This article discusses the role of European Union (EU) State aid law in the COVID-19 crisis. It contends that different Treaty derogations have played unique roles in addressing the core determinants of the economic risk linked to the pandemic (ie the “exposure” to lockdown measures and the “vulnerability” of certain sectors to them), and in increasing the resilience of national economies. Moreover, this article examines the extent to which EU State aid law has been used to manage and mitigate health risks, by allowing Member States to enhance the preparedness and capacity of their healthcare sector (broadly conceived) to respond to the pandemic. On the whole, this article maintains that State aid control has been used by the European Commission as an important “risk management tool”, and it highlights the role of the Commission as the crisis management authority.

On 15 December 2020, the European Commission published its proposal for the Digital Services Act, which is expected to be adopted before summer 2022. It carries out a regulatory overhaul of the twenty-one-year-old horizontal rules on intermediary liability in the e-Commerce Directive and introduces new due diligence obligations for intermediary services. Our analysis illuminates an important point that has so far received little attention: how would the Digital Services Act’s rules interact with existing sector-specific lex specialis rules? In this article, we look specifically at the intersection of the Digital Services Act with the regime for online content-sharing service providers (OCSSPs) set forth in Article 17 of Directive (EU) 2019/790 on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (CDSM Directive). At first glance, these regimes do not appear to overlap, as the rules on copyright are lex specialis to the Digital Services Act. A closer look shows a more complex and nuanced picture. Our analysis concludes that the Digital Services Act will apply to OCSSPs insofar as it contains rules that regulate matters not covered by Article 17 CDSM Directive, as well as specific rules on matters where Article 17 leaves a margin of discretion to Member States. This includes, to varying degrees, rules in the Digital Services Act relating to the liability of intermediary providers and to due diligence obligations for online platforms of different sizes. Importantly, we consider that such rules apply even where Article 17 CDSM Directive contains specific (but less precise) regulation on the matter. From a normative perspective, this might be a desirable outcome, to the extent that the Digital Services Act aims to establish “uniform rules for a safe, predictable and trusted online environment, where fundamental rights enshrined in the Charter are effectively protected”. Based on our analysis, we suggest a number of clarifications that might help us to achieve that goal.

On 2 March 2010 the European Commission authorised the cultivation of a BASF's genetically modified potato “Amflora” throughout the European Union. This came after a tortuous process commenced in 1996 and so far it is the only authorisation of a GMO for cultivation in EU since the current regulation was established. On 3 March 2010, President Barroso announced that the Commission intends to propose amendments to the current regulation to allow the Member States to prohibit the cultivation of GMO authorised for cultivation in the EU and it did so on June 13, 2010. This is one of the very few cases where decision-making power is effectively devolved back from Union to state level; it is even more impressive that this is happening on the initiative of the Commission and despite the obvious negative consequences for the internal market. In the meantime BASF botched the 2011 growing season for Amflora in Sweden and in 2012 announced that it withdraws its GM crops from the EU. This article follows the saga purports to find the reasons why it entailed an immediate change.

Regulatory inspections and enforcement are seen by many as a key instrument to ensure the effectiveness of regulations – it is broadly assumed to be essential to have supervision and “deterrence” to promote compliance with rules, and thus achievement of regulatory outcomes. However, this presupposes that rules are indeed adequate for reaching outcomes, and that control is what drives compliance with rules. A different approach suggests that compliance is more complex and driven by a combination of factors (ethics, social conformity, procedural justice and legitimacy etc), that rules are imperfect, and that risk-focused, risk-proportionate “regulatory delivery” will achieve better results, more “effectiveness”. Considering a case study of occupational safety inspections and outcomes in Britain, France and Germany, we observe that higher numbers of inspections are not correlated with less fatal incidents, and that, on the contrary, the best outcomes are achieved in the country having the least inspection visits, the most risk-focused system, and the broadest approach to “regulatory delivery”, combining engagement with regulated industries, guidance, responsive and risk-proportionate enforcement, and risk-based, targeted inspections.

This paper argues that COVID-19 has triggered a multiplication of heterogeneous bordering mechanisms that, far from stopping movement as such, have enhanced hierarchies of mobility. In particular, it shows that a confinement continuum has been put in place in the name of the “contain to protect” principle: migrants have been subjected to protracted lockdown measures in the name of their own protection. The piece concludes by interrogating how to rearticulate critique in COVID times in light of the enforcement of discriminatory “passports to freedom” (COVID-19 travel certificates).

