The lingering European financial crisis continues to threaten the Eurozone and, in the opinion of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the very survival of the European idea. With this apocalyptic rhetoric, it is easily forgotten that only nine years earlier Europe overcame a predicament that was, at the time, equally described as the most challenging in its history. Two failed referendums in Member States of the European Union (Member States)—namely, in France and the Netherlands—stopped the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe (Constitutional Treaty) in its tracks and led to an extended “period of reflection” for Europe's leaders. From this emerged a reboot of the Constitutional Treaty, now dubbed the Treaty of Lisbon, with few substantial changes, but more success throughout the ratification procedures. The final hurdle presented itself in the form of institutionally strong Constitutional Courts (CC) and Tribunals (CT) of the European Member States. Of these, the following were at one time or another seized with complaints against the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty: The Austrian Verfassungsgerichtshof (Austrian CC), the Belgian CC, the Ústavní soud České republiky (Czech CC), the French Conseil Constitutionnel (French CC), the German Bundesverfassungsgericht (German CC), the Hungarian CC, the Latvijas Republikas Satversmes tiesa (Latvian CC), the Polish Trybunał Konstytucyjny (Polish CT), and the Tribunal Constitucional de España (Spanish CT).

The new Constitution and the new Act are changing the status of the Hungarian Constitutional Court by developing the Hungarian constitutional tradition, creating better collaboration between the Constitutional Court and the ordinary judiciary, and establishing an effective instrument for the protection of individual human rights. But the pattern of the Parliament reacting to the rulings of the Constitutional Court with constitutional amendments reduces the competences of the Constitutional Court. It is to be hoped that this process is coming to an end, because otherwise the achievement of the “paradoxical revolution of law” is endangered.

Due to the former extensive competences in terms of law review and its limited influence on ordinary jurisdiction, the status of the Constitutional Court caused problems. Because of the abstract nature of the procedures, the distance from the ordinary judiciary, and the power dilemma between the Constitutional Court and the Parliament respectively, the Government decided the main stream of its ruling up to 2012.

Now there are some important changes, especially the introduction of a widespread constitutional complaint. The abolition of the actio popularis is justified. The relationships between the state organs seem to be better clarified and adjusted. The European clause of the 1949/1989 Constitution, which was largely retained in the Fundamental Law, contains a fundamental concept, which is that the European Union is founded on strong sovereign Member States. On the other hand, the Fundamental Law strengthens Hungary's ties to Europe by making these an integral part of that law. As the Constitutional Court had not yet really applied the European Clause, it now has the opportunity to put these two concepts into practice and make them mutually compatible by enforcing them at a high level.

The discussions concerning the newest constitutional developments in Hungary mainly have their origin in the power struggle between the constituent majority of the Parliament and the Constitutional Court. It is not clear, however, how long this conflict will continue to be a matter falling solely within the national sovereignty of Hungary. Due to the parliamentary super-majority of the governing parties, the Constitutional Court is losing its power. Hungary is a unitary state; it is an open question whether there is any substitution needed to balance the power of the governing parties. Nevertheless, in spite of the substantial restrictions on reviewing the constitutionality of financial laws and the several amendments of the new Constitution, the Constitutional Court still plays a role in safeguarding democratic checks and balances. Indeed, it can have a positive impact on the European integration of Hungary. It has been granted new competences to guarantee constitutional unity within the Hungarian legal system and to complete the enforcement of individual rights. The Constitutional Court should make better use of its new granted competence to remedy any possible grievance entirely.

While the creation of a new international organization is often met with great fanfare, less focus is accorded to the systematic challenges that inhibit reform of international organizations. This article discusses these challenges as well as the enablers that may be useful in addressing them.

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.

On 26 July 2012, the European Central Bank (ECB) issued a new currency, the “Draghi.” A country where the Draghi has the status of legal tender must be fabulously wealthy—a single coin gives unlimited purchasing power to its owner. This is one way to characterize ECB President Mario Draghi's pledge to do “whatever it takes” to save the Euro. It is widely believed that the move prevented the common currency from breaking apart. Yet, the ECB's resolve caused severe conflict within the European System of Central Banks (ESCB). A few weeks later, when the Governing Council of the ECB formally adopted the Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT) program to pave the way for the implementation of Draghi's rescue policy, the representative of the German Bundesbank was outvoted. Subsequently—in a maneuver quite unusual among central bankers—he appealed to the public to stir up support for his opposition to the policy.

