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Emergency! But What about Legal Protection in the EU?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 March 2018

Tom BINDER ,
Argyro KARAGIANNI  and
Miroslava SCHOLTEN
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Abstract

The EU institutions and agencies have become increasingly involved in enforcing EU law directly vis-à-vis private actors. A number of such EU entities have also acquired the so-called emergency powers, which allow interference with the legal position of a private party. Given the lack of research in this area, the question that this article addresses is whether relevant safeguards have been introduced to ensure the rule of law in such situations to prevent the abuse of executive discretion by public authorities. What are the relevant safeguards in the emergency in the EU in the first place? Having analysed relevant EU legislation and case law, the article offers a complete overview of all the existing EU entities with the emergency powers and shows a great diversity in the extent to which the EU legislator has regulated procedural safeguards in relevant law. The article discusses what safeguards need to be ensured in an emergency and argues for clarity of legislative frameworks in this respect.

Type
Articles
Information
European Journal of Risk Regulation , Volume 9 , Special Issue 1: Special Issue on Judge-Made Risk Regulation and Tort Law , March 2018 , pp. 99 - 119
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 

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Footnotes

*

Junior lecturer of EU law, Utrecht University, the Netherlands: [email protected].

**

Lawyer and a PhD researcher, Utrecht University, the Netherlands, funded under the “vidi” grant of Professor M Luchtman by the Dutch Council for Scientific Research (NWO): [email protected].

***

Associate Professor of EU Law, Utrecht University, who gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the NWO in writing this article via her “veni” grant: [email protected]. Argyro and Miroslava are members of the Utrecht Centre for Regulation and Enforcement in Europe (RENFORCE). All authors are grateful to Professor Rob Widdershoven as well as an anonymous reviewer appointed by the journal for their useful comments on the earlier drafts of this article.

References

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6 Our scan included the search for terms such as “emergency”, “urgency”, and “threat”, in the legislation of EEAs.

7 TEU, Art 17.

8 Scholten and Luchtman, supra, note 1.

9 Regulation 178/2002, Art 53(1).

10 Regulation 1224/2009, Art 108(1).

12 Regulation 1005/2008, Art 36(1).

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15 Idem.

16 Idem.

17 COM (2015) 613 final, Art 55(1).

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28 Idem.

29 Idem.

30 Idem.

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33 Idem.

34 Idem.

35 Idem.

36 Idem.

37 For all applicable legislation, see: Reg ESAs, Art 1(2).

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41 Idem.

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43 Idem.

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82 Idem, para. 29.

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105 Joined Cases C-20/00 and C-64/00, Booker Aquaculture Ltd, t/a Marine Harvest McConnell and Hydro Seafood GSP Ltd v The Scottish Ministers [2003] ECLI:EU:C:2003:397.

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110 ibid, para. 9.

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11 Henceforth, where combined discussion of the European Supervisory Authorities (ESAs) EBA, EIOPA, and ESMA so permits, their respective legal bases Regulation 1093/2010, Regulation 1094/2010, and Regulatioin 1095/2010 shall be referred to jointly as Reg ESAs.