The entry into force on 1st March 2001 of Regulation 1347/2000 on Jurisdiction and the Recognition and Enforcement of Judgments in Matrimonial Matters and in Matters of Parental Responsibility for Children of Both Spouses (‘the Matrimonial Regulation’) amounts to a landmark in the harmonisation of private international law at European Community level. It deals with direct judicial jurisdiction, and the mutual recognition and enforcement of judgments, but not choice of law, in respect of divorce, separation and annulment of marriage, and of custody (in a broad sense) of children of both spouses when determined on the occasion of matrimonial proceedings. It is the first EC measure to enter into force dealing with private international law in family matters, and is likely to be followed up by further such measures, especially in relation to child custody when dealt with independently of any matrimonial proceedings.

Maurice Lagrange was appointed Advocate General in 1953 and retired in 1964. He delivered over 80 Opinions in a period of 10 years, covering a wide range of issues. The first 40 or so Opinions concerned the European Coal and Steel Treaty (ECSC Treaty) exclusively, whilst the remainder covered all three Treaties.

The case law of the Court of Justice of the EU concerning the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) is still limited. Nonetheless, even this limited case law already offers interesting insights into analysing the potential role of the Court of Justice of the EU in the development of the CEAS, and this jurisprudence is in any event likely to grow significantly, due to the fact that the provisions of the CEAS are the result of a political compromise and so lack clarity. This chapter examines the ruling delivered by the Court in the case of Elgafaji, which contains certain elements which address the interpretative difficulties raised by Article 15(c) of the Qualification Directive, and goes on to consider, through a discussion of the recent ruling in Abdulla, the extent to which the Court’s interpretation of those provisions of the CEAS which replicate the wording of the 1951 Convention will influence the interpretation of this international instrument, and the difficulties presented in this context. The extent of this influence remains to be seen, but it is clear in any event that the Court of Justice is likely to play a major role in the development of the CEAS. One amendment which may prove necessary is the modification of the Court of Justice’s procedural rules such that it can take into account the views of third-party organisations with a special expertise in this field.

Interim measures can be indicated by most international decision-making bodies which monitor compliance with human rights norms to the parties involved in the proceedings before them, in order to prevent the commission of any irreversible actions which would either preclude the proper examination of a complaint or render the final judgment meaningless. The availability of interim measures is an essential feature of any effective judicial system, particularly where fundamental rights are at stake. They play a particularly important role in proceedings before the European Court of Human Rights (‘the Court’). The volume of requests for an indication of interim measures received by the Court each year is substantial and increasing. This presents the Court with a number of legal and practical problems. This chapter examines the circumstances in which an indication of interim measures may be made, as well as the consequences of non-compliance with such an indication, although it is acknowledged that the incidence of non-compliance is low. With its recent case law, the Court has brought the existence of interim measures to the attention of a wider audience, which is desirable as only such an awareness will render the protection of Convention rights practical and effective rather than theoretical and illusory, a stated goal of the Court. However, such a wider awareness will in turn increase the volume of requests again, making it likely that the Court will in years to come have to make significant changes to the scope of requests for interim measures, as well as to its practices and procedures for considering such requests.

EU management of its international responsibility for wrongful acts varies between a pragmatic approach and the proceduralisation of its responsibility. The EU either lays down complex procedures in order to manage the allocation of responsibility in order to (allegedly) preserve the internal division of competences or takes a pragmatic approach which disregards any internal division of competences. This chapter critically analyses these two trends in EU practice. More precisely, it identifies from the ongoing development in the incipient foreign direct investment policy of the EU and in its accession to the European Convention on Human Rights the problems linked to this way of managing the EU’s international responsibility. Overall, it argues that instead of complex and slow procedures or ad hoc pragmatic solutions, the EU should adhere to a rule-based approach which is at the same time pragmatic and respects the principles underpinning the proceduralisation of responsibility.

Fiscal state aid is an important aspect of state aid law. Aid granted though fiscal measures accounted for more than 40 per cent of aid granted in 2003–5. According to a recent study, allegations that fiscal measures constitute illegal aid account for more than 50 per cent of state aid cases before national courts. The European Commission and European as well as national courts are thus increasingly being called upon to consider the extent to which state aid rules apply to fiscal measures.

