scholarly journals Extraterritorial Bulk Surveillance after the German BND Act Judgment

Author(s):  
Marcin Rojszczak

Foreign surveillance as a means of circumventing existing legal safeguards – Different perspectives on the problem of the extraterritorial application of fundamental rights in US and EU legal models – The limited usefulness of effective control tests for establishing the responsibility of states for action taken in cyberspace – Judgment of Bundesverfassungsgericht in the BND Act case as an interpretative guideline for the regulation of foreign surveillance in EU member states – Electronic surveillance as a threat to European integration process.

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 406
Author(s):  
Sergiy Dubchak ◽  
Valentyna Goshovska ◽  
Volodymyr Goshovskyi ◽  
Oleksandr Svetlychny ◽  
Olena Gulac

The article is devoted to the analysis of legal regulation of the sphere of nuclear safety and security of Ukraine on the way to European integration. The authors drew attention to the importance of Ukraine achieving the necessary level of and nuclear sefaty and security adopted in the EU member states. The emphasis was placed on the fact that the prospects for fulfilling national obligations in the field of nuclear safety in accordance with European standards directly depend on solving the problems of ensuring the functioning of nuclear facilities, the physical protection of nuclear materials and installations as well as radioactive waste management. The main directions of ensuring the nuclear safety and secutiry in the world within the international law are considered. The role and activities of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in setting up a regulatory framework for nuclear safety and security are analyzed. The international legal framework for nuclear safety and security was discused.The legislative basis for nuclear safety and secutiry in the EU IS characterized. The issue of legal norms unification in the field of nuclear safety regulation of EU member states was considered. The principles of legal regulation of nuclear a safety and security in Ukraine are characterized. Key words: nuclear safety, nuclear security, public administration of nuclear safety and security, legal regulation of nuclear safety and security, European integration, sustainable development in the field of ensuring nuclear safety and security. UDC 35:574:339.9:349.6        JEL Classification: K 23, K 32, K 33,  Q 5


2019 ◽  
pp. 16-51
Author(s):  
Anniek de Ruijter

This book looks at the impact of the expanding power of the EU in terms of fundamental rights and values. The current chapter lays down the framework for this analysis. Law did not always have a central role to play in the context of medicine and health. The role of law grew after the Second Word War and the Nuremberg Doctors Trials (1947), in which preventing the repetition of atrocities that were committed in the name of medicine became a guidepost for future law regarding patients’ rights and bioethics. In the period after the War, across the EU Member States, health law developed as a legal discipline in which a balance was struck in medicine and public health between law, bioethics, and fundamental rights. The role of EU fundamental rights protections in the context of public health and health care developed in relation with the growth of multilevel governance and litigation (national, international, Council of Europe, and European Union). For the analysis here, this chapter develops an EU rights and values framework that goes beyond the strictly legal and allows for a ‘normative language’ that takes into consideration fundamental rights as an expression of important shared values in the context of the European Union. The perspective of EU fundamental rights and values can demonstrate possible tensions caused by EU health policy: implications in terms of fundamental rights can show how highly sensitive national policy issues may be affected by the Member States’ participation in EU policymaking activities.


Author(s):  
R. Daniel Kelemen

Theories of federalism can provide a set of assumptions, concepts, and arguments that shed light on many aspects of European integration. Applying the federalism perspective opens up EU scholars to a range of relevant comparative cases that provide analytic leverage and insight on the EU. This perspective also enables EU scholars to draw on and contribute to a well-established literature in comparative politics, thus connecting their findings about the EU to broader academic debates. EU scholars have applied theories of federalism to help explain a wide range of questions about European integration, from general questions about why and how the EU came together as a political system to narrow questions about very specific policy areas, to the causes and consequences of the EU’s recent crises. This chapter discusses the main assumptions, concepts, and methodologies in federalism theories of the EU, and explores how this perspective can shed light on the eurozone crisis and the crisis of democratic backsliding among EU member states.


2018 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 535-570
Author(s):  
Paula Poretti

<span>At EU level, discussions on the future direction of development of consumer protection policy revolve around the open question of efficiency of mechanisms for protection and realisation of consumer rights in national legal systems of EU Member States. Measures and activities of the EU legislator resulted in ‘competing’ mechanisms, which objectively creates a need for examination of the extent to which their functions overlap as well as if it is possible to detect the (most) appropriate way for protection of consumer rights. The analysis in the paper starts from the presumption that the consumer protection policy was developed within the measures aimed at integration of the Single Market and harmonization of consumer laws, on the one side and the recognized need of consumer protection as a social and political goal, on the other side. In this sense, the main point discussed in the paper is whether the recent development in the field of consumer protection, including the recent judgments of the European court could be interpreted as a reflection of the notion that the efficient judicial protection of (individual) consumer rights is (yet) again a priority at EU level. In the first part of the paper the development and application of mechanisms which represent a certain kind of alternative to the judicial consumer protection will be presented. In the second part of the paper, we will consider if the all the more present focus on judicial protection of consumer rights at EU level is an indication of a ‘successful experiment which resulted in unexpected outcome’. The required argumentation will be provided through monitoring of the trend of ‘proceduralization’ or ‘europeanisation’ of the national consumer law in the jurisprudence of the European court. The effect of Article 47 EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and its requirement of efficient protection of procedural rights of individuals before national courts of EU Member States will be analysed in detail. At the same time, the recent activities of the European Commission directed at court proceedings before national courts and removal of barriers in their work in the field of consumer protection will be taken into account.</span>


