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On Thursday 7 July 2010, the European Parliament approved the new SWIFT-Agreement on bank data transfers to the United States for counter-terrorist purposes (see the press release of the European Parliament). The Draft Agreement provides for mass bank data transfers upon request by the US authorities with a view to identifying suspected terrorists. It is [...]
Filed under: EU Common Foreign and Security Policy, EU-Law, EU/EC Law | 1 Comment »
Representatives of Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Serbia, Slovenia, the EU’s foreign policy chief Baroness Ashton, representatives of a number of EU countries, the US, Russia and Turkey are meeting today in a high-level summit in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina. The main topic of discussions is the future of the integration of the Balkan countries into the [...]
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Yesterday’s EUobserver has a concise and well-written piece on some of the issues which will need addressing as part of the EU’s accession to the European Convention on Human Rights. This is a topic which is likely to receive a lot of academic attention over the coming months.
Filed under: EU-Law, EU/EC Law, Europeam Court of Human Rights | 1 Comment »
In today’s Wall Street Journal Marcus Walker speculates that the admission of Turkey to the EU may be the only possibility left if Europe is to maintain its standing as an important international actor. The article somewhat echoes another article in this week’s Economist noting the need for the EU to become more realistic in [...]
Filed under: EC-Law, EU Common Foreign and Security Policy, EU-Law, EU/EC Law | 1 Comment »
As my first post I thought it appropriate to reflect on the September 2008 Kadi judgment of the ECJ, in which the Court held an EC Regulation to be in violation of fundamental rights.[i] What was fundamental to Kadi was that the EC Regulation at issue directly transposed a Chapter VII Security Council Resolution dealing [...]
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Maybe if Barroso is re-elected and gets his way. EU Observer has the story.
Filed under: EC-Law, EU-Law, EU/EC Law, Regional Human Rights | 1 Comment »
A brief follow-up on the ECJ’s Kadi decision and the Court of First Instance’s (CFI) – slightly less famous – PMOI decisions we reported earlier on (see here, here and here). The Kadi decision dealt with an EU regulation implementing a UN blacklist which provided for the freezing of financial means of suspected Al Quaida [...]
Filed under: EC-Law, ECJ, ECtHR, EU-Law, EU/EC Law, Environmental Law, Human Rights, Regional Human Rights, Regional Human Rights Protection | Leave a Comment »
Six years after the first publication a second updated and expended German version of the established and very well received volume on European Constitutional Law edited by Armin von Bogdandy and Jürgen Bast from the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law has been published. The volume bringing together German authors with [...]
Filed under: Book review, EU-Law, EU/EC Law, Public International Law, Publications, Relevant Literature, literature | Leave a Comment »
Today the Icelandic parliament voted in favor of applying for membership in the EU. The vote was rather close, 33 to 28. With this decision, the Icelandic government is basically authorized to begin accession talks with the EU. The road to full membership is, however, not a simple one. Several different steps have to be [...]
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The German Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe today handed down a decision in which it approved the Lisbon Treaty but delayed its ratification. According to the Court, there are no decisive constitutional objections to the Act Approving the Treaty of Lisbon. The Lisbon treaty is as such compatible with the German basic law (Grundgesetz). Moreover, in [...]
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This week, on 22 April 2009, the European Parliament approved an interim trade agreement with Turkmenistan (for the full text of the resolution see here). Such an agreement would facilitate market access of Turkmen goods to the European Community and vice versa. This information would probably not be worthy of more than a minor note [...]
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Today the ECJ issued two judgments on the failure of Member States to adopt appropriate measures to eliminate incompatibilities of bilateral investment agreements which they entered into with third countries prior to their accession to the EU. The Court ruled that Austria (Case C-205/06) and Sweden (C-249/06) have failed to fulfil their obligations according to [...]
