The purpose of the Article is to analyze and compare certain aspects which define the limits of permissible interference with a person's private life in the legislation of Ukraine and other countries of the world in terms of ensuring the balance of interests of participants in criminal proceedings during covert measures to obtain information related to interference with a person’s private life. The Article uses general scientific and special research methods, in particular comparative legal, scientific categories, definitions and approaches, formal dogmatic (legal), dialectical. On the basis of the conducted research, generalized conclusions were made regarding general trends in the field of reforming the legal regulation of special measures for covertly obtaining information, and ways of their improvement. The forms and methods of departmental, judicial, and public control over the covert activities of law enforcement agencies have been determined separately, and the influence of terrorist threats and military actions on ensuring the balance of interests of participants in criminal proceedings has been investigated. According to the results of the research, ways of solving problematic issues of the regulation of criminal procedural legislation have been determined in order to ensure the balance of the interests of the participants in criminal proceedings during the organization, conduct, recording, storage, and use of the results of covert information-gathering activities. A comparative analysis of the ways of solving a number of legal regulation issues in the field of the use of informal forms of obtaining information, the determination of different approaches to the separation of departmental, judicial, and public control is being carried out for the first time and will provide a comprehensive and systematic approach to the improvement of legislation in the specified field in the conditions of martial law or during anti-terrorist activities.

Until recently, the recognition to the European Union of the capacity to borrow from capital markets for spending purposes was considered almost inconceivable without a treaty amendment. When borrowing for spending was authorized under the Next Generation EU program to support the recovery of member states from the unprecedented consequences of the coronavirus, it was immediately faced with the suspicion that the pandemic was being used as a pretext to promote the creation of a fiscal and transfer union by the back door in violation of the principle of conferral. In its NGEU judgment, the German Federal Constitutional Court concluded that the authorization to borrow under the program could not be considered ultra vires. However, the ambiguous and controversial reasoning of the Constitutional Court gives rise to uncertainty as to whether the funding and financing model introduced by the recovery program could be used again in the future, beyond the exceptional circumstances of the pandemic. At the same time, it appears that, in this case, the Constitutional Court applied a considerably more restrained version of its ultra vires review compared to its recent case law on the asset purchase programs of the European Central Bank.

Should theoretical discourse supporting state crimes be protected as free speech or prosecuted as atrocity speech? The relationship between Neo-Hobbesian Nazi collaborator Carl Schmitt and progressive Futurology founder Ossip Flechtheim provides a fascinating framework for exploring that question. In 1933, Schmitt rejected Flechtheim as a PhD student, on antisemitic grounds. Meanwhile, becoming Nazism’s “Crown Jurist,” he helped force Jewish lawyers, including Flechtheim, into exile. Post-war, Flechtheim, now on the US Nuremberg prosecution staff, arrested Schmitt. Through Flechtheim’s experience, this article explores how Schmitt’s prosecution, within a contemplated “Propaganda and Education Case” (PEC), might have determined how to treat atrocity-complicit academic propagandists. It chronicles how the PEC/Schmitt case collapsed when Flechtheim’s investigation was curtailed due to resource constraints, equivocal precedent, and prosecutor Robert Kempner’s botched interrogations. Nonetheless, Flechtheim contributed to the Ministries Trial conviction of propagandist Otto Dietrich. The article concludes by juxtaposing that case with Schmitt’s near-prosecution to contemplate norms for charging theorists laying needed groundwork for atrocity, via sufficiently proximate speech, even absent direct incitement. Such an international justice future would mirror immediate post-Cold War intellectual developments, which vindicated Flechtheim’s vision, not Schmitt’s. Exploring this topic is timely, as Russian academic discourse has enabled/fueled Ukraine’s invasion and related atrocities.

The gradual digitization of EU migration policies is turning external borders into AI-driven filters that limit access to fundamental rights for people from third countries according to risk indicators. An unshakeable confidence in the reliability of technological devices and their ability to predict the future behaviour of incoming foreigners is leading towards the datafication of EU external frontiers. What happens if the supposedly infallible algorithms are wrong? The article aims to understand the consequences of algorithmic errors on the lives of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers arriving in the European Union. This contribution investigates the socio-political implications of deploying data-driven solutions at the borders in an attempt to problematize the techno-solutionist approach of EU migratory policies and its fundamental rights impact on affected individuals.

Over the last few years, artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have become embedded in various domains of social life, prompting legislative efforts at both national and international levels. In the European Union (EU), this drive for legislation has been reflected in various legal instruments, notably the proposed AI Act, which is expected to become a global standard through the “Brussels Effect.” This Article argues that while the AI Act will likely produce a Brussels Effect of its own, such an outcome will be accompanied by a side effect that undermines the EU’s ambition to spread legislative text and values in AI governance. Since the AI Act follows EU product safety legislation, its provisions supply limited protection to some of the values the EU policy intends to protect, such as the protection of fundamental rights. These shortcomings are compounded by the EU’s active efforts to shape alternative instruments, such as the Council of Europe’s proposed convention on AI along the lines of the AI Act. As a result, the diffusion of the AI Act as a global standard will have consequences for the EU policy agenda on AI and the conceptualization of the Brussels Effect.