According to Article 267 TFEU, a ‘court or tribunal of a Member State’ can make a preliminary reference to the Court of Justice. The Court applies a single, homogeneous definition of a ‘court or tribunal’. This has allowed it to admit references from those specialised, independent, administrative bodies that in several Member States have been established instead of administrative courts to decide claims under public law, including EU law. Whether such a ‘dispute settling’ body is entitled to submit a preliminary reference normally depends upon whether it commands sufficient ‘independence’ vis-à-vis both the parties to the dispute and the public administration as such. The Court has tightened these requirements appreciably in connection with the threats against the independence of the judiciary in some Member States, and the consequent more prominent roles that Articles 19 TEU and 47 of the Charter have come to play. Whereas safeguarding the rule of law is of utmost importance, these provisions pursue objectives within the Union's legal order which are materially different from those pursued by Article 267. In this article, it is therefore argued that the Court should apply different constructions of the independence criterion with respect to these provisions.

In a series of decisions the European Court of Justice [‘the Court’] has ruled that Member States must deploy their law enforcement authorities, including their criminal justice systems, so as to safeguard Community interests from threat or damage. These rulings have received attention from commentators because, amongst other things, they make it explicit that Community law has a tangible impact on matters of criminal law and justice notwithstanding the absence of a criminal legal base in the Community Treaty.

Youssef nada is a 77-year-old man, who lives in the tiny commune of Campione in Switzerland. He is not allowed to leave this commune. Nor can he access his financial accounts, despite being a senior figure in the world of banking. The problem Mr Nada faces is that his bank, the Al Taqwa bank, is associated with the Moslem Brotherhood and that Mr Nada—an Egyptian by birth—is also connected with this organisation. Among his adversaries is the Egyptian Government of Hosni Mubarak, which desires to get him back to Cairo, where it is clear his safety could by no means be guaranteed. After the attacks of 11 September 2001, Mr Nada also incurred the enmity of the US Government. He found himself placed on a UN sanctions black-list—hence the restrictions on his movement and financial dealings.

A new legal order has arisen in the United Kingdom (‘UK’) following that country's withdrawal from the European Union (‘EU’). Nowhere are these changes more evident than in the complex rules that have emerged in the fields of freedom of movement and the right to work. In evaluating the new legal landscape, this Article has two overarching aims. The first is to assess the level of protection granted to the right to work and associated free movement rights within EU and UK law, including the terms of the EU-UK Withdrawal Agreement. The second aim is to examine the extent to which those right to work rules are reflective of the status of the right to work as a fundamental social right. It is argued that Brexit unmoors the right to work from EU free movement rules, thereby undermining the normative value of that right, while exacerbating flaws in domestic rules governing access to employment for both national and migrant workers.

This Article interrogates the role of national constitutional courts within the Article 267 TFEU preliminary reference mechanism from both descriptive and normative angles. First, I demonstrate that although a clear majority of the constitutional courts submit references to the ECJ on a more frequent basis, differences in individual approaches remain significant. Subsequently, I argue that the core normative attractivity of the questions submitted in the course of domestic constitutional review lies in their participative and deliberative potential. Compared to ordinary courts, constitutional courts are better suited to amplify the ‘unheard’ voices of immobile EU citizens. By counterbalancing the demands of the EU's functional constitution, which is primarily based on the ideals of market capitalism, constitutional courts’ questions may contribute to the EU's capacity to generate legitimate decisions. Finally, I put my theoretical claims in context and analyse the main ways in which such deliberative potential can translate into practice.

Cases involving the posting of workers will inevitably involve international elements and therefore issues of private international law. Historically, it has been assumed that English employment law is territorial: in particular section 204 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 provides that the provisions of the Act apply irrespective of the law applicable to the contract. This contribution examines this proposition through the perspective of private international law principles, and also considers the compatibility of section 204 with the private international law rules in the Posted Workers Directive and the new definition of overriding mandatory rules in the Rome I Regulation.

