, it makes sense to evaluate alternative concepts of governance and policy. To this end, this paper analyses in how far the concept and prospects of an ECO are still viable today. Through critical examination of relevant literature, the past developments in this regard are analysed. Furthermore, a model of aspects that are important for competition law enforcement is used to draw a comprehensive picture of aspects important for competition law enforcement and its institutions, such as goals, independence, competition economics, procedural issues, caseload and structure. Finally a normative evaluation of a prospective independent agency is done, which shows a possible solution for an independent European Cartel Office. This institution would be quite similar to DG Competition in some aspects, but potentially quite different, especially with regard to procedure.

Commerce in some data is, and should be, limited by the law because some data embody values and interests—in particular, human dignity—that may be detrimentally affected by trade. In this Article, drawing on the Roman law principles regarding res extra commercium, we investigate the example of personal data as regulated under the EU Charter and the GDPR. We observe that transactions in personal data are not forbidden but subject to what we call a dynamically limited alienability rule. This rule is based on two dynamic variables: The nature of data and the legal basis for commercially trading such data at a primary or secondary level. Accordingly, in order to deal with such dynamism and the uncertainty it poses, we propose a general two-stage reasonableness test that should help legal practitioners, judges, and lawmakers to consider when trade in data is illicit and who, if anyone, shall be held responsible for this mischief. Finally, we show how the two-stage test and the limited alienability rule can advance European contract law and help enforce legal principles associated with such data extra commercium in automated and autonomous data trading systems.

Child work in England and Wales has been a well-researched topic from a historical perspective, but increasingly side-lined in socio-legal scholarship. This work aims to bring back this topic to the legal debate, by considering the relevant legal framework and related international and EU instruments, the experiences of working children in England and Wales, and the legal enforcement of the current standards by public authorities. Priorities for the future are also highlighted, with the ultimate intention of prompting greater monitoring and empirical research in this field.

The EU law as normative power is capable of affecting the legal order of non-member countries in different ways. This chapter addresses the commitments which Georgia has imposed on itself, be that on the basis of unilateral acts or in the framework of an international agreement, and are aimed at approximating the Georgian law to that of the EU. Obviously, in this sense, commitments undertaken under the EU-Georgia Association Agreement are of great significance. The chapter explores Georgian approach to the EU law which is reflected in unilateral acts adopted by the Georgian lawmaker. Furthermore, particular attention is given over to commitments assumed under the EU-Georgia Association Agreement, especially to preserve and respect common values and to approximate Georgian laws to EU norms. It is argued that the EU law will be — especially through the Association Agreement — a decisive factor in the further development of the Georgian legal order. GABRICHIDZE, Gaga. Impact of the EU-Georgia Association Agreement on the Legal Order of Georgia. Kyiv-Mohyla Law and Politics Journal, n. 4, p. 53–64, 2018. ISSN 2414-9942. Available at: . doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.18523/kmlpj153251.2018-4.53-64.

We have developed an application aiming at federated search for EU and Hungarian legislation and jurisdiction. It now contains above 1 million documents, with daily updates. The database holds documents downloaded from the EU sources EUR-Lex and Curia Online as well as public jurisdiction documents from the Constitutional Court of Hungary and The National Office for The Judiciary. The application is termed Justeus. Justeus provides comprehensible search possibilities. Besides free text and metadata (dropdown list) searches, it features hierarchical data structures (concept hierarchy trees) of directory codes and classification as well as subject terms. Justeus collects all links of a particular document to other documents (court judgements citing other case law documents as well as legislation, national court decisions referring to EU regulation etc.) as tables and directed graph networks. Choosing a document, its relations to other documents are visualized in real time as a network. Network graphs help in identifying key documents influencing or referred by many other documents (legislative and/or jurisdictive) and sets of documents predominantly referring to each other (citation networks).