2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (5) ◽  
pp. 1104-1115
Author(s):  
Stanisław Biernat

AbstractA concern was voiced in commentaries after the PSPP judgment that the BVerfG’s position regarding the refusal to apply in Germany the CJEU judgment as issued on an ultra vires basis might be used in EU Member States infringing the rule of law, and the independence of the judiciary in particular. This issue is presented in relation to Poland. The article sets out the constitutional provisions which proclaim openness to European integration, as well as the union-friendly case-law of the Constitutional Tribunal (CT) until 2016. The CT jurisprudence at that time provided, however, for the possibility of refusing to apply EU law in exceptional situations, even though this never happened. Next, the article discusses endeavors of the new Polish authorities since the end of 2015 which drastically breach the rule of law in the field of the judiciary, as well as the measures taken by EU institutions to counteract these adverse phenomena. The Polish authorities argue that the competence to define the legal position of the judiciary has not been conferred on the Union and remains within the exclusive competence of the Member States. Such a stance was also taken by the politically dependent CT in April 2020. The PSPP judgment was therefore welcomed with joy by Polish politicians. There are major differences, however, between the rulings of the BVerfG and those of the Polish CT in its current composition, and the hopes pinned on the PSPP judgment by the Polish authorities are unfounded.


2006 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 753-772 ◽  
Author(s):  
MIELLE BULTERMAN

Under the UN sanctions regime of Resolution 1267, UN member states are obliged to freeze the assets of persons and entities which are associated with Usama bin Laden, and which therefore reason have been listed by the UN. Within the European Union this ‘UN sanctions list’ is implemented by means of a Community regulation, having direct effect in all EU member states. The regulation was challenged by several individuals and an organization, which were added to the UN sanctions list on the basis of their association with al Qaeda. The regulation was challenged on two grounds. First, the applicants claimed that the Community did not have the competence to adopt the contested regulation. In the second place, the applicants claimed that the Community regulation infringed their human rights (right to property, right of access to court). Thus the CFI was asked to determine to what extent it is competent indirectly to review measures adopted under the UN Charter. This delicate legal question is answered in a lengthy judgment, the legal reasoning of which is not always convincing.


The process of European integration is marked both by continued deepening and widening, and by growing evidence of domestic disquiet and dissent. Against this background, this book examines three key themes: the challenge to the power of member states – as subjects of European integration – to determine the course of the integrationist project and to shape European public policies; the constraints in the domestic political arena experienced by member states as objects of European integration; and the contestation over both the ‘constitutive politics of the EU’ and specific policy choices. These three themes – power, constraint, and contestation – and their interdependence are explored with specific reference to Germany. The main findings call for a revision of the ‘conventional wisdom’ about Germany's Europeanization experience. First, while Germany continues to engage intensively in all aspects of the integration process, its power to ‘upload’ – ‘hard’ and ‘soft’, ‘deliberate’ or ‘unintentional’, ‘institutional’ or ‘ideational’ – appears in decline. Germany's capacity to ‘shape its regional milieu’ is challenged by both changes in the integration process and the ever-more-apparent weaknesses of the ‘German model’. The traditional regional core milieu is shrinking in size and importance in an enlarging Europe, and Germany's milieu-shaping power is being challenged. Second, the coincidence of enabling and constraining effects is being progressively replaced by a discourse that notes unwelcome constrictions associated with EU membership.


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 265-295
Author(s):  
Florence Humblet ◽  
Kabir Duggal

Climate change is severely impacting the survival of humankind on earth. In the European Union (EU), the Charter of Fundamental Rights (EU Charter) codifies environmental protection as part of the EU’s corpus of fundamental rights protection and states that “a high level of environmental protection and the improvement of the quality of the environment must be integrated into the policies of the EU and ensured in accordance with the principle of sustainable development”. By virtue of this article, the EU has elevated environmental protection to the level of constitutionality. Environmental concerns have played a critical role in investor-state arbitration. This article submits that Article 37 of the EU Charter might be a viable defence for Member States of the EU (Member States) that adopt climate change and environmental measures. Such defence would not consist of a jurisdictional challenge based on the Achmea decision but of a defence based on the applicable law which protects the notion of sustainable investment enshrined in the applicable international investment agreement. Article 37 of the EU Charter could, therefore, operate a powerful tool to foster environmental protection in investor-state disputes and, therefore, address one of the most widespread complaints in the backlash against investor-state arbitration.


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