A purist might say that the judicial architecture of what is now the European Union was first altered by the 1957 Convention on Certain Institutions Common to the European Communities. That Convention set up a single Court of Justice with jurisdiction under the three Community Treaties which had by then been signed. However, the 1957 Convention should probably be regarded as the last brick in the original edifice, which was to remain unchanged for nearly 30 years. Although the Court started to express concern about its capacity to cope with its workload in the 1970s, the Member States did not respond until 1986, when provision for a court of first instance was made in the Single European Act. That reform marked the beginning of a period of rapid change in the judicial architecture of the Union.

Sweden is well known as a high tax society and it is also well known for its spending on welfare. Just over 50 percent of GDP is consumed by taxation. This is an enormous amount of money. How is it possible to avoid strong conflicts between the citizen and the state? Must not this huge appetite for funding tempt the democratic state to pass the borderline and become almost a despotic state? How are human rights protected?

In the new post-Cold War security era, there is a perception that the nature of cross-border security threats has changed. The need to respond to these new threats has led to a proliferation of multilateral international and regional treaties in this area, as well as unilateral demands made by the United States post-9/11. We have, then, seen a process of globalisation of criminal law, a field traditionally linked to State sovereignty. This chapter examines, first, EU action with regard to UN multilateral conventions and the impact of those conventions on internal EU law, as well as the impact of EU action within the framework of the regional treaties of the Council of Europe; secondly, the interrelationship between Union law and the global production of norms in criminal matters by the UN Security Council and by the Financial Action Task Force; thirdly, bilateral cooperation between the EU and the US, in particular in connection with the transfer of Passenger Name Records data; fourthly, the question of compliance by the EU in this area, in both the internal and the external context; and, fifthly, the Court of Justice’s approach to the protection of fundamental rights when global criminal law is engaged. The EU has managed to take centre stage in international developments in the field of global criminal law through a clear commitment to multilateral negotiations as well as a clear political will to implement at the Union level norms agreed internationally without a high degree of transparency. The Court of Justice has also been reluctant to overturn Union security decisions in the name of fundamental rights. The coming into force of the Lisbon Treaty will eliminate some complexity in this area, but not all, and it still remains to be seen whether in the process of globalisation of criminal law the European values proclaimed in Article 2 of the new EU Treaty will be promoted or compromised.

From the perspective of public international law, the legal personality of the European Union (EU) carries with it the possibility for it to exercise rights and to bear obligations on the international plane. Its quasi-federal structure, however, requires consideration as to how these rights and obligations may be exercised. In this chapter, two regimes are compared: the EU’s rights and obligations as an international organisation and the possibility that its internal structures might be recognised on the international plane, thus leading to more complex notions of subsidiary responsibility, shared between the various levels of European governance.

Sometime around the year 1469, Giovanni Andrea, the Papal Librarian at the Vatican, noted that the Middle Ages were at an end and the modern world had just begun. From his standpoint at the intellectual centre of Christendom, a major transition was occurring.

All across Europe, Law, too, was in a state of transition at this time. We may take as our starting point an early piece of evidence of these changes which comes from the Southern Netherlands. It comes from the small village of St Peters, a village in which legal disputes were decided by local alderman, men who had had no formal legal training but who were very experienced in applying the customary law of the area. An issue had arisen whether a legal right of way had been gained by long use.

This article examines the relationship between the EU and the Council of Europe’s Social Charter. It considers the differing approaches to the protection of economic and social rights and the relationship between the two legal orders. It further examines whether the EU should consider acceding to the European Social Charter so as to ensure the effective protection of economic and social rights.

Kojève once wrote in a reply to Leo Strauss that the philosopher who contemplates action faces a conflict that constitutes the only authentic tragedy left in the Christian or bourgeois world:

One is inclined to add that the acting philosopher has a notoriously comic side, too, a side that has been exploited throughout the history of literature, from Aristophanes’ ‘The Clouds’ to the modern trope of the moronic impotence of the inept professor. But just as the comic fiction of Aristophanes’ ‘Clouds’ ultimately turned out to have had an actual tragic effect on Socrates’ life and death, so the modern depiction of the helpless philosopher is but a reflex on the troubled relation of philosophy and action.