Today's world has been deeply affected by globalization. Different cultures have deepened their knowledge of each other and are forced to create common solutions to worldwide problems. This has led to an increasing interest in comparing different nations’ approaches to common problems.

The entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty has changed the framework and possibilities of the development of European Union (EU) criminal law. Gone is the long-lived and awkward cross-pillar character of EU criminal law, as mainly a third pillar EU ‘intergovernmental’ issue but also partly a first (EC) pillar question. The Lisbon Treaty marks a new era for the criminal law as it brings it within the core of the EU law project. Nevertheless, Article 10 of the transitional protocol as attached to the Lisbon Treaty stipulates a five-year transition period before former third pillar instruments will be treated in the same way as EU acts. This paper will focus on two issues in particular. The first question that will be addressed concerns what EU law principles drive or decide the EU's involvement in criminal law. After having identified these principles the second question is whether they should drive it and if so what implications will it have for the criminal law in the future.

The German General Act on Equal Treatment (Allgemeines Gleichbehandlungsgesetz, AGG) has been in force for four years now. Academic discussion has so far mainly focused on the scope of anti-discrimination provisions for non-state actors, i.e. on whether there should be private anti-discrimination legislation, what conduct the statute should prohibit, and what exceptions it should allow. In order to fully understand the effects and relevance of anti-discrimination provisions in a legal system, their remedies and sanctions have to be taken into account as well. This article focuses on the remedies provided for in the AGG and, more specifically, on obligations to contract. The issue of whether there is and whether there should be an obligation to contract has – as regards remedies – been the most controversial issue in the academic discussion so far.

On 22 June 2010, the Landgericht Frankfurt (Oder) (Regional Court) ruled on whether a hotel was entitled to deny a member of a nationalist party entrance to its establishment because of the individual's political beliefs or whether such discriminatory conduct constituted an illegal violation of the personality right of that person which would constitute a tort under § 823 of the Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch (German Civil Code, “BGB”). In making its decision, the Court balanced a property owner's freedom of autonomy, specifically the owner's right to ban a customer from his or her establishment, against the customer's personal rights. Furthermore, the Court considered whether a hotel owner's decision to ban a customer based on his or her political beliefs violated the Allgemeines Gleichbehandlungsgesetz (General Equal Treatment Law, “AGG”). Considering the fundamental question of balancing competing interests, of the personal right of the customer and the right of the property owner, and the national public debate concerning the right of members of nationalistic parties to be treated equally, the case goes beyond the interests of the parties involved and is of general importance.

From 6–8 June 2007, the summit meeting of the Group of Eight (G8) leading industrialized nations was held in Heiligendamm, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, under Germany's presidency. In advance of the summit, the federal state (Land) Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and the federal authorities agreed that the task of providing adequate security for the Summit would overstretch Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania's capacities unless assistance were provided by the Federal Government and other federal states.

The United States and other nations have taken numerous military, police and intelligence measures in order to counter terrorists’ threats in response to the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Virginia as well as the attempted attack on a target in Washington, D. C.