Many European Union law scholars, commentators and politicians consider the creation of European citizenship by the Treaty of Maastricht an important landmark in the process towards “ever closer union.” By marking a special relationship with the Union itself, citizenship epitomizes the growing maturity of the Union as a political community and not merely an economic project of a single market. Citizenship introduces the first elements of a political, social, and emotional bond between the peoples of Europe and their new Union. Nonetheless, the content of European citizenship remains a puzzle. The rights it grants are very different to those promised by states. When looked at in detail, it fails to match many of the most central elements of citizenship.

One of the problems in this area is that there is no single common core of citizenship rights. State citizenship in general marks a special relationship with a political community marked by a bundle of rights and duties, yet that relationship takes many forms.1 Some sociological accounts present a model of citizenship with many components disaggregated and broken down as overlapping identifications.2 Nevertheless, even these theories presuppose that the primary case of citizenship is some type of special belonging or attachment to a political community. Multiple national or other identities do not challenge the idea of a special attachment to a single set of institutions. In fact, they presuppose it. A theory of citizenship must explain the content of this special bond between the citizens and his or her political community and must explain whether or to what extent such a special bond has moral value sufficient to create moral obligations on those sharing it.3

The application of constitutionally granted communication-related rights assumes the existence of public space as a basic requirement for human encounters. Mass media, such as television, internet, radio, or journals, does not completely satisfy people's general communicative needs. Instead, people need actual places where they have the opportunity to confront other individuals face to face with their opinion. Indeed, some forms of communication require a more spacious area than is owned by individuals, or can only fulfill their purpose at specific locations. Protest marches or rallies, for example, are important in raising public awareness and encouraging a broader exchange of opinions with a wider circle of recipients. Public space is the site to exchange ideas and opinions and thus the location for individuals to confront the public with political disputes, societal conflicts, and other matters. Traditionally, market places, pedestrian areas, public streets, and squares offered such sites. They are not only seen as places for consumption and means of transportation, but also as places of communication and human encounters. Hence, in this capacity, public space is the prerequisite for the actualization of the freedom of assembly and general communication-related rights, which on their part—and thereby also the existence of public forums—are the foundations of democratic decision-making and can be seen as a constituting element of a free democratic basic order.

Numerous comments have already been published on the verdict of the German Constitutional Court (BVerfG) of 19 March 2013 (2 BvR 2628/10, 2 BvR 2883/10, 2 BvR 2155/11) regarding the constitutionality of the legal regulations on plea bargaining in criminal proceedings under the central provision of § 257c of the (German Code of Criminal Procedure) (StPO). The assessments range from perplexity, “mixed, but with modestly auspicious overtones” and “provisional legal security” to agreement with the decision, although only “in the approach, but not in every point of the justification.”

Negotiated agreements in criminal trials—often, somewhat deprecatingly, called “deals” in Germany—are a curious phenomenon. Such agreements informalize criminal proceedings, yet—according to the legislature—they are also restrained by the formal structure of German procedural law, through the principle of judicial investigation. The restraining of deals via procedural law seems like a futile attempt to achieve the impossible: In an inquisitorial system, the court is obliged to find the “real,” material truth by extending the taking of evidence to all facts and means of proof relevant to the decision. Neither ascertainment of guilt nor sentencing can be based merely on hypothetical facts of the case. A recent judgment of the Federal Constitutional Court on negotiated agreements has stressed that it is unconstitutional to base a conviction on facts that have been mutually agreed upon, if it is not certain that the facts are actually real. This decision hints at the problems deals pose for criminal proceedings in Germany. Despite these problems, such agreements have been very common in the last years and decades. There are many reasons for this. We are going to discuss the most important ones here.

Secrecy profoundly challenges democratic oversight. Law enforcement cooperation, however, requires some space for discretion and confidentiality. This classical paradox within the context of the European Union is central in the current legislative debate on Europol's revision. The reform is initiated by the Commission's proposal in March 2013 and, for the first time in its history, the European Parliament has direct power to decide over the future of the intelligence agency.

This article argues that we should not overestimate European Parliament's post-Lisbon prerogative for oversight, and particularly its access to Europol Classified Information, due to the architecture of intelligence exchange. The foundational principle of intelligence cooperation confers absolute discretion to the originators of information and Europol's “secrets” in almost all cases originate from the member states or third parties.

The article offers a new legal and empirical perspective on the tensions of secrecy and oversight in the EU, and especially in the Area of Freedom Security and Justice. It discusses the internal information structure of Europol and suggests options for more plausible oversight arrangements.