The Wikimedia/Yale Law School Initiative on Intermediaries and Information (WIII) at Yale Law School has released a comprehensive report synthesizing key insights “Intermediaries & Private Speech Regulation: A Transatlantic Dialogue,” an invitation-only workshop convened by WIII, featuring leading internet law experts from the United States and Europe. This report highlights insights and questions raised by leading academics and legal practitioners during the event, providing theoretical ideas, practical experiences, and directions for further research on rapidly evolving questions of intermediary liability from a uniquely transatlantic perspective. (Nothing in the report necessarily reflects the individual opinions of participants or their affiliated institutions.) Key takeaways from this report include the following: Europe and the United States must work together to protect online free expression and access On issues of intermediary liability and online speech, the United States and Europe have much more in common than not. Focusing too much on differences between Europe and the United States can lead to unproductive division of resources and intellectual efforts, particularly if the goal is to protect global democratic values of free expression and access. While the development of the early internet may have reflected primarily American values, today’s internet ecosystem is also shaped by the growing influence of the European Union. Future international standards must also include perspectives from other nations and regions, as the internet is global. Collaboration between countries on online speech issues can be helpful and should be encouraged. Regulatory solutions for online speech issues must address the entire internet ecosystem Regulating internet intermediaries is not enough to protect online speech. Regulations must conceptualize and regulate the growing data economy. Some large tech companies are now extremely powerful, with the largest intermediary companies having as much international negotiation power as nation-states. The increasingly disparate power of a few large tech platforms may also lead to a loss of decentralized discourse and increased difficulties for new competitors to enter the market. The law should protect free speech and expression rights against abuses from government as well as from corporations. Policymakers must narrowly tailor regulations to protect online free speech and expression Policymakers should avoid creating overly broad regulations and instead tailor regulations narrowly to best address consumer harms. One way to do this might be to craft regulations that distinguish between types of intermediaries or perhaps between types of harms. Another option for tailoring regulations is to craft regulations tailored toward protecting or managing different types of speech. There may also be alternative or additional models that include either hybrid state-industry regulatory regimes or models that give greater weight to civil society and to individuals. Industry and civil society must work together to combat harmful indirect speech regulation States are using corporate terms of service and content takedown mechanisms as a form of indirect speech regulation. This indirect speech regulation is effectively a form of prior restraint. When states use intermediaries as proxies for speech regulation, this has a negative impact on rights to free speech and free expression. Indirect speech regulation lacks transparency, and there is no accountability or redress for citizens whose speech has been silenced. Practical strategies to fight against this problem include: 1) calling for greater government transparency, through the FOIA process or through NGO audits; 2) working with companies to gather information, for use in academic and policy research; 3) advocating for individuals and groups who have been disproportionately harmed; and 4) other forms of advocacy, including amicus briefs, policy papers, and impact litigation. New laws can create better models for future regulation of online speech By analyzing failures of existing regulations and noting successes, academics and advocates can create better models for future regulations of online speech. Future regulatory models for protecting free expression online can draw from: U.S. legal concepts from media and telecommunications regulations, including the “must carry” obligation and consumer protection law; U.S. First Amendment and property law doctrine; European human rights law regarding freedom of expression; and precedent from both the United States and Europe regarding due process. Other new frameworks that can be useful in shaping future regulation include the information fiduciaries model and the implementation of strong duty of care standards. Regulatory models can also include incentivization of systemic, architectural solutions on the part of companies.

Through the following proceedings we aim to focus on some milestones regarding the exercise of public audit and the deviations from legality practiced by the budget authorising officers at the territorial administrative level, that were found by the Romanian Court of Auditors in the most recent times. For this purpose, we will make reference to the legal framework that is applicable to the Court of Auditors’ activity, and afterwards we will be presenting the types of auditing missions carried out by the aforementioned institution. The reader will be able to take into account that Romanian Court of Auditors tracks the way in which the economic, financial, fiscal, and accounting regulations are met, in order to identify possible violations of legality/regularity regarding the elaboration of the financial statement, in the management of the private and public assets of the territorial-administrative units, in the appropriate and efficient use of public funding. The findings of the audit missions are, most of the times, deviations and irregularities which result in either not receiving some additional income that is meant for the public budget, or affects the quality of the financial-economical management, and also in damages.

This article analyses, defines, and refines the concepts of ownership and personal data to explore their compatibility in the context of EU law. It critically examines the traditional dividing line between personal and non-personal data and argues for a strict conceptual separation of personal data from personal information. The article also considers whether, and to what extent, the concept of ownership can be applied to personal data in the context of the Internet of Things (IoT). This consideration is framed around two main approaches shaping all ownership theories: a bottom-up and top-down approach. Via these dual lenses, the article reviews existing debates relating to four elements supporting introduction of ownership of personal data, namely the elements of control, protection, valuation, and allocation of personal data. It then explores the explanatory advantages and disadvantages of the two approaches in relation to each of these elements as well as to ownership of personal data in IoT at large. Lastly, this article outlines a revised approach to ownership of personal data in IoT that may serve as a blueprint for future work in this area and inform regulatory and policy debates.

