What Has Changed in European Concept of Undertaking? From „FENIN“ to „EASY PAY“

Competition is the main self-regulatory principle of the market in general, internal market included. Competition law has the form of general clauses making its application dependant on the correct interpretation of general concepts. Core competition rules of the Functional Treaty („TFEU“) are addressed to undertakings; undertaking thus belongs to key concepts of competition law. Interpretation of this concept is decisive for the scope of competition rules application. So, the article explores different approaches of the case law to the interpretation of the concept of undertaking based on economic activity. It compares the FENIN doctrine and the new functional test of separability developed in EASY PAY. It drives attention to the impact of this new test for the evaluation of procurement activities under competition scrutiny.

Protection of Whistleblowers by the European Union, the Council of Europe, and the European Court of Human Rights

Whistleblower protection in the European Union is undergoing significant developments. The new Directive (EU) 2019/1937 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 October 2019 on the protection of persons reporting breaches of Union law sets a minimum standard for the protection of whistleblowers. It is awaiting implementation in Member States' national law by December 2021. However, a certain level of protection is also guaranteed by the European Court of Human Rights case law principles. Reports of illegal activities provided from close internal sources can strengthen the protection of the EU's financial interests. Adequate protection is needed to prevent retaliation against whistleblowers. As the deadline for transposing this directive approaches, the article aims to analyse the Directive 2019/1973 and compare it with the protection guaranteed by Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Development of the German Immigration Policy after 2015

Germany is seen and presented by itself as a welcome country. It is a country of immigration. First, there was the “Gastarbeiter” period when within agreements made by Germany and southern European states several thousand worker arrived in Germany and most of them made the country their permanent home. The country experienced another migration wave when the former Central-European countries became members of the European Union. In 2015, similar to other European States, Germany too experienced a migration-shock which resulted in a political-social turmoil in the German society. Not only politicians, but average people faced the same never-seen-before challenge on different levels, due to the number of migrants arriving in short term onto the territory of the state: one in the everyday life of its community, one in the political and legal perspective. Irrespectively of their reactions or adaptation methods, one common point of these actors was that they had to come to terms with the fact that a huge number of irregular migrants will stay long-term in Germany. However, the wave challenged the “welcome” country attitude both at political and at societal level. The author argues that roles, namely, the country affected by the migration wave, and the country being a leading European Union Member State became contradicted because of the measures introduced after 2015. This is underlined by the normative analysis of the main measures in this article, but because migration policy overlaps other policy areas, for example integration policy, interior policy, these measures touch upon different issues.

New EU Enlargement Strategy Towards the Western Balkans and Its Impact on Rule of Law

The rule of law is incorporated in the EU Founding Treaties and case-law of the Court of Justice of the EU and was included as a key requirement already in 1993 Copenhagen accession criteria. The EU enlargement is not only territorial increase, but also transposition of EU acquis to third countries. Since 1993, the monitoring mechanism of the rule of law reform in the EU accession countries was enhanced, including two specific negotiation chapters, Chapter 23 – judiciary and fundamental rights and Chapter 24 – justice, freedom and security. Over the last two decades, the EU was struggling to develop an adequate mechanism in this area, from mechanism for coordination and verification, to action plans for Chapter 23, to more specific tools like perception and experience surveys of the judiciary and functional reviews. Due to the challenges to measure progress and track record in the rule of law, in February 2020 the European Commission presented the new approach to EU Enlargement that aims to push reforms forward. The intention is to make the accession negotiations more credible, predictable and dynamic and criteria for assessing reforms in the accession countries will be based on the clearer criteria and more concise EU requirements. The article examines how EU enlargement policies influenced the rule of law reforms in Western Balkan countries over the years and what could be expected from the new approach. The research hypothesis is based on the correlation between Enlargement strategy towards the Western Balkans and its impact on rule of law in countries of the mentioned region. The methodological approach applied in the assessment is based on analysis of Enlargement strategy and other EU and national documents, as well as results of the work of judicial institutions in order to provide insight into the bottlenecks of the state rule of law in Western Balkan countries and enable identification of recommendations for improvement. The authors concluded that the new methodology would improve the measurability of the achieved results in the rule of law area, however, the approach might slow down the accession process of Serbia and Montenegro as a frontrunners in the process.

Maritime Concessions in Italy

The paper deals with the treatment – both legislative and judicial – of maritime concessions in Italy. It first analyses legal provisions regarding the term of duration of such concessions and then focuses on some recent sentences. The first of them could have made stronger the conflict between the Italian legal environment and EU one, as the legislative automatic prorogation of concessions was deemed to be legitimate. Luckily, further rulings stated that this legislative statute is not in line with EU law and so has to be non applied. The Council of State solved the question very recently: not only Italian legal discipline was sentenced not to be in line with the EU law, but also some guidelines were given to step out the impasse. Judicial review so proved out to be once again the key element to grant rule of law, even when relationships between different legal environments are concerned.

Torpedoing v. Carpet Bombing: Mutual Trust and the Rule of Law

The aim of this paper is to assess the most recent developments in the arising threats to the rule of law, in particular from the viewpoint of their impact on the judicial cooperation in light of the principle of mutual trust in the European Union. The paper analyses the development of this principle, the position of the Court of Justice of the European Union on the issue, and its views on recent challenges to the rule of law as a fundamental value of the EU, along with positions of other judicial bodies. The assessment then seeks to establish the impact the arising threats to rule of law in the EU, including judicial independence, may exert on the future application of the principle of mutual trust amongst judicial authorities of the Member States, and outline the implications arising therefrom.