The relation between internal market freedoms (the so-called “fundamental freedoms”) and fundamental rights is a recurring question in EU law. In recent years, after rulings such as Schmidberger, Omega, Viking, and Laval, attempts to provide a framework for approaching and resolving clashes between fundamental freedoms and fundamental rights have acquired a special urgency. Less attention, however, has been devoted to capturing the different nature of fundamental freedoms and fundamental rights, and to evaluating the implications of the choice whether or not to include fundamental freedoms in the same category as fundamental rights. The dominant focus in the literature is on what happens when free movement and fundamental rights pull in different directions. Yet, the question of whether fundamental freedoms should be regarded as fundamental rights also deserves close scrutiny. It is especially important to understand the implications of this classification since the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights appears to treat some, but not all, fundamental freedoms as fundamental rights. In particular, the Charter seems to regard the free movement of persons and services as fundamental rights, but not the free movement of goods or the free movement of capital. A similar approach is exhibited in the case law: While the Court recognizes the fundamental rights character of free movement of persons, it does not appear to extend that characterization to the entirety of free movement law. This article attempts to make sense of this dichotomy by relying on an account of fundamental rights that adopts a non-instrumental focus on the right-holder. It argues that certain free movement provisions, namely the free movement of goods and capital, cannot be characterized as fundamental rights because they are inherently instrumental—they are a means to the internal market end. By contrast, the other free movement provisions appear to match the account of fundamental rights adopted here. As this article aims to show, the classification of certain, or all, fundamental freedoms as fundamental rights is a question that affects the interpretation of the scope of the free movement provisions. Moreover, as will be seen, the question is closely related to the debate on the convergence between the free movement provisions, and on the persistence of the “wholly internal rule,” the rule that requires a cross-border connection to trigger the application of free movement law.

This article focuses on the strategy to replace the UK Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA) with a home-grown Bill of Rights to lessen the influence of the European Court of Human Rights' case law. Without attempting to disregard the national-specific elements, the discussion of these questions is very relevant for all States confronted with the influence of Strasbourg. The tension between coherence, efficiency and autonomy is overarching. The article therefore approaches the issue not only from an outsider's perspective but also, where relevant, from a comparative constitutional law perspective. Both perspectives seem to be largely absent from the current (academic) debate. Firstly, this article analyzes the current relationship between the UK Supreme Court and the Strasbourg Court, which reveals that the judicial arguments in support of a mirror principle are not so much based on section 2(1) HRA, as they are, in the domestic courts' relationship with Strasbourg, on concerns about international obligations, hierarchy, effectiveness of the Strasbourg Court, coherence and efficiency. Internally, judicial arguments are founded on concerns about separation of powers, limited jurisdiction, and accustomedness to the precedent system. In the second part, this article focuses on the potential impact of a home-grown Bill of Rights on the current relationship between both courts; concluding that a home-grown Bill of Rights will most likely cause domestic courts to receive less latitude by Strasbourg and will not absolve domestic judges from the duty of taking into account the Strasbourg case law.

This article argues that “political herding” plays a crucial role in driving and shaping constitutional change. It links the prevalence of political herding to a psychological phenomenon, “social influence.” It goes on to argue that constitutional change is often driven by the desire for certain substantive policies, which in turn are determined by whether, in a particular epoch, the political community is herding in a progressive or reactionary direction. Contending that the general phenomenon whereby political communities go through recurrent swings to the left or to the right has been neglected by scholars, this essay aims to give this phenomenon the centrality it merits in relation to the evolution of the British constitution. Accordingly it considers the 1906 Liberal government, the 1945 Labour government and the lengthy succession of post-1979 neoliberal governments, analyzing how substantive progressive and reactionary programs led to constitutional change. Finally this article considers the legitimacy both of political herding itself, and of political herding's impact on constitutional change.

With the negotiation of its Data Protection Regulation, the European Union seeks to reform an outdated set of laws that has failed to address the evolving data protection challenges inherent in new technologies such as social networks, e-commerce, cloud computing, and location-based services. This article addresses the forthcoming Data Protection Regulation as well as the current state of data protection law in the EU, with a particular focus on Germany. The first part of the article examines Germany's robust data protection framework and the EU's existing authority. The article then raises key issues related to data protection in Germany and the EU—namely, discrepancies in data protection standards and enforcement among EU Member States—as illustrated by recent, high profile cases involving household names like Facebook, Apple, Google, and Amazon. Through this analysis, the article attempts to explain how and why companies doing business in Germany, but established in other EU Member States, are subject to less stringent data protection standards than German companies. Lastly, the article synthesizes the issues in debate with regard to the draft Data Protection Regulation and offers perspectives on what the Regulation could and should mean for data protection in the EU.

Imagine your local supermarket invites you to get a 10% reduction on all food bills at the end of the year if you buy 90% of all food there throughout the year. Would you accept? If your supermarket is dominant in the sense of European competition law—and if it is located at the, say, Belgian-Dutch border—it may face an antitrust investigation. The rebate may turn into an exclusivity arrangement that hinders free competition for your money; welcome to the world of target rebates. The book under review deals with the handling of target rebates in European competition law. Above all, however, it is a study of the possible information to be drawn from economics and behavioral studies for the law.

Chris Thomale's Leistung als Freiheit is the printed version of his Berlin doctoral thesis of 2011 (Freie Universität) which was supervised by Martin Schwab. The title of the book will most probably be meaningless or even be misleading to non-German readers: Leistung als Freiheit translates to “Performance as Freedom.” The subtitle will not be of any help to non-German readers, either: Erfüllungsautonomie im Bereicherungsrecht means “Autonomy of Performance in the Law of Unjustified Enrichment.” The subtitle points to the area of law to which the book is devoted—the law of unjustified enrichment—and within the law of unjustified enrichment, to those cases which are commonly—and not only in German law—labeled as enrichment by performance or enrichment by deliberate conferral. In German law, and also in other civil law systems, the different condictiones are joined together under this label.

The division of external competences between the European Union and the Member States is a long-standing object of contention for constitutional and practical reasons. The competence to negotiate and conclude international agreements in a given area has as many highly political implications as concrete policy-making ones. This tension is well illustrated by the field of the commercial aspects of intellectual property. Community, and later Union, competence over this area was established only gradually. After multiple Treaty revisions and legal disputes over competence, the Treaty of Lisbon now lists the field as one of the main elements of the Union's Common Commercial Policy (CCP). The CCP itself is one of the founding policies, dating back to the European Economic Community. It structures the Union's trade relations with third countries, encompassing bilateral and multilateral trade and tariff agreements, as well as unilateral trade defense measures such as anti-dumping and anti-subsidy instruments. Today, the Treaty of Lisbon expressly provides for exclusive Union competence over the CCP, codifying the case law of the Court of Justice.