This contribution explores the adequacy of EU action with regard to Roma minorities. The expulsion of large numbers of Roma individuals, accompanied by other discriminatory practices and forms of hostility, exclusion and violence against the Roma across Europe, has brought the attention of the media and policy makers to Roma issues to a greater extent than ever before during the last decade. The range of problems still afflicting the lives of many Roma nowadays is extremely wide, well researched and profusely documented. This contribution leaves aside issues related to free movement and EU citizenship, thus moving the debate beyond the narrow framework of the ‘migrant Roma’. The contribution considers the wide range of relevant EU competences in this field, and assesses how comprehensive and appropriate the EU’s approach to Roma issues is. The analysis combines legal instruments, policy papers, and case law, draws from legal and non-legal literature, and integrates considerations of social, economic and cultural nature. In the process, this contribution considers themes that cut across several strands of the EU’s Roma policy, including fundamental rights, intercultural sensitivity, the limits of the ‘integration model’, and issues of enforcement, monitoring and funding. The logical narrative developed puts together the key jigsaw pieces that currently contribute to a EU Roma policy, and clearly identifies the limitations of the current state of affairs. Finally, this contribution interrogates the trends underlying the development of the EU Roma policy and puts forward a range of recommendations.

This conclusion offers some concluding remarks on the overall theme of gender and queer perspectives on Brexit, drawing from key insights in the contributions to this volume and advancing some future lines of research which hopefully will continue to advance the debate in this area.

This Introduction explores why Brexit matters for women and queer individuals. It offers background and context, including the nature of the referendum debate on social and traditional media, whose voices were heard, role of activists, voting breakdown, etc. This Introduction also offers a roadmap through the subsequent contributions.

We refer here, in some sentences, to the materialization in the editorial-journalistic plan of the concerns regarding the economic and fiscal issues of a Romanian author / researcher, Ionel Bostan. Our approach goes from the paper entitled "Macrofinancial sketches" (Libra Publishing House, Bucharest, 2010, pages: 256). This book was awarded by the International Salon of Romanian Book, 20th Edition, Iași, 29-30 September 2011, with the Special "Academica" Prize.

Today’s society is part of a shared digital life, with an Internet population of 3.2 billion people. Though this colossal data infrastructure enables communication, information sharing, and collaboration, it is a place that favors a paradigm of continuous collection and storage of data, without much analysis of how that disrupts certain social norms and induces cases of violations of fundamental rights like privacy, freedom, and protection from discrimination.In 2016, the European Union adopted the General Data Protection Regulation, which introduced a right for individuals to have their personal data erased. This opened a discussion on privacy and identity concerns in the context of perpetual stigmatization and discrimination due to obsolete data that remains on the web. Through analyses of some cases in the U.S. and E.U., this paper will investigate the challenges of importing a similar legal framework for the erasure of personal data in the U.S., while ensuring the freedom of expression and maintaining the quality of the search engines and respective websites.

EU-Belarus relations have seen many changes throughout the years ranging from closer engagement to isolation. Although recently the relations started to improve, the main international agreement between Belarus and the EU is still the one concluded by the Soviet Union. Even though there are plans on changing the situation and concluding a new international framework agreement with the EU, it is clear that Eurasian integration is of primary importance for Belarus. This article focuses on analyzing the legal basis of the EU-Belarus relations, effect that international contractual obligations have in the domestic legal order, and the way membership to the Eurasian Economic Union influences that. It is argued that new contractual legal framework between Belarus and the EU is imaginable, although it would be limited, among others, due to transfer of certain exclusive competences to the supranational level of the Eurasian Economic Union. KARLIUK, Maksim. Legal Challenges of the EU-Belarus Relations. Kyiv-Mohyla Law and Politics Journal, n. 4, p. 65–79, 2018. ISSN 2414-9942. Available at: . doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.18523/kmlpj153252.2018-4.65-79.

