It looks as if Simon Usherwood was asked the same question I was: How to win at Brexit. My answer would begin by taking a step back and loving the bomb. Winning at Brexit is the wrong question. The goal is winning at life. Winning Brexit is simply the best way to do that, but […]
In the last few days, I’ve ended up in Twitter conversations with two British journalists I greatly respect, only to discover that when they look at the EU they see something completely different than what I see. This is not a question of factual knowledge. They know as much about the EU as I do, […]
Is it blue or is it a car? This may seem like a strange question, but it is exactly the kind of question that the European Court of Justice was faced with in yesterday’s Commission v. Parliament and Council (Cross-border exchange of information on road safety related traffic offences): Is Directive 2011/82 facilitating the cross-border […]
Verfassungsblog wins the prize for the law geek question of the week/year/decade: Now that the European Court of Justice, in Digital Rights Ireland, has annulled Directive 2006/24, can Sweden get its infringement fine back? After all, in Case c-185/09 (proper judgement in French and Swedish only) the Court found that “by failing to adopt, within […]
Now that all major parties have chosen their nominee for Commission President, it is time for the next question: How can we tell who’s won? Let’s assume that the result is the same as the most recent polls: S&D: 209 EPP: 202 GUE-NGL: 67 ALDE: 61 ECR: 45 Greens: 44 EFD: 31 NI: 92 […]
Last month, AG Cruz-Villlalon published his opinion in the case about the Dutch thuiskopieerheffing, the levy on writable media for the purposes of compensating copyrights holders for legal and illegal private use copying. While the opinion is probably correct, I think there is something very very wrong with it. (The opinion isn’t currently available in […]
Good news: In the Terschelling Ferries case that I blogged about on Monday, EVT won on appeal! The Court of Appeals in The Hague ruled today that EVT gets to continue to operate between Harlingen and Terschelling for the time being. (A new regulatory scheme is currently the subject of parallel litigation. Don’t ask.) Competition Law As […]
Recently, the District Court in The Hague tackled an interesting case about competition between ferry companies. While some of the legal details make the Court’s decision quite obviously right, the economics of the case are worth digging into a little further. Starting on 18 November 2008, a company called EVT – Eigen Veerdienst Terschelling – […]
A more specific passage from the Cohn-Bendit & Verhofstadt book that makes me mad: « La zone euro ne souffre toutefois pas uniquement de ce manque de solidarité. La discipline est également défaillante, alors qu’elle constitue la seconde condition nécessaire à la pérennisation d’une zone monétaire. Tous savaient depuis longtemps que les Grecs étaient incapables […]
The story of Tonio Borg’s confirmation as the next Maltese Commissioner for Health and Consumer Protection keeps getting stranger. In response to the objections in the S&D group, the Parliament has listed a series of commitments that Mr. Borg is to make in order to be confirmed. They are: The delivery of the legislative proposal […]