Nijhoff Studies in European Union Law – serie

The Rome I Regulation on the Law Applicable to Contractual Obligations has unified the conflict of laws rules of the Member States. The influence of the European Union upon Private International Law goes beyond positive harmonisation however. There is a certain tension between European law and PIL. European law is concerned with whether the imposition of a rule constitutes a restriction to the internal market whereas PIL does not seek to neutralise the disadvantages that result from differences between national laws but instead tries to locate the geographical centre of the legal relationship. The present book attempts to identify the methodological disharmony between the two legal disciplines in the regulation of cross border contracts and proposes suggestions to enhance their mutual understanding.

In the EU, activities of the liberal professions (legal, medical, technical and accountancy professions) are subject to self- and state regulation. Traditionally their regulatory schemes have been legitimised on the basis of the societal role liberal professions assume, dismissing EU competition law as a means of addressing restrictions in professional services markets. Reflecting on the role of professional associations in rule making processes, this book assesses the authority and democratic legitimacy of professional rules with a comprehensive rereading of the principles governing EU competition law (including Article 102 and 106(2) TFEU). As a result, this book challenges the use of a diffuse public interest concept and the dichotomy maintained in past legal writing between competition and non-economic interests in professional regulation.

Today, consent is a fundamental concept in the European legal framework on data protection. The analysis of the historical and theoretical context carried out in this book reveals that consent was not an intrinsic notion in the birth of data protection. The concept of consent was included in data protection legislation in order to enhance the role of the data subject in the data protection arena, and to allow the data subject to have more control over the collection and processing of his/her personal information. This book examines the concept of consent and its requirements in the Data Protection Directive, taking into account contemporary considerations on bioethics and medical ethics, as well as recent developments in the framework of the review of the Directive. It further studies issues of consent in electronic communications, carrying out an analysis of the consent-related provisions of the ePrivacy Directive.

In The Civic Citizens of Europe: The Legal Potential for Immigrant Integration in the EU, Belgium, Germany, and the United Kingdom, Moritz Jesse analyses the legal framework within which inclusion of immigrants into the receiving societies can take place. The inclusion of immigrants cannot be enforced by law. However, legislation must provide the room within which integration can take place legally. By studying residence titles, procedures, rights to family migration, permanent residence, and integration measures in a comparative and critical way, Jesse wants to discover whether the legal potential for integration in the EU and the three Member States is sufficient for the inclusion of immigrants.

National Judges as EU law Judges: The Polish Civil Law System by Urszula Jaremba aims at filling a research gap in one of the key areas of EU law concerning its enforcement at the national level and the phenomenon of judicial behaviour. More precisely, it examines the way civil judges in Poland function as EU law judges, and the practical problems they encounter while striving to actualise this constitutive role. However, the book goes beyond the formal law scenario, and investigates how Polish civil judges establish their own understanding of EU law and the new requirements it has imposed upon them. To this end, the study employs an empirical − that is to say quantitative and qualitative − methodology and theory to result in a socio-legal study that combines legal and empirical insights into the way national judges function in the context of EU law.

The Political Accountability of EU and US Independent Regulatory Agencies is an in-depth investigation on the law and practices of the political accountability arrangements of the 35 EU and 16 US independent agencies. The comparative analysis demonstrates similarities between the political accountability arsenals and challenges to political oversight in the EU and the US. The greatest differences are revealed in the organization of the political accountability of independent agencies, i.e., ‘excessive diversity in the EU vs. uniformity in the US’, and the design of accountability obligations. Based on comparative insights, the book concludes with three recommendations on how the EU agencies’ political accountability could be adjusted in the ongoing reform on agencies’ creation and operation.

In Supranational Citizenship and the Challenge of Diversity Francesca Strumia explores the potential of European citizenship as a legal construct, and as a marker of group boundaries, for filtering internal and external diversities in the European Union. Adopting comparative federalism methodology, and drawing on insights from the international relations literature on the diffusion of norms, the author questions the impact of European citizenship on insider/outsider divides in the EU, as experienced by immigrants, set by member states and perceived by “native” citizens. The book proposes a novel argument about supranational citizenship as mutual recognition of belonging. This argument has important implications for the constitution of insider/outsider divides and for the reconciliation of multiple levels of diversity in the EU.

In this monograph, Aistė Mickonytė examines the compliance of the European anti-cartel enforcement procedure with the presumption of innocence under Article 6(2) of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The author maintains that the pursuit of manifestly severe punishment with insistence of the European Commission on administrative-level procedural safeguards is inconsistent with the robust standards of protection under the Convention. Arguing that EU anti-cartel procedure is criminal within the meaning of the Convention, this work considers this procedure in light of the core elements of the presumption of innocence such as the burden of proof and the principle of fault. The author zeroes in on the de facto automatic liability of parental companies for offences committed by their subsidiaries.

European citizenship is facing numerous challenges, including fundamental rights and social justice considerations. These get amplified in the context of Brexit and the general rise of populism in Europe today. This book takes a representative selection of these challenges, which raise a multitude of highly complex issues, as an invitation to provide a critical appraisal of the current state of the EU legal framework surrounding EU citizenship. The contributions are grouped in four parts, dealing with constitutional developments posing challenges to EU citizenship; the limits of the free movement paradigm in the context of EU citizenship; EU citizenship beyond free movement; and, lastly, EU citizenship in the context of the outside world, including Brexit, the EEA and Eurasian Economic Union.

In Due Process and Fair Trial in EU Competition Law, Cristina Teleki addresses the complex relationship between Articles 101 and 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The book is built around the idea that big business can threaten democracy. Due process and fair trial should be central to the process of addressing bigness through competition law, by safeguarding independent decision-making and judicial review and by preventing competition authorities from growing into administrative behemoths threatening democracy from inside. To show this, the book combines a comprehensive review of the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights with insight from economics, psychology and systems theory.

While the EU is the most emblematic Regional International Organization (RIO), the 'regional' perspective is largely absent in debates about the EU's identity and external posture. What does the 'regional' lens offer to the study of EU law? How is the regional dimension reflected in EU policymaking, and how does it impact norm production? This book offers the first critical, legal account of the EU as a RIO. It brings together scholars from different disciplines to reflect on the construction, use and misuse of the 'region' in EU law and practice and to examine how this dimension interacts with other RIOs.