Slowly, but surely, awareness is increasing about the possible impact of Brexit on individuals who identify, or are identified as, members of minorities based on their sexual orientation or gender identity (SOGI). After explorations of this theme by Wintemute and by us, Cooper, Cooper et al., and the Trade Union Congress all alerted people to the potentially detrimental effect that Brexit may have on SOGI minorities.It is critical to note that these SOGI minorities are far from monolithic, and any potential impact of Brexit for them will be different at a sub-group and even at an individual level. Broad-brush, abstract policy analyses on this theme – as on any other theme – fail to capture the essentially individual nature of the relationship between SOGI minorities and Brexit, as one of the most divisive and hotly contested topics in British society for many decades.In this short piece, we wish to delve into that individuality, bringing to the fore just some of the voices within the ‘SOGI minorities’ umbrella and listening to their concerns, fears and hopes in relation to Brexit – both specifically related to their identity and more generally about life after Brexit.

I should start by mentioning that this book review has been written by a lawyer and not a political scientist, which accounts to some extent for the perspective taken and comments produced. In this work, Amy Elman proposes a highly critical analysis of the politics surrounding gender equality in the EU. The book is structured in eight main chapters: in chapters 2 and 3 the author sets the background to, and presents a chronological account of, the topic at stake; in chapter 4 she makes a first assessment of the policies in question; in chapter 5 she focuses on the intersection between political participation and gender; in chapter 6 the role of male violence is examined; in chapter 7 the programmes Stop and Daphne are assessed; chapter 8 debates the process of politicisation of (mostly female lesbian) sexuality; and chapter 9 concentrates on the right of same-sex couples to marry. The book chiefly concludes that the EU’s role in this field has primarily been one of maintaining gender inequality, rather than diminishing it.

This paper serves as an editorial to a collection of papers on the horizontal effect of fundamental rights in private law in the European Union. The papers refer to developments in several European jurisdictions, and cover a broad range of topics, from environmental rights to linguistic rights, from conditional bequests to consumer rights, from the right to adopt to the right to know one’s own genetic origins.This collection of papers forms a special issue of the European Review of Private Law, and presents some of the results of a project entitled ‘Fundamental Rights and Private Law in the European Union’, funded as a Research Training Network under the European Community’s Fifth Framework Programme. The editorial discusses the aims and results of this research project, and introduces the papers selected for this special issue.

On 24 June 2016, many people had the feeling that they had gone to bed the night before in the United Kingdom and had woken up in Little Britain – a country prone to isolationism and protectionism, risking hurting its economic and social development for the sake of imperial nostalgia and moral panic about ‘loss of sovereignty’ and ‘mass migration’. That feeling inevitably affected many individuals who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, intersex, queer and other (LGBTIQ+). Although the possible impact of Brexit seems to have been scrutinised from most angles, there has been limited analysis of how it may affect LGBTIQ+ individuals.There is certainly more than one ‘gay in the village’, so it is worth assessing Brexit in relation to the situation of LGBTIQ+ individuals. This is particularly timely in the light of the recent UK Supreme Court decision in Walker v Innospec Limited, where the Court relied on European Union (EU) law to hold a provision of the Equality Act 2010 unlawful for violating pension rights of same-sex couples.

European Union law has curtailed the traditional discretion Member States have in ordering non-nationals to leave their territory. Although Directive 2004/28 (the Citizenship Directive) has enhanced the system of protection afforded to offending European Union citizens, it still contains a number of cracks that lead to policy incoherence and gaps in rights protection. This is evident in the first rulings on Article 28(3) of Directive 2004/38 concerning the deportation of offending EU citizens. These issues also threaten to transform European Union citizenship from a fundamental status into a thin overlay that, under pressure from national executive power, loses its effect and significance. To be sure, EU citizenship has demonstrated that community belonging does not have to be based on organic-national qualities, cultural commonalities, or individuals' conformity to national values, but the continued deportation of long-term resident Union citizens makes nationality the ultimate determinant of belonging. The subsequent discussion suggests possible remedies and makes recommendations for institutional reform.

The EU has throughout its history benefited from variable levels of popular support and revealed different levels of capacity to deal with crises. The current circumstances, on account of financial pressures, social instability and present geographical and policy scope of the EU, require serious introspection and ‘soul searching’. What can be done if the EU is not to perish and, hopefully, become more part of the solution than of the problem? May becoming more humane be the answer?‘Humane’ may be defined in different ways, including compassionate, sympathetic and humanitarian. Non-Western cultures seem to have made a much more sophisticated use of this notion in broader contexts up to the present day. Chinese culture, through the Confucian notion of ‘jen’, places enormous value on humaneness as a way of achieving balance, empathy and the moral standard. In the African context, the notion of ‘ubuntu’ has served as the gateway through which humaneness infiltrates all aspects of society, including law and policy, namely by focussing on participation, co-responsibility, interdependence, respect and equality. This introduction presents an analytical framework through which the degree of humaneness of the different fields of EU law and policy can be assessed.