During the past decade, economic crime has been in the public focus in Germany like never before. Major cases, such as the embezzlement proceedings against former Deutsche Bank CEO Ackermann—the so-called Mannesmann proceedings—or the corruption incidents within the Siemens group, have shed more light on illegal behavior in the economic sector. These cases revived an interest in economic criminal law that had not been present since the 1980s when the first wave of economic crime regulation after the establishment of economic criminal law as an academic subject and as a central part of criminal policy had passed. This article analyzes the status and development of economic criminal law. First, it will deal with criminological aspects before turning to the forces in economic crime development. Second, it will examine the changes made in substantive, procedural, and soft law. It includes recent developments, such as the privatization of public investigations and the concept of compliance, as a means to prevent and discover criminal behavior.

Within this collection flowing from the “European Citizenship: Twenty Years On” conference, this article has three functions: first, explain the political origins of a common supranational citizenship in Europe; second, summarize the evolution of EU citizenship by illustrating the debates about the proper relationship between human rights (for everyone) and citizenship rights (for EU citizens only) and about the relationship between national and EU citizenship (or national and EU law), debates occurring within a context of the ever-expanding scope of EU law; third, provide a new perspective on the debates about EU citizenship's finalité politique or political objectives by placing EU citizenship in a comparative perspective. The main argument of the first section is that the goal of creating European citizens has always been an essential element of the European project, rather than an afterthought accidentally introduced in the Maastricht Treaty. Hence the conference title of “Twenty Years On” is flawed; “Sixty Years On” (dating the genesis of European citizenship not to the 1990s but rather, correctly, to the 1950s) would be more appropriate. This article's second section describes the expanding scope and growth of supranational citizenship rights from workers to movers to citizens; the main idea is that this continuing expansion and growth of EU citizenship should mean the end of reverse discrimination, in which national law disadvantages those who cannot appeal to EU law but must rely on national law. The main argument of the third section is that EU citizenship is not sui generis or without precedent but rather should be seen as one manifestation of the ubiquitous tension between unity and diversity, a tension present within any political community but manifest most clearly in political systems (such as the EU and federal states) characterized by multilevel citizenship.

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.

In a long-awaited judgment, the German Constitutional Court in 2013 upheld the constitutionality of the 2009 German law authorizing the negotiation of criminal judgments between the court and the parties. The German version of plea bargaining, which had grown from the grassroots of criminal law practice, was later accepted by the Federal Court of Justice and written into § 257c of the Code of Criminal Procedure (StPO) in 2009. In light of these developments, a verdict of unconstitutionality by the Federal Constitutional Court was the final hope of those who opposed the replacement of the search for truth with a system of negotiation. The Court deflated these hopes, but at the same time refrained from giving an unconditional stamp of approval to the burgeoning practice of negotiating judgments. The Court attempted to rein in that practice by giving the statute a literal reading, emphasizing the limitations it places on negotiations, and strictly prohibiting any consensual disposition outside the statutory framework.

The history of the European Union has been fraught with constant friction between the sovereignty of the Member States and the supranational powers of the Union, with the Union gaining terrain in fields of law traditionally belonging to the Member States. Despite this tension, certain legal fields are steadfastly asserted as belonging to the Member States. Notably, Member States regulate the grounds of the acquisition and loss of nationality. The Treaty of Lisbon highlights that the nationality of Member States is scarcely governed by European Union law, if at all. The sole provision governing the relationship between Member State nationality and Union law, i.e., Article 20 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) stresses the primacy of Member State nationality.

Reality, however, is often not as simple as such a cursory reading implies. European Union citizenship, once a mere complementary facet of the national citizenships, has transformed into an institution in its own right, forming a symbiotic relationship between the Member State nationality and the European Union.

The European financial crisis has called many of the assumptions of the constitutional structure of the European Union (EU) into question. The market-based model of the European Monetary Union (EMU) led to an improper assessment of the borrowing capacity of the euro-area Member States and a mispricing of their default risk. Another design flaw of the EMU that has been exposed by the crisis was the weakness of the existing framework for economic policy coordination. The factual interdependence of the participating economies in the monetary union was so strong that the denial of some form of assistance to the debt-distressed countries triggered a domino effect in the Eurozone as a whole. The quest for instruments to address the sovereign debt crisis brought a European constitutional crisis to the forefront: the EU did not possess the appropriate mechanisms to help the states in need and to guarantee financial stability in the EMU.

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.

When the Federal Constitutional Court (hereinafter FCC) decided to refer the question of whether the European Central Bank's (ECB) decision on the purchase of Outright Monetary Transactions (OMTs) is compatible with EU primary law, it effectively forced the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) into a game of “chicken.”