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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 »
Yesterday, the UN Security Council agreed for the first time on Kosovo since the country’s independence proclamation in February this year and gave green light for further reconfiguration of the international civil presence in Kosovo with EULEX as the main future actor. As the Council was briefed on the implementation of its resolutions on Kosovo, most respectively Resolution 1244 (1999), it [...]
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The last two days the Czech Constitutional Court has been reviewing the Lisbon Treaty. The Court’s aim was to assess whether the Treaty is consistent with the Czech constitutional order. As it is commonly known the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty has encountered serious delay in the Czech Republic. While the Chamber of Deputies (the [...]
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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 [...]
Filed under: EC-Law, EU Reform, EU-Law, EU/EC Law | 3 Comments »
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 [...]
Filed under: EU Common Foreign and Security Policy, EU-Law, EU/EC Law, Human Rights, Public International Law | 1 Comment »
Yesterday, the UN General Assembly by 77 votes in favor, 6 votes against and 74 Member States abstaining backed Serbia’s proposal to submit the question of the legality of Kosovo’s independence to the International Court of Justice (ICJ). According to the resolution the ICJ will thus have to give an opinion on whether “the unilateral [...]
Filed under: EU/EC Law, International Courts, Public International Law, United Nations | 7 Comments »
Tomorrow the European Parliament is expected to approve a motion tabled by the Committee for Constitutional Affairs, which will adopt a flag, an anthem and a motto for the Union. Not surprisingly, the flag will be the well-known blue banner with the twelve stars. Equally unsurprising, the anthem will be based on the ‘Ode to [...]
Filed under: EC-Law, EU/EC Law | 1 Comment »
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 [...]
Filed under: EC-Law, EU-Law, EU/EC Law | 2 Comments »
Although the current world-wide financial crisis is indeed a bad one, it could just be that it might lead to a few good outcomes. One such outcome could be, according to Tony Barber of the Financial Times’ Brussels Blog, further European integration. It certainly appears that the dismal economic situation in Iceland has lead to [...]
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The Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe, Thomas Hammarberg has published his memorandum on the UK asylum and immigration system with a number of notable conclusions and recommendations. Amongst many other points, the memorandum attacks head-straight the lack of a legal framework regarding detention of asylum seekers in “Fast Track Processes”, proceedings [...]
Filed under: Council of Europe, EU/EC Law, Human Rights, Public International Law | Leave a Comment »
The European Court of Justice handed down its decision in the Kadi and Al-Barakaat joint cases on 3 September 2008.[1] After reviewing the treatment of the case by the Court of First Instance with considerable attention, the Court divided its conclusions into three separate but interdependent issues: (i) the Council’s competence in adopting the regulation [...]
Filed under: EC-Law, ECJ, EU/EC Law, Public International Law | 4 Comments »
This is the appeal stated by Lüder Gerken, director of the Centre for European Policy, and Roman Herzog, former President of Germany and former judge at the German Federal Constitutional Court. They illuminate their reasons behind this rather radical-sounding position in an article published in the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung from the 8 September. An [...]
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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 »
This is a follow up to my report of 17 September 2007. On the 1st July 2008 the Commission issued final Guidelines on the application of Article 81 EC to maritime transport services. http://ec.europa.eu/comm/competition/antitrust/legislation/maritime/ By virtue of Council Regulation 1419/2006, three fundamental changes were introduced in the maritime transport services market in the EU related [...]
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Today on 1st July, France takes over the presidency of the Council of the European Union from Slovenia. The transfer takes place at a crucial point in time for the EU. Following the Irish referendum of 12th June this year, when Ireland turned down the ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon (we reported earlier on [...]
Filed under: EC-Law, EU Reform, EU-Law, EU/EC Law | 1 Comment »
The long-awaited decision of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) over the compatibility of Directive 2005/35 with the international law of the sea was handed down on 3 June. It has been almost two years since the case was referred to the ECJ by the English High Court . Many of those waiting for the [...]
Filed under: EU/EC Law, Law of the sea, Public International Law | Leave a Comment »
Today the German lower house Parliament (Bundestag) passed the Treaty of Lisbon by 515 supporting votes, 58 against and one abstention. The result is a huge boost for the Reform Treaty, taking into account that the necessary two-thirds majority (408 supporting votes) was surpassed by a wide margin. The upper house of the Parliament (the [...]
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Yesterday the European Commission issued a statement to the effect that it had initiated two (separate) antitrust investigations against Microsoft Corp. on the alleged abuse of a dominant market position, i.e. infringement of the antitrust provisions of the EC-treaty (see Art. 82 EC Treaty: ‘Any abuse by one or more undertakings of a dominant position [...]
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In an effort to ease the free movement of the citizens of the European Union, land and sea border controls with the new member States (i.e. Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia) are being lifted today 21 December 2007 (air borders will follow in March 2008). After it was [...]
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Today the Treaty of Lisbon amending the Treaty on the European Union and the Treaty establishing the European Community will be signed in Lisbon. The ceremony, at which all 27 heads of State and government of the European Union as well as the president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, the president of the [...]
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On the 17th September 2007, the CFI issued a judgement in which it partly confirmed and partly annulled Commission’s decision of 2004 in Microsoft case. The case involved accusations of the abuse of dominant position by Microsoft in the PC operating system market by refusing to disclose interoperability information that would enable its competitors to [...]
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On the 14th September 2007 the European Commission issues long-promised (Draft) guidelines on the application of Article 81 of the EC Treaty to maritime transport services. The Guidelines were proposed (and asked for by some shipping industry participants) in light of the changes in the EU competition regulation of shipping sector. First, the liner conference block [...]
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According to a press release of the EU Parliament, the Parliament will work closely with the Commission to conclude the drafting of the EU Reform Treaty, although “some issues still need to be properly discussed“. What is interesting here is the fact that the two organs, which in essence represent the unity (vs. diversity) of [...]
Filed under: EC-Law, EU Reform, EU-Law, EU/EC Law | 1 Comment »