Judged by the level of political debate, public policy and academic literature, the work of children (under-18s) in England and Wales is neither of interest nor of concern. And yet the absence of this topic from the policy agenda is far from indicative of its lack of relevance or timeliness. In fact, figures from the Labour Force Survey suggest that about a third of young people aged 16-17 are active in the labour market. Many of these young people, and others even younger, work illegally for a range of reasons: because of the number of hours worked, their age, the type of work carried out, the time of day worked, or because they lack a work permit. Indeed, in 2013, Nils Muižnieks – the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights – reported on children working long hours in the UK as a consequence of the late 2000s economic crisis. And in 2015, at a seminar held in Liverpool, several children of high school age spoke candidly about practices of dubious legality that they experienced at work, including low pay, informal work arrangements, deficient health and safety conditions, and sexist recruitment procedures, not to speak of detrimental effects to their education. More generally, we should be alarmed that children who work mainly carry out unskilled and manual labour, are poorly paid, acquire limited recognisable skills, jeopardise their educational attainment, sustain accidental injuries (in particular in delivery and agricultural work), may not be covered by insurance and accident cover, are often burdened with caring duties, and may even be recruited by the military. So, what is being done to address these issues?

Hungary has been in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons for quite a while. From legislation targeting ‘foreign-operating universities’ to border walls to keep refugees from entering Hungarian territory, the populist right-wing government of Viktor Orban has been sparking outrage in many sectors of Hungarian society, and the European institutions. The most recent reason for alarm again relates to migration and refugees, an area of widespread criticism of Hungarian authorities. Building on extremely hostile policies towards refugees that have been admonished by both the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), Hungarian authorities now intend to resort to highly dubious means to assess the applications of individuals claiming asylum on grounds related to their sexual orientation. It was already public knowledge that this category of claimants was subjected to poor treatment by the Hungarian authorities, but recent events suggest that the authorities have reached a new low.

This chapter will explore the role of the EU in creating and developing labour policies that affect children. The analysis will be framed within the context of the global debates about child labour, and will highlight the role that the EU might play in those debates. The chapter starts by sketching the main lines of the ‘child labour’ debate, the qualitative and quantitative significance of children in the EU labour market, and the relevant EU competences. It will then touch upon a range of EU labour law instruments that affect children, both as direct addressees – especially the Young Workers Directive – and collateral beneficiaries, including a variety of tools that address sex discrimination. Finally, the chapter will assess the compatibility between the instruments and policies considered and, amongst others, the CRC, the relevant ILO instruments, and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. The conclusion will determine the scope for improvement of the current state of affairs, and present policy recommendations.

The expulsion of large numbers of Roma individuals from France since 2009 has raised considerable debate in the context of EU law and policy. This was, however, accompanied by other discriminatory practices and forms of hostility, exclusion and violence against the Roma, such as finger-printing in Italy and educational segregation in the Czech Republic. A comprehensive approach and strong action by the EU against these practices was defended, which led to the Commission communication on the EU Framework on National Roma Integration Strategies (2011), a non-binding Parliament resolution (2013) and the Council recommendation on effective Roma integration measures in the member states (2013). Such comprehensive approach may be in many respects appropriate, but the danger is to neglect the true relevance of concrete, enforceable and ‘hard law’ measures. This chapter thus explores the legal adequacy of EU action with regard to the Roma minority, particularly from free movement and EU citizenship perspectives. The scope for derogations from free movement and from the rights associated with EU citizenship are the centre pieces of this analysis, which critically analyses specific EU Member States’ restrictions on the free movement of the Roma minority and the EU response in this and other relevant aspects.

The concepts of 'liability age' and 'capacity responsibility' have been widely dissected by researchers in various fields. However, their application to both criminal and tort liability of children remains inconsistent. Furthermore, rarely has an interdisciplinary approach adequately dealt with these concepts and their impact on legal norms. This text investigates the notion of criminal and tort liability age in connection with the notion of capacity responsibility, in relation to children, and further questions the adequacy of the relevant legal norms. This endeavour to improve the applicable legal norms is supported by an analysis of the pertinent findings in the field of psychology, particularly in respect of the moral development of children. Informed by an excursion through the ideas of Piaget, Kohlberg, and Gilligan, among others, regarding the moral development of children, the text also serves to assess the impact of concepts of moral responsibility and maturity, in relation to the development of the legal norms, which determine the age of liability of children. The text concludes with a proposal for a criminal and tort liability age framework, based upon indicative/presumptive age milestones, and an integrated approach to all relevant circumstances in casu.

