Application of European Environmental Law by National Courts

elni Review ◽  
2008 ◽  
pp. 78-80
Author(s):  
Luc Lavrysen

In this article, the author describes the situation of National Courts applying European Environmental Law. The article shows that not in all Member States the issue is being addressed as it should be. Therefore, the author strongly supports the initiative taken by the European Commission to set up, in the light of Communication COM(2007)502 of September 2007, a large-scale training programme for members of the judiciary on the national level.

Competitio ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-48
Author(s):  
Daniel Pop

This paper discusses how the CEE-10 countries complied with the EU conditionality in the field of regional policy, examining whether the territorial reforms implemented were carried out leading to the enrooting of sub-national regional governance structures. Following the discussion of the EU requirements in the field of regional policy, I turn to a case by case analysis of how the meso-level government tiers were set up in the CEE-10 countries. The analysis leads to the finding that the limited interest in the CEE-10 countries to develop extensive regional governance structures by creating new autonomous sub-national governance structures coupled with the frequent contradictory and often unofficial requirements by the European Commission during negotiations, has led to a weak institutionalization of meso-level governments when compared to the institutional and policy structures within the EU-15.


2009 ◽  
Vol 14 (43) ◽  
Author(s):  
V Bremer ◽  
A Bosman ◽  
D Coulombier

Strengthening capacity in intervention epidemiology is key to the overall goal of responding to the challenge to detect and counter threats posed by outbreaks of infectious diseases in the European Union (EU). Since its founding in 1995, the European Programme for Intervention Epidemiology Training (EPIET) has become a core resource in training in intervention epidemiology in the EU. EPIET was integrated into the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) on 1 November 2007 and this has resulted in an increased sustainability of the programme, allowing for long-term planning. Also, a new training programme, the European public health microbiology training (EUPHEM), was set up in 2008 to increase the response capacity for microbiology. Collaboration with EU Member States and other training programmes has been further intensified. Merging EPIET and other training activities in the ECDC training section has created the opportunity to develop an integrated multilevel approach to training in applied field epidemiology. An integrated approach to training activities on EU level, and increasing the number of EPIET and EPIET-associated fellows are essential to respond to the training needs of EU Member States, particularly new Member States. An external evaluation of EPIET in 2009 will provide guidance for a future strategy for the programme. This article examines the achievements of the EPIET programme after its transition to ECDC and provides an outlook on its future.


2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 305-308
Author(s):  
Áine Ryall

Case C-404/13, The Queen, on the application of Client Earth v Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs EU:C:2014:2382, OJ C – 26 of 26.1.2015, p. 6.When a Member State finds that the limit values cannot be respected before the deadline fixed by the Air Quality Directive and wishes to postpone that deadline for a maximum of five years, that Member State is required to make an application for the postponement of the deadline by drawing up an air quality plan demonstrating how those limits will be met before the new deadline (official headnote).


2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-170
Author(s):  
Lorenzo Squintani ◽  
Dionne Annink

The need to ensure a uniform interpretation and effective application of the large corpus of EU environmental regulation in the jurisdictions of the Member States remains a task of pivotal importance for the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). A quick look at the CURIA database reveals that many judgments are handed down every year to clarify the meaning of EU environmental provisions. It is therefore important to study the proper functioning of the tandem composed of the CJEU and the national courts in this field of EU law. In that sense, this article responds to Bogojević’s call ‘to draw a grander map of judicial dialogues initiated across various Member States’. More specifically, the topic investigated by this article is how Dutch courts have followed up on responses received from the CJEU to their preliminary reference requests in the field of EU environmental law, until January 2017. Almost all the cases we have retrieved from the Netherlands show various degrees of willingness to cooperate with the CJEU. This article highlights the existence of three trends: full cooperation, gapped cooperation and withdrawn cooperation.


Author(s):  
Lucia Quaglia

Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) is one of the most important policy areas of the European Union (EU). Academic research on EMU in political science is well-established and ever-evolving, like EMU itself. There are three main “waves” of research on EMU, which have mostly proceeded in a chronological order. The first wave of scholarly work has focused on the “road” to EMU, from the setting up of the European Monetary System in 1979 to the third and final stage of EMU in 1999. This literature has explained why and how EMU was set up and took the “asymmetric” shape it did, that is to say, a full “monetary union,” whereby monetary policy was conducted by a single monetary authority, the European Central Bank (ECB), but “economic union” was not fully fledged. The second wave of research has discussed the functioning of EMU in the 2000s, its effects and defects. EMU brought about significant changes in the member states of the euro area, even though these effects varied across macroeconomic policies and across countries. The third wave of research on EMU has concerned the establishment of Banking Union from 2012 onward. This literature has explained why and how Banking Union was set up and took the “asymmetric” shape it did, whereby banking supervision was transferred to the ECB, but banking resolution partly remained at the national level, while other components of Banking Union, namely a common deposit guarantee scheme and a common fiscal backstop, were not set up. Subsequently, the research has begun to explore the functioning of Banking Union and its effects on the participating member states.


European View ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-25
Author(s):  
Michael Schneider

Subsidiarity is a core value of the European People’s Party. It has been incorporated in the EU treaties to ensure that decisions are taken as closely as possible to the citizens. At a time when citizens are increasingly putting Europe’s democratic legitimacy into question, it is essential to place this principle at the heart of discourse on the EU. The Task Force on Subsidiarity, Proportionality and Doing Less More Efficiently, which was set up by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker in November 2018, has identified a ‘new way of working’. It gives local, regional and national authorities a stronger voice in EU policymaking, with the aim of improving the quality and effectiveness of legislation. If implemented by the different institutions, it will both ensure that EU legislation adds value and lead to the member states and their regions and cities taking greater ownership of EU decisions. And these developments, in turn, will help reconnect Europe with its citizens.