To discourage unhealthy eating and limit the population's intake of fatty foods, thereby alleviating the current obesity “epidemic”, an increasing number of countries across the industrialised world are considering levying taxes on unhealthy food. A “fat tax” may be defined as a tax or surcharge placed upon fattening foods, beverages or individuals with the aim to decrease consumption of foods that are linked to obesity. This is not an entirely new idea – some theorists, starting with Arthur Pigou, a 20th century English economist, have long presented the arguments for imposing special taxes on goods and services whose prices do not reflect the true social cost of their consumption. Examples of Pigouvian taxes are duties on cigarettes, alcohol, gambling and environmental emissions. Support for another such tax, a fat tax, is now spreading across the European Union. On 1 October 2011, Denmark introduced a tax on foods by targeting those products that are high in saturated fat. The Danish Act (hereinafter, Act) confirms the trend in various EU Member States to tax certain foods or consider taxing them in the future.

Occupational exposures of pregnant workers can give rise to foetal damage. Two major types of strategies against detrimental effects on the foetus are described: differentiated protection that reduces only the exposure of pregnant workers (or only of female workers) and unified protection that reduces the exposure of all workers to a level that is sufficiently low to protect against detrimental effects on the foetus. The former strategy is shown to be inefficient, as it does not provide the desired protection. Protection only of pregnant workers is insufficient since protection is needed early in pregnancy when it is not known, and in the case of substances that are accumulated in the woman's body even prior to conception. Protection of all women is also insufficient to protect the foetus since evidence indicates that preconception exposure of the father can also give rise to malformations. Furthermore, differentiated protection that requires more costly protective measures for women tends to aggravate the already prevalent discrimination of women on the labour market. It is therefore concluded that unified protection is the only efficient and non-discriminatory strategy against foetal damage.

The primary concern of the present paper is the cost of acquiring information by judges and legislators in the process of regulating new technologies. The paper distinguishes between risky and uncertain applications of technology. A risky technology poses an obvious risk, and the problem before the regulator is one of comparing cost and benefit. We argue that the judiciary, which acquires information gratis from litigants, is better suited to the regulation of risky technologies. Uncertain technologies, on the other hand, can be harmful in ways which cannot be foreseen at the time of the technological innovation. Cost and benefit are incalculable; regulation must instead be based on subjective preferences about the degree of uncertainty that society should tolerate. Legislative law-making is designed with a view to aggregating subjective preferences. Accordingly, uncertain technologies should be regulated through statute.

Glyphosate’s authorisation will expire in 2022 and its re-approval will take place in a changed legal and political landscape: the national phase of risk assessment is entrusted to a taskforce of four Member States, and, from 2021, the reform of the general food law will apply, imposing, inter alia, more ambitious transparency standards. Taking stock of these developments, this contribution analyses, from a legal perspective, whether and how the glyphosate dispute has contributed to the development of the EU’s regulatory epistemology, with specific regard to food governance. It identifies the “manifesto” of the EU’s regulatory epistemology in the 2002 guidelines on the collection and use of expertise and reads them in the light of the glyphosate dispute. In particular, it focuses on the legal arrangements reflecting the principles established in the 2002 guidelines (quality, openness, effectiveness) and analyses them against the tensions that emerged throughout the dispute with regard to the sources, levels and purposes of EU regulatory knowledge-making. It then considers whether and how such tensions have been addressed by legislative reform and whether this has resulted in a further refinement of the EU’s regulatory epistemology.

Personalised nutrition, the tailoring of nutrition products, services or advice to individual characteristics such as genetics, phenotype, nutritional intake and/or exercise routine, is increasingly attracting the interest of industry, consumers and researchers. This article provides an overview of the current European Union (EU) regulatory framework as applying to personalised nutrition and draws attention to the important role of EU food law in the regulation of this innovative approach to nutrition. It is argued that personalised nutrition challenges the regulatory borderline between health and lifestyle products or services and, furthermore, also pushes the boundaries of current food safety and health claims legislation.

Modern financial regulation has predominantly been economically-driven,1 progressing from addressing market failures to making markets more competitive and work better.2 The UK Financial Conduct Authority is expressly mandated to pursue regulatory objectives that maintain market integrity and protect consumers (addressing market failures) and to promote competition (making markets work better).3 Both the FCA and its sister regulator, the Prudential Regulation Authority (for banks), have recently adopted innovative regulatory initiatives to promote technologically-driven innovation, aimed at making markets work better. These initiatives are also a response to the recent explosion of technologically-led financial innovation outside of the regulatory perimeter.