Case comment on R. (on the application of Nicklinson) v Ministry of Justice 2014 UKSC 38; 2015 A.C. 657 (SC). The case dealt mainly with the following two matters: the prohibition of assisted suicide in the UK, under the 1961 Suicide Act, and whether such prohibition is compatible with UK obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR)3; and the legality of the policy issued by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) relating to the prosecution of individuals who have allegedly assisted a suicide.

Since the beginning of the 2008 economic crisis, reports of child work across Europe have increased. This article looks into the European Union (eu) legal framework that applies to children who work, and offers a socio-legal analysis of child work regulation more generally. In so doing, it considers the role of a range of factors relevant to the regulation of child work, including children’s rights, cultural relativism, social constructions of childhood, empirical evidence of the benefits and harm of child work, and the different contexts in which children are found working. Crucially, the article advances a justification for retaining a restrictive approach in relation to child work in the European context on the basis of legal, social, economic and cultural factors.

Portugal’s migration history has been extensively explored in academic literature, including in legal scholarship. Yet, very little attention has so far been directed towards Portuguese refugee law. This may be due to the relatively low number of asylum seekers that Portugal receives, but that does not justify neglecting the study of the Portuguese socio-legal framework applicable to asylum seekers and refugees. This short piece summarises the findings of an article that addresses this gap by analyzing the framework in a European context, enhancing the analysis with a case study of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, and intersex (LGBTI) asylum seekers. The analysis explores the evolution of the current legal framework, the procedures and remedies available to asylum seekers, the substantive standards applied in decision-making, and the broader socio-legal resources offered to asylum seekers. Several shortcomings and possible avenues of improvement are also identified.

European Union law has curtailed the traditional discretion Member States have in ordering non-nationals to leave their territory. Although Directive 2004/28 (the Citizenship Directive) has enhanced the system of protection afforded to offending European Union citizens, it still contains a number of cracks that lead to policy incoherence and gaps in rights protection. This is evident in the first rulings on Article 28(3) of Directive 2004/38 concerning the deportation of offending EU citizens. These issues also threaten to transform European Union citizenship from a fundamental status into a thin overlay that, under pressure from national executive power, loses its effect and significance. To be sure, EU citizenship has demonstrated that community belonging does not have to be based on organic-national qualities, cultural commonalities, or individuals' conformity to national values, but the continued deportation of long-term resident Union citizens makes nationality the ultimate determinant of belonging. The subsequent discussion suggests possible remedies and makes recommendations for institutional reform.