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Today marks the one year anniversary of Kosovo declaring independence from Serbia. In many ways, the first year has been a mix of fortunes and misfortunes. Most importantly, Kosovo has largely remained peaceful despite initial warnings that the declaration of independence would lead to unrest and further fighting in the area. Kosovo’s politicians, its population [...]
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After a battle of several year the Iranian opposition group People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (“PMOI”) has succeeded in getting its name off the EU’s black list of terrorist organisations. As EUobserver reported on Tuesday, the EU Foreign Ministers agreed to remove the name of the organization from the list due to a lack of evidence [...]
Filed under: EC-Law, ECJ, EU Common Foreign and Security Policy, EU-Law, EU/EC Law, International terrorism, Public International Law | Leave a Comment »
It seems that the disputed military attacks led on Gaza by Israel in the past weeks have caused first tangible consequences for its external economic relations. Last week, it was reported that EU Commissioner Benita Ferrero Waldner froze the plans to upgrade its economic relations with Israel (for further information, see the following article in [...]
Filed under: EC-Law, EU-Law, EU/EC Law, Human Rights, Middle East Crisis, Public International Law | 1 Comment »
Today, 1 January 2009, the Czech Republic will take over from France the Presidency of the European Union (official website). The Presidency mainly consists of the responsibility for the functioning of the Council of the EU (i.e. organizing and chairing all the meetings of the Council) but has also evolved into some sort of representational duty of the [...]
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During the meeting of the Council of the European Union on 11 and 12 November agreement was reached with regard to a European Economic Recovery Plan (including a 200-billion-euro ($264 billion) pact to revive the battered economy), an energy/climate change package (reaffirming the commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20% below 1990 levels by 2020 and [...]
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On 9 December 2008 the European Commission stated that the products from 16 developing countries will benefit from duty-free access to the European Union under the “special incentive arrangement for sustainable development and good governance” (GSP+). The GSP+ is a specific tariff arrangement in the context of the Scheme of Generalised Tariff Preferences. It provides [...]
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On 4 December the Court of First Instance delivered its judgment in the matter People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (“PMOI”) v Council of the European Union (Case T‑284/08), where it declares one of the EU’s key instruments for the “fight against terrorism” partly unlawful. This case concerns Council Decision 2008/583/EC of 15 July 2008 which [...]
Filed under: EC-Law, EU Common Foreign and Security Policy, EU-Law, EU/EC Law, Human Rights, Public International Law | 1 Comment »
Today the Czech Constitutional Court rendered its much awaited decision on the relationship between the Czech constitution and the Lisbon Treaty. The Court decided that “[t]he Treaty of Lisbon amending the Treaty on European Union and Treaty on establishing the European Community and Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union are not in conflict with the constitutional [...]
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Yesterday, the Swedish parliament voted to approve the Lisbon Treaty (see press release here). After almost 9 hours of debate in the Riksdag, 243 MP voted in favour, 39 against, 13 abstentions (while 54 MP were not present). Apparently large parts of the debate in the parliament centered around issues that are of relevance from [...]
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The EU’s external relations with third countries have always offered excellent object lessons with respect to the omnipresent tension between the promotion of the EU’s essential moral values and the political and economic interests of its Member States. Most recent evidence to this effect can be found in the 2897th External Relations meeting of the [...]
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On Friday 3 October, the European Commission published a proposal on the extension and the improvement of the EU law framework on maternity leave (COM(2008) 600/4). The proposal forms part of a package of measures aimed at helping women to align their work with their family life. More specifically, according to Social Affairs Commissioner Vladimir [...]
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A few days ago, on 17 July 2008, the European Court of Human Rights handed down a rather hopeful judgement in the case of NA. v. the United Kingdom where it held that the applicant’s expulsion to Sri Lanka would be a violation of Article 3 of the ECHR. NA came to the UK clandestinely [...]
Filed under: EC-Law, EU-Law, EU/EC Law, Human Rights, Public International Law | Tagged: Add new tag | 1 Comment »