In promoting financial innovation, we argue that the regulators have insufficiently focused on the need to govern financial innovation more generally. Although this concern may seem premature, the regulatory innovations are increasingly extending the perimeter for regulatory oversight of financial innovations. As the regulatory innovations have the potential to develop into more mature regulatory frameworks for governing financial innovation, we argue that regulators should manage the risks of their current approach and develop a regulatory strategy framework for balancing regulatory objectives and developing regulatory policy. We propose a framework anchored in rationality, consistency and accountability in governing financial innovation.

The process risk allocation is essential for effective PPP contracts, depending on the scope of defined tasks and responsibilities between the parties in their quest to deliver public services. However, risk in critical infrastructure is sui generis risk which could not be treated contractually and transferred by the public sector to the private sector or retained by the party to an arrangement which is suited best to borne such risks.

Risk in critical infrastructure, being either internal or external, is endemic to the relevant services andwhen critical infrastructure is delivered by public-private partnerships or owned by private actors, the treatment of such risk merits a third-party approach. Such third-party could be an industry in itself, such as insurance, re-insurance or hedge fund insurance bond finance, or a sector / industry approach which related to the owners/operators of the relevant infrastructure, by means of collective apportioning and mitigation of risks associated with the failure of providing services fromsuch infrastructure. The most innovative way of treating risk of critical infrastructure remains in the discretion of EU Member States, in the form of integrating costs related to risk assessment and security measurers to protect critical infrastructure into tariff arrangements of relevant services. In such manner, the enduser / consumer of services ensures and collectively insures their delivery against any type of risk which is not quantified and determined as part of corporate arrangements between the state and the private sector provider of services.

Over a decade ago I was involved in a group project that focused on developing a regulatory model concerning the implementation of the precautionary principle in the EU. The project involved a number of workshops and in those workshops I used to joke about the fact that while there were many different frameworks being produced to represent risk regulation, these diagrams basically fell into two different categories. In the first category there were those diagrams that characterised risk regulation as a linear process involving usually a scientific process of risk assessment and then political processes of risk management and risk communication. In the second category there were those diagrams that had lots of looping arrows going all over the place that represented the fact that risk regulation was an iterative process that constantly involved many scientific, socio-political and other inputs.

Behind my joking was a sense of hope. The linear diagrams did have their minimalist appeal, but the messy diagrams captured much of the reality of this area of regulatory practice.

In the coming few decades, the world is facing three related problems.

First, agriculture contributes to climate change to a considerable extent. In its Fifth Assessment Report, the IPCC's Working Group III concludes that the AFOLU sector (agriculture, forestry and other land use) is responsible for just under a quarter (∼10 – 12 GtCO2eq/yr) of anthropogenic GHG emissions. Usually, a distinction is made between non-CO2 emissions, in particular methane (NH4) emitted by livestock and rice cultivation, and nitrous oxide (N2O) caused by the use of synthetic fertilizers and the application of manure on soils and pasture. Methane and Nitrous oxide have 25 times and 300 times stronger impact on the climate than CO2 respectively. CO2 emissions from agriculture are mainly caused by deforestation and peatland drainage. Emissions from agriculture have been rising on a yearly basis since 1990, although with important regional differences (they went down in Europe and up in Asia).

This article proposes and discusses the text of a Framework Convention on Alcohol Control, which would serve public health and welfare interests. The history of alcohol’s omission from current drug treaties is briefly discussed. The paper spells out what should be covered in the treaty, using text adapted primarily from the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, but for the control of trade from the 1961 narcotic drugs treaty. While the draft provides for the treaty to be negotiated under the auspices of the World Health Organization, other auspices are possible. Excluding alcohol industry interests from the negotiation of the treaty is noted as an important precondition. The articles in the draft treaty and their purposes are briefly described, and the divergences from the tobacco treaty are described and justified. The text of the draft treaty is provided as Supplementary Material. Specification of concrete provisions in a draft convention points the way towards more effective global actions and agreements on alcohol control, whatever form they take.

Amid the outbreak of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, there has been a call to use innovative digital tools for the purpose of protecting public health. There are a number of proposals to embed digital solutions into the regulatory strategies adopted by public authorities to control the spread of the coronavirus more effectively. They range from algorithms to detect population movements by using telecommunications data to the use of artificial intelligence and high-performance computing power to detect patterns in the spread of the virus. However, the use of a mobile phone application for contact tracing is certainly the most popular.