Big Data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) draw non-intuitive and unverifiable inferences and predictions about the behaviors, preferences, and private lives of individuals. These inferences draw on highly diverse and feature-rich data of unpredictable value, and create new opportunities for discriminatory, biased, and invasive decision-making. Concerns about algorithmic accountability are often actually concerns about the way in which these technologies draw privacy invasive and non-verifiable inferences about us that we cannot predict, understand, or refute.Data protection law is meant to protect people’s privacy, identity, reputation, and autonomy, but is currently failing to protect data subjects from the novel risks of inferential analytics. The broad concept of personal data in Europe could be interpreted to include inferences, predictions, and assumptions that refer to or impact on an individual. If seen as personal data, individuals are granted numerous rights under data protection law. However, the legal status of inferences is heavily disputed in legal scholarship, and marked by inconsistencies and contradictions within and between the views of the Article 29 Working Party and the European Court of Justice.As we show in this paper, individuals are granted little control and oversight over how their personal data is used to draw inferences about them. Compared to other types of personal data, inferences are effectively ‘economy class’ personal data in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Data subjects’ rights to know about (Art 13-15), rectify (Art 16), delete (Art 17), object to (Art 21), or port (Art 20) personal data are significantly curtailed when it comes to inferences, often requiring a greater balance with controller’s interests (e.g. trade secrets, intellectual property) than would otherwise be the case. Similarly, the GDPR provides insufficient protection against sensitive inferences (Art 9) or remedies to challenge inferences or important decisions based on them (Art 22(3)).This situation is not accidental. In standing jurisprudence the European Court of Justice (ECJ; Bavarian Lager, YS. and M. and S., and Nowak) and the Advocate General (AG; YS. and M. and S. and Nowak) have consistently restricted the remit of data protection law to assessing the legitimacy of input personal data undergoing processing, and to rectify, block, or erase it. Critically, the ECJ has likewise made clear that data protection law is not intended to ensure the accuracy of decisions and decision-making processes involving personal data, or to make these processes fully transparent.Conflict looms on the horizon in Europe that will further weaken the protection afforded to data subjects against inferences. Current policy proposals addressing privacy protection (the ePrivacy Regulation and the EU Digital Content Directive) fail to close the GDPR’s accountability gaps concerning inferences. At the same time, the GDPR and Europe’s new Copyright Directive aim to facilitate data mining, knowledge discovery, and Big Data analytics by limiting data subjects’ rights over personal data. And lastly, the new Trades Secrets Directive provides extensive protection of commercial interests attached to the outputs of these processes (e.g. models, algorithms and inferences).In this paper we argue that a new data protection right, the ‘right to reasonable inferences’, is needed to help close the accountability gap currently posed ‘high risk inferences’ , meaning inferences that are privacy invasive or reputation damaging and have low verifiability in the sense of being predictive or opinion-based. In cases where algorithms draw ‘high risk inferences’ about individuals, this right would require ex-ante justification to be given by the data controller to establish whether an inference is reasonable. This disclosure would address (1) why certain data is a relevant basis to draw inferences; (2) why these inferences are relevant for the chosen processing purpose or type of automated decision; and (3) whether the data and methods used to draw the inferences are accurate and statistically reliable. The ex-ante justification is bolstered by an additional ex-post mechanism enabling unreasonable inferences to be challenged. A right to reasonable inferences must, however, be reconciled with EU jurisprudence and counterbalanced with IP and trade secrets law as well as freedom of expression and Article 16 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights: the freedom to conduct a business.

On 24 June 2016, many people had the feeling that they had gone to bed the night before in the United Kingdom and had woken up in Little Britain – a country prone to isolationism and protectionism, risking hurting its economic and social development for the sake of imperial nostalgia and moral panic about ‘loss of sovereignty’ and ‘mass migration’. That feeling inevitably affected many individuals who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, intersex, queer and other (LGBTIQ+). Although the possible impact of Brexit seems to have been scrutinised from most angles, there has been limited analysis of how it may affect LGBTIQ+ individuals. This contribution assesses Brexit in relation to the situation of LGBTIQ+ individuals. This is particularly timely in the light of the recent UK Supreme Court decision in Walker v Innospec Limited, where the Court relied on European Union (EU) law to hold a provision of the Equality Act 2010 unlawful for violating pension rights of same-sex couples.

Commentary on judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union on case F v Bevándorlási és Állampolgársági Hivatal, relating to credibility assessment and means of evidence in asylum cases involving sexual orientation.

Since the 1990s, the European Union (EU) has slowly developed an increasingly sophisticated body of asylum law and policy, known as the Common European Asylum System (CEAS). This framework – both in the shape of legislative instruments and case law – has inevitably also affected those asylum seekers who claim asylum on the basis of sexual orientation and/or gender identity (SOGI). This has been vividly demonstrated by particular norms in EU asylum instruments and judgments of the Court of Justice of EU (CJEU). The current CEAS can be said to have several shortcomings in relation to SOGI claims, including in relation to: country of origin information; the notion of ‘safe country of origin’; the burden of proof and the principle of benefit of the doubt; the concept of a ‘particular social group’; and the definition of persecution. A new set of proposals for reform of the CEAS was put forward in 2016 by the European Commission, and these also affect SOGI asylum claims in precise and acute ways. This policy brief scrutinises these proposals of reform, and assesses the extent to which these proposals and different institutional positions address, ignore or aggravate the issues that currently affect asylum seekers who identify as LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex). The policy brief makes fifteen recommendations for European policymakers in regards to the reform of the CEAS, in order to ensure that the needs of LGBTI asylum seekers and refugees are effectively addressed and their rights are respected. Academics from the University of Sussex working on the Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Claims of Asylum (SOGICA) project, funded by the European Research Council, are calling for policymakers to implement these recommendations in order to render the CEAS fairer for SOGI asylum seekers.