scholarly journals EFFECTS OF THE DIFFERENT IMPLEMENTATION OF LEGISLATION RELATING TO SEWAGE SLUDGE DISPOSAL IN THE EU

Detritus ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 92-99
Author(s):  
Torben Bauer ◽  
Lale Andreas ◽  
Anders Lagerkvist ◽  
Linus Ekman Burgman

The European Directive 86/278/EEC implemented in 1986 was a means adopted by the European Union to improve use of the valuables in sewage sludge by applying treated sludge on agricultural soils. To prevent an accumulation of pollutants, the Directive provided suggestions limiting concentrations of toxic elements in sewage sludge and agricultural soil. The Directive was implemented diversely throughout EU member states, with current national legislations only partly reflecting the initial intentions of the EU Directive from 30 years ago. This study demonstrates how the European Directive was implemented in three countries currently at different stages of replacing the agricultural application of sewage sludge with incineration (Netherlands, Germany and Sweden). Additionally, recent changes in the legislation with regards to the re-use and final disposal of sewage sludge in the three chosen member states are analysed. The aim was to investigate how each member state has solved the conflict between improvement of nutrient recovery from sludge and limitation of pollutants in agricultural soil. Based on this review, limit values are not necessarily reflected in application rates of sewage sludge in agriculture. Following changes in current legislation, phosphorus recovery will become a priority task. The recovery of other valuables from sewage sludge is currently not regulated in the legislation of the three member states investigated.

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (7) ◽  
pp. 2380 ◽  
Author(s):  
Panos Panagos ◽  
Cristiano Ballabio ◽  
Emanuele Lugato ◽  
Arwyn Jones ◽  
Pasquale Borrelli ◽  
...  

In the European Union (EU), copper concentration in agricultural soil stems from anthropogenic activities and natural sources (soil and geology). This manuscript reports a statistical comparison of copper concentrations at different levels of administrative units, with a focus on agricultural areas. Anthropogenic sources of diffuse copper contamination include fungicidal treatments, liquid manure (mainly from pigs), sewage sludge, atmospheric deposition, mining activities, local industrial contamination and particles from car brakes. Sales of fungicides in the EU are around 158,000 tonnes annually, a large proportion of which are copper based and used extensively in vineyards and orchards. Around 10 million tonnes of sewage sludge is treated annually in the EU, and 40% of this (which has a high copper content) is used as fertilizer in agriculture. In the EU, 150 million pigs consume more than 6.2 million tonnes of copper through additives in their feed, and most of their liquid manure ends up in agricultural soil. These three sources (sales of fungicides, sewage sludge and copper consumption for pigs feed) depend much on local traditional farming practices. Recent research towards replacing copper spraying in vineyards and policy developments on applying sewage and controlling the feed given to pigs are expected to reduce copper accumulation in agricultural soil.


2020 ◽  
Vol 59 (3) ◽  
pp. 487-494
Author(s):  
David Lewis

This Resolution was adopted in October 2019 following a report of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights. It has to be seen in the context of previous Council of Europe activity on this topic as well as the European Union (EU) Directive on the protection of persons who report breaches of Union law. The content of the EU Directive was agreed earlier in 2019 and EU Member States are obliged to transpose it into national legislation by December 2021.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kai Stefan Danelzik

For most companies, choice of court agreements are one of the most important legal instruments, with the result that legal certainty and transparency are essential for the functioning of (international) choice of court agreements. This study deals in detail with the legal bases relevant to choice of court agreements and the problems of demarcation that arise with regard to the different constellations of choice of court agreements in international legal relations. The analysis the study conducts shows that with regard to the priority of applying the EU Directive 44/2001 over the German civil procedure code (ZPO), hardly any conceivable area of application for the German ZPO remains. Accordingly, against the background of the results found, the study makes a reform proposal which largely aligns the ZPO with the aforementioned European Directive in order to avoid legal uncertainty and to harmonise the law on choice of court agreements within the European Union.


2021 ◽  
pp. 51-60
Author(s):  
Yaroslav Hrynchyshyn ◽  

The need to harmonize corporate insolvency legislation has led to the adoption by the European Union of the relevant regulations – the Recommendation on a New Approach to Business Failure and Insolvency and the Directive 2019/1023 on preventive restructuring frameworks, on discharge of debt and disqualifications, and on measures to increase the efficiency of procedures concerning restructuring, insolvency and discharge of debt, and amending Directive (EU) 2017/1132 (Directive on restructuring and insolvency). The purpose of the article is to reveal the essence of preventive restructuring, to assess the main differences in the definition of preventive restructuring in accordance with the provisions of the EU Directive and the Code of Ukraine on bankruptcy procedures. In this work, preventive restructuring is considered as the main tool for timely prevention of bankruptcy, the implementation of which in the EU member states has significant differences. An overview of the provisions of EU regulations on preventive restructuring and the process of their implementation in the member states was done. A comparative analysis of the EU directive on the mechanisms of preventive restructuring and certain provisions of the Code of Ukraine on bankruptcy procedures related to reorganization prior to the commencement of bankruptcy proceedings was carried out. It was found that the Code lacks such principles as early appeal, protection of new financing, taking into account the peculiarities of small and medium-sized businesses. Differences in the use of other principles were also identified. Ukrainian legislation encourages debtors to liquidate their business rather than to carry out financial restructuring. Taken into account the European vector of development, today Ukraine has a real chance to improve insolvency legislation based on the provisions of the EU Directive.


