Restrictions on political association and expression are problematic from a democratic point view. The default assumption seems to be that democracy minimally entails that all citizens have claims to participate in the legislative programming of society, which, given the size and complexity of democratic societies, they have to realize to a significant degree as participants in the debates of a political public sphere or through their membership in and support for political organisations such as parties. If they lack such chances, political decisions will lack democratic legitimacy. Where the law prohibits such options, \“it cuts off the possibility of participating in the open ended future required by democracy. Precisely to the extent the law imposes a version of what the future can or cannot be …[people] are reduced to heteronomous subjects, instead of autonomous citizens.\” It follows that the burden of justification for future-constraining regulations on freedom of association and expression is on those who propose and favour them.

On May 3rd, 2002 the Court of First Instance (CFI) issued its ruling in the case Jégo-Quéré. According to its press release published at the same day, the CFI had undergone the task to “redefine the rules governing individual access to the Community courts” recognizing, thus, “the need to ensure effective protection of legal rights for European citizens and businesses.”

In the last few years, several cases raising a very similar issue have been brought before the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR): all these disputes are centred around the identity of a certain group which the applicants claim to defend, while the State contests either the mere existence of this group as distinct from the rest of the population, or the terms used by the applicants to describe it. Two of these cases – Sidiropoulos and others v. Greece and Gorzelik and others v. Poland – bear upon the refusal of national Courts to register an association created to promote a ‘minority culture’ – the ‘Macedonian’ one in the first instance, the culture of the ‘Silesian national minority’ in the second. The Greek government argues that ‘Macedonians’ do not constitute a distinct ethnic group, and that the claiming of a separate ‘Macedonian identity’ is an attack against Greek symbols and history, if not against the territorial integrity of Greece. In the Polish case, registration was refused on the ground that the association wrongly alleged that the ‘Silesians’ constitute a ‘national minority', while, according to domestic Courts, they are ‘only’ an ‘ethnic group'. The other cases concern measures or sanctions imposed on the applicants because of the stance they took with respect to a particular community: the conviction of a Greek MP for having used the term ‘Turks’ during the electoral campaign to address the Muslim population of Western Thrace in Greece (Ahmet Sadik v. Greece); the dissolution of political parties in Turkey for having stated in their programme that ‘Kurds’ constitute a ‘minority', a ‘people’ or a ‘nation’ (Unified Communist Party of Turkey (TBKP) and others v. Turkey; Socialist Party of Turkey and others v. Turkey; Party of Freedom and Democracy (Özdep) v. Turkey); finally a prohibition on organising public meetings issued against an association promoting the alleged ‘Macedonian’ culture and history in Bulgaria (Stankov and the United Macedonian Organisation Ilinden v. Bulgaria).

Recently, the German law governing atypical forms of work has been amended in several respects. The Beschäftigungsförderungsgesetz 1985 (BeschFG 1985 - Act on the Improvement of Employment Opportunities), regulating part-time work (Teilzeitarbeit) and (partially) fixed-term contracts (befristete Arbeitsverhältnisse), has been replaced by the Gesetz über Teilzeitarbeit und befristete Arbeitsverträge (TzBfG - Act on Part-Time Work and Fixed-Term Contracts), in force since 1 January 2001, and implementing Directive 97/81/EC on Part-Time Work and Directive 99/70/EC on Fixed-Term Contracts. The legislator, however, did not confine himself to implementing EC law but regarded the obligation to implement the Directives as a stimulus to amend the right of part-time work and fixed-term contracts fundamentally. In doing so, he fixed a level of employee protection much higher than required by the Directives. The legal rules for temporary work (Leiharbeit) have not yet been fundamentally changed. But the Job-AQTIV-Gesetz (Job-AQTIV-Act) has amended it in a way at least partially anticipating the presumably soon to be adopted Directive on Temporary Work. Both acts, the Act on Part-time Work and on Fixed-Term Contracts as well as the Job-AQTIV-Act, aim at a reduction of the numbers of unemployed and the creation of employment opportunities. This article sketches and briefly comments on the new rules for fixed-term work, temporary and part-time work.

With the implementation of the Court of First Instance (CFI) on 31 October 1989, a major change occurred in the judicial system of the European Communities. Article 225 EC (ex Article 168 a EEC) became the legal foundation for the new CFI. The main reason for establishing a new Court in the Judicial System of the European Communities was the rapidly growing workload and the increasing complexity of the cases before the Court of Justice of the European Communities (ECJ), which led to a great backlog of cases and a general increase in the average time the ECJ was taking to complete the cases submitted to it. The CFI is not yet a separate institution. In fact, it can instead be characterized as a new judicial body, which will become independent after the ratification of the Nice-Treaty (if and when this happens). The CFI consists of fifteen Judges appointed for renewable terms of six years. There is no assistance by Advocates General on a permanent basis but each Judge could be called upon to perform the function of Advocate General cases of significant difficulty or complexity. Only limited use has been made of this possibility.