Schengen: Quo Vadis?

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 178-197 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie De Somer

Abstract The EU’s Schengen zone has been in crisis for over four years. This article critically reviews three scenarios on the way forward for the Schengen area that are currently circulating in the EU policy sphere. These include, first, proposals to improve the current rules on internal border checks within the Schengen Borders Code, either through reform or through better implementation practices. A second scenario relates to ideas on increasing the use of police checks in border regions as alternatives for internal border controls. A third scenario links to proposals on making access to the Schengen zone conditional on cooperation and good governance in the CEAS. It is submitted that the proposals in this third scenario are unfeasible for both political as well as legal reasons. More merit can be found in the discussions around the first two scenarios, albeit bearing in mind a number of important caveats.

2019 ◽  
Vol 125 ◽  
pp. 53-62
Author(s):  
Mikołaj Kruszewski ◽  
Mirosław Nader

Limiting the number and consequences of the traffic accidents is one of the most important goals of the EU policy for the road transport. Despite significant efforts in this area, the targets set for the 2010-2020 decade are unlikely to be achieved. This may be due to, inter alia, the increasing importance of the driver attention distraction as a factor contributing to their occurrence. In order to limit the effects of distraction, attempts are made to develop a method to detect such a state of a driver. The distraction of the driver affects the way he drives the vehicle. The authors in their earlier work conducted a research aimed at developing model for detecting states of distraction of the driver's attention, based on a change in the method of vehicle steering. The developed model uses fuzzy logic to detect distraction. This paper presents the results of this model's operation on a sample of 72 drivers, including 36 inexperienced drivers who were the main object of the tests.


Author(s):  
Violeta Moreno-Lax

This chapter identifies the content and scope of application of the EU prohibition of refoulement. Following the ‘cumulative standards’ approach, the analysis incorporates developments in international human rights law (IHRL) and international refugee law (IRL). Taking account of the prominent role of the ECHR and the Refugee Convention (CSR51) as sources of Article 19 CFR, these are the two main instruments taken in consideration. The scope of application of Articles 33 CSR51 and 3 ECHR will be identified in turns. Autonomous requirements of EU law will be determined by reference to the asylum acquis as interpreted by the CJEU. The main focus will be on the establishment of the territorial reach of EU non-refoulement. The idea that it may be territorially confined will be rejected. Drawing on the ‘Fransson paradigm’, a ‘functional’ understanding of the ‘implementation of EU law’ standard under Article 51 CFR will be put forward, as the decisive factor to determine applicability of Charter provisions. The implications of non-refoulement for the different measures of extraterritorial control considered in Part I will be delineated at the end.


2021 ◽  
pp. 203195252199115
Author(s):  
Matthijs van Schadewijk

The growth in multilateral working relationships (e.g. agency work, chains of sub-contracting and corporate groups) is causing Member States to increasingly scrutinise their traditional, contractual approach to the notion of ‘employer’. So far, little attention has been paid to the boundaries and limits that EU law sets when defining the employer. The lack of attention may have come to an end with the recent AFMB judgment, in which the Court ruled, for the first time, that the concept of employer in a provision of EU law had to be given an autonomous and uniform interpretation throughout the EU. Starting from the AFMB judgment, the author analyses the concept of employer in EU law. The author finds that the concept of employer in EU law can be described as ‘uniform in its functionality’: in EU law, the national concept of the employer is never absolute, but the circumstances and the way in which the national concept must be set aside depend on the context and the objective of the European legislation in question. Through this functional approach, EU law partly harmonises the various national approaches to the concept of the employer. Nevertheless, a lack of specific reasoning on the part of the Court may grant the Member States considerable leeway to uphold their own views on the concept.


Author(s):  
Karolina Borońska-Hryniewiecka ◽  
Jan Grinc

This article offers the first ever comparative analysis of the involvement of V4 parliaments in the sphere of European Union (EU) affairs. Its underlying research objective is to determine what conditions V4’s parliamentary participation in various EU-oriented activities such as domestic scrutiny of the government’s EU policy, the political dialogue with the Commission, the Early Warning System for subsidiarity control, and the green card initiative. Based on the actual scrutiny output, parliamentary minutes, and data from questionnaires, we address the questions: (1) To what extent domestic legislatures act as autonomous as opposed to government-supporting actors in these arenas? (2) Do they mostly act as EU veto players, or try to contribute constructively to the EU policy-making process by bringing alternative policy ideas? (3) What are their motivations for engaging in direct dialogue with EU institutions in addition to domestic scrutiny? and (4) How MPs envisage their own EU-oriented roles? While the article reveals that V4 parliaments mostly act as gatekeepers in the sphere of EU affairs, it also casts a new light on the previous literature findings related to the EU-oriented performance of the Czech and Polish lower chambers. We conclude that, generally, V4 parliaments refrain from fully exploiting their relatively strong formal prerogatives in EU affairs—a fact that can be partly explained by the composition of their ruling majorities.


Author(s):  
Jasper P. Sluijs ◽  
Pierre Larouche ◽  
Wolf Sauter
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