2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (4 (1)) ◽  
pp. 39-54
Author(s):  
Robert Grzeszczak

The issue of re-nationalization (disintegration and fragmentation) of integration process is manifested by the will of some of the Member States to verify their relations with the European Union. In the age of an economic crisis of the EU and in relation to the large migration of the population, there has emerged strong social and political criticism, on the European level, of the integration process, with some Member States even consideringtheir withdrawal from the EU. In those States, demands forextending the Member States’ competences in the field of some EU policies are becoming more and more popular. The legal effects of the above-mentioned processes are visible in the free movements of the internal market, mainly within the free movement of persons. Therefore, there are problems, such as increased social dumping process, the need to retain the output of the European labour law, the issue of the so-called social tourism, erosion of the meaning of the EU citizenship and the principle of equal treatment.


2020 ◽  
pp. 97-105
Author(s):  
Aleksandra Kusztykiewicz-Fedurek

Political security is very often considered through the prism of individual states. In the scholar literature in-depth analyses of this kind of security are rarely encountered in the context of international entities that these countries integrate. The purpose of this article is to draw attention to key aspects of political security in the European Union (EU) Member States. The EU as a supranational organisation, gathering Member States first, ensures the stability of the EU as a whole, and secondly, it ensures that Member States respect common values and principles. Additionally, the EU institutions focus on ensuring the proper functioning of the Eurozone (also called officially “euro area” in EU regulations). Actions that may have a negative impact on the level of the EU’s political security include the boycott of establishing new institutions conducive to the peaceful coexistence and development of states. These threats seem to have a significant impact on the situation in the EU in the face of the proposed (and not accepted by Member States not belonging to the Eurogroup) Eurozone reforms concerning, inter alia, appointment of the Minister of Economy and Finance and the creation of a new institution - the European Monetary Fund.


Author(s):  
Elena Sorokina

The preliminary ruling procedure is an essential feature of the EU legal system, which is a unique cooperation tool as part of the dialogue between the Court of Justice of the EU and national courts of the Member States. Its main purpose is to ensure uniform interpretation and application of the provisions of EU law with all Member States and to preserve the uniformity of the European legal system. The continuous use by national courts of the Member States of the mechanism of preliminary ruling and constructive inter-judicial cooperation, the Court of Justice has developed an extremely extensive case law on the prohibition of discrimination and with the result to introduce substantial changes in European anti-discrimination law.The preliminary rulings of the Court of Justice have shown its inclination to expand notions of what constitutes discrimination and in most cases the Court prompt by the desire to interpret the provisions of European law so as to ensure the full effectiveness of the law, as well as a willingness to promote and strengthen protection against discrimination in Europe. While the protection against discrimination on some grounds is stronger than others, however, the preliminary rulings of the Court of Justice are important contribution to the transformation of anti-discrimination law, promote change in the national legislation of the Member States and provide the more effective protection of human rights in general.


Author(s):  
D. A. Lebedeva ◽  
Yu. A. Shcheglov

This work scrutinizes modern bioethical concepts of the use of animals for scientific purposes, as well as legal aspects of its use. Initially, the authors present a brief excursion into the history of bioethics and then focus on the modern concept of ethical attitude to the animals used for scientific purposes. The authors analyze the EU Directive on the protection of animals used for scientific purposes, as well as the EAEU acts and by-laws of the EAEU member states, and conclude that it is necessary to adopt a supranational act within the EAEU that will regulate the use of animals for scientific purposes in accordance with the principles of reduction, replacement and refinement.


Author(s):  
Frank Vandenbroucke

This contribution argues for a truly reciprocal social investment pact for Europe: member states should be committed to policies that respond to the need for social investment; simultaneously, member states’ efforts in this direction—notably efforts by those in a difficult budgetary context—should be supported in a tangible way. Social investment is a policy perspective that should be based on a broad consensus between people who may entertain certain disagreements regarding the level of their empirical and/or normative understanding of the social world. For that reason, the expression of an ‘overlapping consensus’ is used for delineating social investment advocacy. Data on education spending show that we are far removed from a social investment perspective at the European Union (EU) level. This underscores the fact that social investment advocates need to clearly consider the role the EU has to play in social investment progress.


Author(s):  
Frank Schimmelfennig ◽  
Thomas Winzen

Differentiated integration is a durable feature of the European Union and a major alternative for its future development and reform. This book provides a comprehensive conceptual, theoretical and empirical analysis of differentiation in European integration. It explains differentiation in EU treaties and legislation in general and offers specific accounts of differentiation in the recent enlargements of the EU, the Euro crisis, the Brexit negotiations and the integration of non-member states. Differentiated integration is a legal instrument that European governments use regularly to overcome integration deadlock in EU treaty negotiations and legislation. Instrumental differentiation adjusts integration to the heterogeneity of economic preferences and capacities, particularly in the context of enlargement. By contrast, constitutional differentiation accommodates concerns about national self-determination. Whereas instrumental differentiation mainly affects poorer (new) member states, constitutional differentiation offers wealthier and nationally oriented member states opt-outs from the integration of core state powers. The book shows that differentiated integration has facilitated the integration of new policies, new members and even non-members. It has been mainly ‘multi-speed’ and inclusive. Most differentiations end after a few years and do not discriminate against member states permanently. Yet differentiation is less suitable for reforming established policies, managing disintegration, and fostering solidarity, and the path-dependency of core state power integration may lead to permanent divides in the Union.


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