The aim of this paper is to recognize and discuss the inherent risks associated with Internet regulation and control over digital content. The key point of this analysis is that Internet regulation can present human rights risks. In particular, the paper examines how restrictions over Internet content are posing regulatory issues directly related to the growing importance of an equitable access to digital information. It also considers the relevance and impact of computer–mediated communication, its potential on democratization of freedom of expression and the problem of conflicting rights. Drawing upon comparative and case study material, the paper finally discusses and investigates the potential risks and vulnerabilities related to communication technologies focusing on legislative reforms in the area of digital communications and their implications for fundamental freedoms.

EU legislation on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) is the most stringent legislation governing the matter in the world, laying down strict conditions relating to labelling, traceability, threshold and release on the market. In light of a recent Commission proposal to amend Directive 2001/18, which currently regulates the release of GMOs on the European market, this article asks whether and on what basis such stringency is justified. This is done through an in depth analysis of the EU regulatory framework for GMOs while at the same time highlighting the multiple interests at stake (environmental, scientific, industrial, political, national and European).

This article argues that the European institutions should proceed to amend Directive 2001/18 on the basis of a detailed examination of the benefits as well as the risks that GMOs present. This article, however, raises concern that the European regulatory framework will focus exclusively on the risks or on political concerns relating to GMOs instead, for it is a fear of GMOs that seems to permeate the system from top to bottom.

STOA, the European Parliament's Technology Assessment body, which I had the honour to chair, has a mission to: (i) assess the impact of introducing and promoting new technologies, and (ii) identify the relevant policy options. In the context of its work, STOA has to address many different issues. One of the issues deserving STOA's attention is the changing face of risk governance: “Moving from precaution to smarter regulation”.

This is currently being debated on various levels, including that of the WTO (World Trade Organization), where science-based decision-making has always played an important role. The JRC (Joint Research Centre) is very active in this field and has developed, among others, a science-based approach to risk assessment in the area of nanotechnology. With the comitology procedure becoming more and more important, the European Parliament and its members have to assume their role with respect to risk management and explain it to the public.

Inside companies that produce significant risks, risk managers play a key role. They manage the connection between the risk regulation regime, which stresses public values, and the company, which pursues a broader array of organisational goals. This makes the role of risk managers ambivalent. To better understand this ambivalence and identify the means, motives and strategies that risk managers employ in response to this ambivalence, this article conducts a concise review of (classic) organisation and regulatory literature. Based on this review, we propose a typology that distinguishes four roles of risk managers: risk managers as supporting staff; risk managers as professionals; risk managers as boundary spanners; and risk managers as agents in regulatory communities. Each type subsequently describes how risk managers employ different strategies in their attempt to connect the risk regulation regime and the company, ie translating policies to practices, tailoring policies to practices, explaining and framing policies and practices, and (re)interpreting policies and practices together with regulators. The typology enables researchers and practioners to emphasise and more thoroughly analyse the variety and complexity of risk managers’ work, and can help regulators to broaden and fine-tune their strategies to improve connections with the various roles of risk managers.

The policy drivers for preventing system risks – risks that threaten vital parts of society – represent an as-yet understudied subject. A fundamental characteristic of an effective prevention policy for system risks is long-term investment. This article presents evidence that long-term investment in prevention follows a cyclical rather than a stable pattern, which implies large costs to the welfare of future generations. This cycle is usually triggered by a shock that shifts the set of preventive policies that are acceptable to or even demanded by society. After a rapid rise in preventive investment, however, attention often wanes, and the downturn of the prevention cycle sets in. While policy shocks from crises and disasters are commonly studied, their policy legacies rarely have been. This article offers a theoretical framework for this “prevention cycle”, demonstrates its applicability in understanding policy investment in several system risks and offers suggestions for its fundamental causes.

The role of courts has been rather significant in the COVID-19 pandemic, weakening the theory that the judiciary is not equipped to contribute to governing crisis management. Although differences exist across countries, depending on institutional varieties and political contexts, the analysis shows that, even in times of emergency, courts can provide the necessary balance to the power shift towards the executives. Both action and inaction affecting fundamental rights have been scrutinised, taking into account fundamental freedoms and the rule of law. Deference to political decision-making has varied across jurisdictions and across the multiple phases of the health crisis. Differences in the balancing have emerged compared to during ordinary times. Uncertainty has played a major role, calling for new strategies in regulatory, administrative and judicial decision-making and new balances between precaution and evidence-based approaches. The role of scientific evidence has been at the core of judicial review to ensure transparency and procedural accountability. Proportionality and reasonableness with multiple conceptual variants across countries have been used to scrutinise the legality of measures. Courts are likely to continue playing a significant but different role in the years to come, when liability issues and recovery measures will likely become the core of litigation.

The potential of artificial intelligence (AI) has grown exponentially in recent years, which not only generates value but also creates risks. AI systems are characterised by their complexity, opacity and autonomy in operation. Now and in the foreseeable future, AI systems will be operating in a manner that is not fully autonomous. This signifies that providing appropriate incentives to the human parties involved is still of great importance in reducing AI-related harm. Therefore, liability rules should be adapted in such a way to provide the relevant parties with incentives to efficiently reduce the social costs of potential accidents. Relying on a law and economics approach, we address the theoretical question of what kind of liability rules should be applied to different parties along the value chain related to AI. In addition, we critically analyse the ongoing policy debates in the European Union, discussing the risk that European policymakers will fail to determine efficient liability rules with regard to different stakeholders.

