Various animal welfare assurance programs are being used to encourage or require the adoption of animal welfare standards in food production, and to assure the public that such standards are followed. The programs involve five main formats. Non-mandatory codes/guidelines are relatively easy to institute and appear well-supported by the industry, but provide only minimal assurance to the public unless measures are taken to ensure compliance. Programs based on government regulations and inter-governmental agreements are more challenging to institute; they are likely to generate less industry acceptance, but may provide more public confidence if enforcement is adequate. Product differentiation programs, and retailer policies requiring products to meet certain standards, serve a range of functions; these may generate public confidence but only for products covered. The various programs include several types of requirements. Requirements that are designed to maintain animal health and functioning have a widely accepted scientific basis, are often easy to incorporate into existing production systems, and often provide economic benefits, but do not fully address public concerns over animal welfare in some cultures. Requirements that address pain, distress and other affective states, and those that accommodate certain natural behaviour, have a growing but less traditional scientific rationale and appear likely to generate public confidence; however, they sometimes require significant changes to existing practices. Requirements for more natural surroundings (outdoor, free-range) seem to generate public confidence, but appear most likely to increase costs, least likely to be supported by the existing industry, and may involve trade-offs with productivity and with other aspects of animal welfare. The various formats and requirements provide a range of policy options for addressing animal welfare concerns in different cultural, industry and market contexts.

How do voters want their governments to respond when another country unilaterally withdraws from an international institution? We distinguish between negotiation approaches that vary in the degree to which they accommodate the withdrawing state's demands and argue that negotiation preferences are shaped by two issues. The first is voters’ exposure to the costs and benefits of accommodation. This exposure varies across issues, and we argue that citizens will generally prefer non-accommodation on zero-sum issues, but support more accommodation on cooperation issues, where non-accommodation puts existing cooperation gains at risk. Second, withdrawal negotiations create precedents, and citizens should therefore be less willing to accommodate the more they are concerned about the ripple effects of accommodation on the institution's stability. These concerns also confront citizens with two types of dilemmas depending on how favorably they view the institution themselves. To test our argument, we use survey evidence and a conjoint experiment conducted in Germany and Spain during the Brexit negotiations. We find that respondents overall are more willing to accommodate the UK on cooperation issues than on zero-sum issues, but also find evidence that Euroskeptics and Europhiles confront different issue-specific dilemmas. Our paper contributes to a better understanding of the dynamics surrounding the challenges to multilateralism that have proliferated in recent years.

How does naming and shaming affect public support for compliance with international agreements? We investigated this question by conducting survey experiments about the Paris Agreement, which relies on social pressure for enforcement. Our experiments, administered to national samples in the United States, produced three sets of findings. First, shaming by foreign countries shifted domestic public opinion in favor of compliance, increasing the political incentive to honor the Paris Agreement. Second, the effects of shaming varied with the behavior of the target. Shaming was more effective against partial compliers than against targets that took no action or honored their obligations completely. Moreover, even partial compliers managed to reduce the effects of shaming through the strategic use of counter-rhetoric. Third, identity moderated responses to shaming. Shaming by allies was not significantly more effective than shaming by non-allies, but Democrats were more receptive to shaming than Republicans. Overall, our experiments expose both the power and the limits of shaming as a strategy for enforcing the Paris Agreement. At the same time, they advance our understanding of the most significant environmental problem facing the planet.

According to the main element of the legal admissibility test of the European Citizens’ Initiative (‘ECI’) set out in Regulation 211/2011, a proposed ECI cannot collect signatures of support if it ‘manifestly falls outside the framework of the Commission’s powers to submit a proposal for a legal act of the Union for the purpose of implementing the Treaties’. This contribution argues that the interpretation and application of the ECI legal admissibility test has developed since the early years of the ECI’s operation, largely due to the CJEU’s intervention in ECI-cases. It analyses the procedural and substantive changes to the test in light of the relevant litigation and the ongoing reform of the ECI’s legal framework. It illustrates that certain contested procedural aspects of the ECI legal admissibility test have been resolved, while the scope of the ECI has been extended to allow Initiatives in the field of international agreements. The article explores the effects of these developments on current and future ECI practice, including the possibility to bring an ECI in the context of the EU-UK Brexit negotiations.

