Assessing the Evaluation of the EC Data Retention Directive

Author(s):  
Nóra Ní Loideain

The focus of this chapter is the first evaluation of European legislation designed to harmonise domestic laws on the retention of telecommunications data for the purpose of assisting law enforcement efforts. The European Union introduced the EC Data Retention Directive in 2006. This Directive requires the retention of every European citizen’s communications data for up to two years for the purpose of investigation, detection, and prosecution of serious crime, as defined by each Member State in their domestic legislation. The Directive was the source of considerable unease amongst legislators, Data Protection authorities, and the private sector. This chapter analyses the results provided in this evaluation on the use and operation of the Directive by individual Member States of the EU.

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 436-465 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tore Vincents Olsen ◽  
Christian F. Rostbøll

The Lisbon Treaty from 2009 introduced the possibility for individual member states to withdraw from the European Union (EU) on the basis of a unilateral decision. In June 2016 the United Kingdom decided to leave the EU invoking article 50 of the treaty. But is withdrawal democratically legitimate? In fact, the all-affected principle suggests that it is undemocratic for subunits to leave larger political units when it adversely affects other citizens without including them in the decision. However, it is unclear what the currency of this affectedness is and, hence, why withdrawal would be undemocratic. We argue that it is the effect of withdrawal on the status of citizens as free and equal that is decisive and that explains why unilateral withdrawal of subunits from larger units is democratically illegitimate. Moreover, on the ‘all-affected status principle’ that we develop, even multilaterally agreed withdrawal is undemocratic because the latter diminishes the future ability of citizens to make decisions together regarding issues that affect their status as free and equal. On this basis, we conclude that it is undemocratic for a member state such as the United Kingdom to withdraw from the EU.


The Member States of the European Union combines a study of individual member states with an examination of the broader process of Europeanization. Examining both sides of this crucial relationship, this text provides a useful guide to EU member state relations. This third edition has been updated to summer 2019 and includes chapters on eight member states from different geographical regions and dates of accession. These are followed by seven thematic chapters on the Europeanization of structures, actors, and processes within the pre-Brexit EU 28. The Member States of the European Union helps understanding the influence of Member States in the EU but also the impact the EU has on the domestic institutions, politics, and policies of each member state.


The Member States of the European Union combines a study of individual member states with an examination of the broader process of Europeanization. Examining both sides of this crucial relationship, this text provides a useful guide to EU member state relations. This second edition has been updated to take in the latest round of EU enlargement and includes chapters on eight member states from different geographical regions and dates of accession. These are followed by seven thematic chapters on the Europeanization of structures, actors, and processes within the EU 27.


2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 415-435 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elise Johansen

Abstract In the last several decades, the European Union (EU) has demonstrated its intention to play an important role in supporting Arctic cooperation and helping to meet the challenges now facing the region. Norway, one of the five Arctic coastal states, and the EU have cooperated closely in this regard, particularly through the Agreement on the European Economic Area (EEA Agreement). This article examines how Norway’s domestic legislation applicable to its Arctic marine areas has been influenced by the development of EU environmental legislation. Specifically, this paper provides a discussion and analysis of the relevant Norwegian laws and mechanisms used to regulate how EU environmental legislation has been incorporated into Norway’s domestic legislation through the EEA Agreement.


2017 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-71
Author(s):  
Maciej Etel

Abstract The European Union and its member-states’ involvement in the economic sphere, manifesting itself in establishing the rules of entrepreneurs’ functioning – their responsibilities and entitlements – requires a precise determination of the addressees of these standards. Proper identification of an entrepreneur is a condition of proper legislation, interpretation, application, control and execution of the law. In this context it is surprising that understanding the term entrepreneur in Polish law and in EU law is not the same, and divergences and differences in identification are fundamental. This fact formed the objective of this article. It is aimed at pointing at key differences in the identification of an entrepreneur between Polish and EU law, explaining the reasons for different concepts, and also the answer to the question: May Poland, as an EU member-state, identify the entrepreneur in a different way than the EU?


2014 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Kuner

The European Union (EU) has supported the growing calls for the creation of an international legal framework to safeguard data protection rights. At the same time, it has worked to spread its data protection law to other regions, and recent judgments of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) have reaffirmed the autonomous nature of EU law and the primacy of EU fundamental rights law. The tension between initiatives to create a global data protection framework and the assertion of EU data protection law raises questions about how the EU can best promote data protection on a global level, and about the EU’s responsibilities to third countries that have adopted its system of data protection.


Author(s):  
Markus Patberg

This chapter presents an institutional proposal for how citizens could be enabled—in the dual role of European and national citizens—to exercise constituent power in the EU. To explain in abstract terms what an institutional solution would have to involve, it draws on the notion of a sluice system, according to which the particular value of representative bodies consists in their capacity to provide both transmission and filter functions for democratic processes. On this basis, the chapter critically discusses the proposal that the Conference of Parliamentary Committees for Union Affairs of Parliaments of the European Union (COSAC) should transform itself into an inter-parliamentary constitutional assembly. As this model allows constituted powers to continue to operate as the EU’s de facto constituent powers, it cannot be expected to deliver the functions of a sluice system. The chapter goes on to argue that a more convincing solution would be to turn the Convention of Article 48 of the Treaty on European Union into a permanent constitutional assembly composed of two chambers, one elected by EU citizens and the other by member state citizens. The chapter outlines the desirable features of such an assembly and defends the model against a number of possible objections.


Author(s):  
Thomas Faist

Europe, and the European Union in particular, can be conceived as a transnational social space with a high degree of transactions across borders of member states. The question is how efforts to provide social protection for cross-border migrants in the EU reinforce existing inequalities (e.g. between regions or within households), and lead to new types of inequalities (e.g. stratification of labour markets). Social protection in the EU falls predominantly under the purview of individual member states; hence, frictions between different state-operated protection systems and social protection in small groups are particularly apparent in the case of cross-border flows of people and resources. Chapter 5 examines in detail the general social mechanisms operative in cross-border forms of social protection, in particular, exclusion, opportunity hoarding, hierarchization, and exploitation, and also more concrete mechanisms which need to be constructed bottom-up.


Author(s):  
Robert Schütze

This chapter describes the direct enforcement of European law in the European Courts. The judicial competences of the European Courts are enumerated in the section of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) dealing with the Court of Justice of the European Union. The chapter discusses four classes of judicial actions. The first class is typically labelled an ‘enforcement action’ in the strict sense of the term. This action is set out in Articles 258 and 259 TFEU and concerns the failure of a Member State to act in accordance with European law. The three remaining actions ‘enforce’ the European Treaties against the EU itself. These actions can be brought for a failure to act, for judicial review, and for damages.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document