Reality is complex, and often does not lend itself to generalization or simplifying explanations. Yet at the same time, explaining reality often requires the shaping of notions and concepts of it through generalization and the reduction of complexity. This tension between complexity and particularity on the one hand and generalization and the search for abstracting explanatory patterns on the other is beautifully illustrated by two recently released publications on precaution and risk regulation in the United States and Europe, namely “The Politics of Precaution” by David Vogel1 and “The Reality of Precaution” edited by Jonathan Wiener, Michael Rogers, James Hammitt, and Peter Sand.

Both books together can be seen as the latest significant contribution to the ongoing debate on the role of the precautionary principle in risk regulation in a comparative EU-US perspective. Both contributions are significant in that they consolidate the trend towards an empirically informed analysis of the actual practice of the application of precaution in risk regulation.

The report aims to illustrate how weakening of the statehood is reflected in the way EU and its member-states manage obesity epidemics. Private interests and behavioural turn in policy mechanisms call for more state involvement and rigorous democratic deliberation not only of nudges coming from the state, but those coming from the industry as well. The potential of nudging does not lie in the behavioural interventions it is capable of producing, but rather in the discourse it kick-started, as behavioural law and economics are paving their way into policy-making.

This section highlights the interface between international trade and investment law and municipal and international risk regulation. It is meant to cover cases and other legal developments in WTO law (SPS, TBT and TRIPS Agreements and the general exceptions in both GATT 1994 and GATS), bilateral investment treaty arbitration and other free trade agreements such as NAFTA. Pertinent developments in international standardization bodies recognized by the SPS and TBT Agreement are also covered.

In today’s innovation-driven agrifood domain, the perspective of using so-called New Breeding Techniques (NBTs) on both non-human animals and plants calls into question the regulatory approach (process/product-based) to be used, while asking for a critical reflection on the potential impact of products on the industrial sector and citizens. A possible reconfiguration of European (EU) discipline will have to grapple with not only agrifood market’s interests and needs, but mostly and primarily with the growing quest for public and participatory discussion on the current dominant vision on life sciences. Only through restoring visibility to the intertwining of knowledge production will it be possible to obtain EU governance of gene editing that is more authoritatively reliable from a scientific stance, as well as more transparently discussed and democratically shared at legal and policy level.

In response to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, European Union (EU) Member States adopted technological solutions aimed at mitigating the effects of the virus, as well as enforcing newly adopted public health measures. Examples include apps for disseminating information, performing self-diagnosis, enforcing home quarantine orders and aiding contact tracing. This extensive use of technology for tracking and promoting public health raises important questions regarding EU citizens’ privacy. Thus far, the discourse in this regard has predominantly revolved around data protection, the risk of surveillance and the right to control access over one’s personal information (informational privacy). In light of the push towards a more unified approach to mitigating the current pandemic and future health crises through a European Health Union (EHU), we consider a different dimension of privacy that may be at risk when employing technology for public health, namely the right to non-interference with one’s decisions (decisional privacy). In particular, this article focuses on whether the advances in health-related persuasive technology, together with a more general movement towards “nudging” as an individual and public health tool, will require EU legislation to further protect decisional privacy by regulating “hypernudging” technologies and to guide the EHU in coordinating public health measures that utilise these technologies in a privacy-preserving way.

This study focuses on the Icesave dispute and Icesave agreements between Iceland, the UK and The Netherlands in the light of European law (EU and EEA law) and explores two main issues: 1) the State liability for breaches of EU/EEA law on the basis of Directive 94/19/EC following a systemic bank collapse in Iceland; and 2) the principle of non-discriminatory interplay between the nationalisation of Icelandic banks (State aid) and the payment of the minimum guarantee of €20.887 to depositors of Icesave accounts in the branches of Landsbanki in the UK and The Netherlands. This dispute was handled through diplomatic negotiations. The author is highly critical of the methodology followed. This cross-border dispute brought to light new complex problems in a grey area of European law which should have been brought before the highest European courts. Icesave also seems to have turned Icelanders against the process of European integration and the EU.

Two inter–related themes provide the architecture of this better regulation package: the political tone of the initiative and the responsibility/blame game. The tone is in part the consequence of the political context surrounding regulatory policy in the EU. Whilst in the past regulatory quality standards interested only a few top civil servants and elected politicians, today there is much more political interest – and contestation, as shown by the new better regulation watchdog created by non-governmental organizations and their response to the package. The very fact that in May 2015 there was media interest in the leaked version of the chapeau communication is a novelty. Why so much attention? Among others, the rhetoric of the past few years on making the EU acquis fit for purpose and less burdensome, coupled with a growing recognition by stakeholders that impact assessment and policy evaluation are “here to stay” have turned better regulation into an additional window of opportunity for those wishing to influence EU policy–making.

This section regularly examines Regulatory Impact Assessment (IA) at three levels: the EU, theMember States and internationally. Contributions aim to cover aspects such as the interface between IA and risk analysis, looking atmethodologies as well as legal and political science-related issues. Contributions are meant to report and critically assess recent developments in the field, develop strategic thinking, and make constructive recommendations for improving performance in IA processes.

The requirements of free trade and economic globalisation and the respective international legal framework, namely in the context of the WTO, have led to a decrease of the regulatory power of the nation states which cannot be replaced by comparable public international law making – neither in content nor with respect to legitimacy considerations.

Cautious skepticism rather than euphoric joy surrounds the activities of the European Commission developing its new – flexible – approach towards cultivation of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs). Following its announcement in the summer of 2010, new elements of the reform unravel at the beginning of 2011.

GMO regulation has experienced a rather uneasy track in the European Union. The specificity of the sector, with its economic importance, its social controversies as well as the high levels of uncertainty as to the long-term effects, have all contributed to various political and regulatory troubles in Europe and worldwide. After the revision of the first wave of regulation in 2001-2003, the de facto moratorium, and ensuing conflicts under the WTO adjudication, the situation seemed to be settling down.