This survey covers the treaties, international agreements, and other international instruments mentioned in the ‘Tractatenblad van het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden’ – Treaty Series of the Kingdom of the Netherlands (abbr.: Trb.). Its purpose is to record the legal consequences of such agreements and instruments for the Netherlands, and Netherlands State acts in respect of them, such as signature, parliamentary approval, ratification, entry into force, provisional application, extension or limitation of territorial application, termination and abrogation. Signature by the Netherlands, however, is mentioned separately only if, in the case of multilateral treaties, such signature has taken place on a date different from the official date of conclusion of the treaty.

Direct effect of international agreements – WTO – Current jurisprudence and theories – Implications for separation of powers and checks and balances – Justiciability – Criticism of current standards: precision and reciprocity – Reversal of dual concept in EU external relations

Relationships between international, EU, domestic law – Different legal orders – Different jurisdictions – Validity, rank, effects of international law in EU legal order – Kadi – Court of First Instance in Kadi – Advocate-General in Kadi – European Court of Justice in Kadi – Pluralism concept of AG Maduro – European legal pluralism reconsidered

International law in constitutional change of EU – Rigidity of amendment – EU amending and accession treaties not reviewable – International law in internal development of Union law – Conventions/treaties by member states jointly – Acts of the representatives of the governments – International law in the agreements with third states – Exportation of legal rules – Conditionality policies – Legislating through international agreements

Promising somewhat more than anyone expects to be delivered remains ingrained in international agreements, clouding their expected aggregate outcomes and how to assess the Parties’ performance. This persistence is explained by systematic overpromising being predictable and, up to a point, productive. I characterize this regime and its consequences and provide an empirical application to the Kyoto Protocol. Overpromising by governments or Parties can be part of a sustainable strategy for electoral success, and varies with socio-economic determinants that characterize the group regime. Thus targets need to be adjusted for regression-predicted overpromising to reveal the rationally-expected outcomes and individual countries’ performance is best identified by deviations of outcomes from their adjusted rather than the agreed targets.

This survey covers the treaties, international agreements, and other international instruments mentioned in the ‘Tractatenblad van het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden’ – Treaty Series of the Kingdom of the Netherlands (abbr.: Trb.). Its purpose is to record the legal consequences of such agreements and instruments for the Netherlands, and Netherlands State acts in respect of them, such as signature, parliamentary approval, ratification, entry into force, provisional application, extension or limitation of territorial application, termination and abrogation. Signature by the Netherlands, however, is mentioned separately only if, in the case of multilateral treaties, such signature has taken place on a date different from the official date of conclusion of the treaty.

This survey covers the treaties, international agreements, and other international instruments mentioned in the ‘Tractatenblad van het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden’ – Treaty Series of the Kingdom of the Netherlands (abbr.: Trb.). Its purpose is to record the legal consequences of such agreements and instruments for the Netherlands, and Netherlands State acts in respect of them, such as signature, parliamentary approval, ratification, entry into force, provisional application, extension or limitation of territorial application, termination and abrogation. Signature by the Netherlands, however, is mentioned separately only if, in the case of multilateral treaties, such signature has taken place on a date different from the official date of conclusion of the treaty.

This survey covers the treaties, international agreements, and other international instruments mentioned in the ‘Tractatenblad van het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden’ – Treaty Series of the Kingdom of the Netherlands (abbr.: Trb.). Its purpose is to record the legal consequences of such agreements and instruments for the Netherlands, and Netherlands State acts in respect of them, such as signature, parliamentary approval, ratification, entry into force, provisional application, extension or limitation of territorial application, termination and abrogation. Signature by the Netherlands, however, is mentioned separately only if, in the case of multilateral treaties, such signature has taken place on a date different from the official date of conclusion of the treaty.

This survey covers the treaties, international agreements, and other international instruments mentioned in the ‘Tractatenblad van het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden’ – Treaty Series of the Kingdom of the Netherlands (abbr.: Trb.). Its purpose is to record the legal consequences of such agreements and instruments for the Netherlands, and Netherlands State acts in respect of them, such as signature, parliamentary approval, ratification, entry into force, provisional application, extension or limitation of territorial application, termination and abrogation. Signature by the Netherlands, however, is mentioned separately only if, in the case of multilateral treaties, such signature has taken place on a date different from the official date of conclusion of the treaty.