The Surveys of the law of the free movement of goods carried in the Quarterly since 1989 have followed a largely consistent pattern. The Court's case law interpreting the nature and purpose of Article 28's legislative institutions. The readier the Court is to treat national measures as barriers to trade, the deeper the incursion of EC law into national regulatory autonomy. And vice versa. The Wider the scope allowed to the possibility to justify barriers to trade, the more room for manoeuvre is handed back to national regulatory autonomy—and the more weight is placed on the process of legislative harmonization or, increasingly, other forms of policy coordination at EC level as the way to advance integration. And vice versa. All these trends are in view in the period covered by this survey. The complex institutional rhythms reveal that the creation of the internal market was not a short-term project that was completed in 1992, nor even an enterprise that gently begged to have a few loose ends tidied up before being triumphantly pronounced historical fact. In reality the internal market, as an exercise in creating a unified economic space underpinned by a constitutionalized system of supra-State legal rules in a politically fragmented but interdependent environment, is one manifestation of the extraordinary exercise in multi-level governance which is evolving in Europe. Systems of this complexity do not stop fluctuating; ‘free’ markets are politically contested.

In its judgment of 3 February 2003, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) declared the application submitted by the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) for revision of its 1996 judgment concerning the Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, inadmissible.1 The Court found that the request for revision was not based on the ‘discovery’ of a ‘fact’ and, therefore, one of the conditions of Article 61 of the Statute of the Court was not satisfied. This commentary will appraise the decision by examining the formal and substantive criteria for revision, a rather neglected and underused process.2

The International Court of Justice is not a human rights court but it does hear human rights cases.1 This is hardly remarkable. As Professor Ian Brownlie has pointed out ‘[h]uman rights problems occur in specific legal contexts. The issues may arise… within the framework of a standard-setting convention, or within general international law.’2 Because human rights treaties normally have their own dispute settlement procedure, the situations in which the International Court of Justice is more likely to have to grapple with human rights issues lie within the realms of general international law or in non-human rights specific treaty provisions, which may, nevertheless, raise such issues. In addition, some human rights treaties, such as the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide 1948, contain provisions specifically referring disputes to the International Court of Justice.3 Thus, it should come as no surprise that the Court has been involved in a number of cases involving human rights questions.

The Barcelona Summit of March 2002 provided the catalyst for further coordination and synchronisation between the social and economic dimensions of the Lisbon Strategy framework. The definition of the ‘European Social Model’ as ‘good economic performance, a high level of social protection and education and social dialogue’ has become a working definition underpinning the direction of social policy in official publications.1 The Barcelona Presidency also led to the adoption of a streamlined set of Employment Guidelines, Recommendations to the Member States and Broad Economic Policy Guidelines on the same day, heralded as an ‘instrument for economic governance’ by the Commission.2 The reform of the European Employment Strategy (EES) concentrates upon the problems and weaknesses of the EES identified in the evaluation of the first 5 years of the Strategy.3 The Commission identified four central issues for reform, focusing upon the need to set clear objectives (which include priorities and targets), the need to simplify the policy guidelines, the need to improve governance and ensure greater consistency and complementarity with other EU processes. A new development on the eve of the Spring Council (the Brussels Summit) on 20–21 March 2003 was a ‘Social Summit’ attended by a troika of the Heads of State/Government of the past, current and future Presidencies, the Commission and the Social Partners. One outcome of this Summit was the creation of a new eight-member task force, chaired by Wim Kok.4 The aim of the European Employment Task Force is to investigate practical steps to prompt the Member States to implement the new revised EES endorsed at the Spring Summit. The Task Force will report to the Commission in time to draft the Joint Employment Report for the annual Spring Summits.

Overriding mandatory laws present one of the most pervasive and delicate problems of international arbitration because they affect party autonomy in both its substantive and procedural dimensions. The tension between these concepts both in theory and in practice is a classic emanation of the public–private divide, which is particularly problematic in international and transnational settings. This tension is even stronger in the context of economic integration and regulation, such as in the EU Internal Market. This article revisits and conceptualizes the operation of overriding mandatory laws in the context of arbitration from the perspectives of conflict of laws, public law, and EU law. Drawing on the principles of effectiveness and proportionality, it proposes a practical rather than a theoretical solution to the dialectical relationship between private and public interests in legal certainty.

Can the law of countermeasures be used to police the high seas? The freedom of the high seas is guaranteed by the immunity of a State's flag vessels from interference by the public vessels of other States, subject to limited exceptions. However, this rule of non-interference may shield those engaged in unregulated or illegal fishing or transporting weapons of mass destruction and their precursors. This article argues that while such conduct may breach obligations protecting the common interest, unilaterally boarding and arresting a vessel involved would constitute an illegal use of force and cannot be justified as a countermeasure.