2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 721-770 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jule Mulder

This article argues that comparative law needs to explore its critical potential when engaging with the European harmonization process and its effects on the law of the Member States. In the first part, the article evaluates existing comparative law methods and their suitability to identify legal and cultural factors that influence the judicial reception of EU harmonized law on a national level. Using EU non-discrimination law as a case study, it questions to what extent traditional methods are suitable to explain differences in the national judicial reception of EU harmonized law, despite the exclusive competence of the Court of Justice of the European Union to interpret EU law. In doing so, it considers the potential of critical comparative law for the development of a deeper understanding of the national courts' reception of EU harmonized law as a key part of the broader legal harmonization process. In the second part, the article develops an original multi-layered culturally informed method to compare EU harmonized law. The proposal goes beyond the existing methods of comparative law by including critical aspects and stressing the relevance of embedding a general normative framework in any comparative critique. It challenges comparatists to reach deeply into national cultural spheres and to identify key influences on the application of EU rules and EU-national legal ‘hybrids’. The method creates room for multi-layered narratives of comparison aimed at gaining a deeper understanding of the national legal and non-legal cultural background that can hinder or facilitate harmonization processes. This enriched comparative critique can offer new insights into the process of legal harmonization in the EU, particularly by focusing on the point of application rather than the previous phases of creation of EU law and its reception by Member States.


The Union is the direct successor to the three communities that were set up in the 1950s by six European States. Just as over time the references to the three Communities became one reference to the ‘European Community’, now the supranational organisation that is referred to has grown since 1992 and the general name by which it is known is no longer the European Community, but the European Union. Clearly the Union is a much larger entity than the Community, as can be seen from the list of the three areas covered by the Union set out above. But the idea of a large Union had always been within the documents setting up the European Community. The Community remains intact—but as one of three spheres of activity. However, concentrated within the Community are the lawmaking powers of the Union. The Union was established by the Treaty of Maastricht 1992 and the Treaty of Amsterdam 1997 (both formally called the Treaty on European Union (TEU)). The same institutions that had served the three Communities were enlarged to serve the Union. The Treaty of Nice in 2000 made further steps towards altering aspects of the institutions of the Union to be ready for enlargement of the number of Member States who were to become part of the Union from 2004. In coming years, the nature of the Union will become increasingly streamlined as it grows in size. The Treaty of Nice reached major agreement on the simplification of the voting procedures for the enactment of secondary legislation, and declared adherence to the Union’s proposed Charter on Fundamental Rights. The terms of reference for the next inter-governmental conference on the Union will consider the simplification of the founding treaties into one new treaty. There are therefore more changes ahead that will affect law students! For all public intents and purposes, there is now only the Union. The official website http://europa.eu.int only refers to European Union and within its legal pages speaks of European Union law. However, it remains true to say that to use that term is technically incorrect. The Union has no law making powers outside those conferred by the founding treaties of the Community, so the appropriate phrase is Community law or European Community law (EC law), not Union law. The next section will deal with the basic consideration of the historical development of the European Community and European Community law. It will lay out the treaties of importance and note the different types of law, and the mechanisms for Community law having an effect within the legal systems of Member States. The legal systems of the Member States are often referred to by the term ‘domestic law’, a metaphoric use of ‘domestic’ linking it to ‘home’. The courts in Member States tend to be referred to by two phrases: ‘domestic courts’, or ‘national courts’. As already noted, whilst much smaller than the ever-growing Union, the Community contains the law making powers of the Union, and therefore it determines its legislative competency. The next section will also attempt to draw attention to areas where name changes have lead to confusion. Despite the wholesale use of the term ‘European Union’ it is useful to deal with name changes incrementally by going back to the creation of the Community and tracing its development into the Union. Those matters chosen for discussion are those most likely to be problematic and necessary to properly understand from the perspective of legal method.

2012 ◽  
pp. 145-145

Author(s):  
Jonathan Roux ◽  
Clément Massonnaud ◽  
Pascal Crépey

1AbstractOn March 16 2020, French authorities ordered a large scale lockdown to counter the COVID-19 epidemic wave rising in the country, stopping non-essential economic, educational, and entertainment activities, maintaining mainly food retailers and healthcare institutions. One month later, the number of new hospitalizations and ICU admissions had reached a plateau and were beginning a slow descent.We developed a spatialized, deterministic, age-structured, and compartmental SARS-CoV-2 transmission model able to reproduce the pre-lockdown dynamic of the epidemic in each of the 13 French metropolitan regions. Thanks to this model, we estimate, at regional and national levels, the total number of hospitalizations, ICU admissions, hospital beds requirements (hospitalization and ICU), and hospital deaths which may have been prevented by this massive and unprecedented intervention in France.If no control measures had been set up, between March 19 and April 19 2020, our analysis shows that almost 23% of the French population would have been affected by COVID-19 (14.8 million individuals). Hence, the French lockdown prevented 587,730 hospitalizations and 140,320 ICU admissions at the national level. The total number of ICU beds required to treat patients in critical conditions would have been 104,550, far higher than the maximum French ICU capacity. This first month of lockdown also permitted to avoid 61,739 hospital deaths, corresponding to a 83.5% reduction of the total number of predicted deaths.Our analysis shows that in absence of any control measures, the COVID-19 epidemic would have had a critical morbidity and mortality burden in France, overwhelming in a matter of weeks French hospital capacities.


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