This blog is hosted on Ideas on Europe
In defence of my proposed inter-pillar tie-breaker, I remarked that the Treaties have a tendency of being more integrationist – i.e. more inclined towards strengthening European integration – than the Member States, even though the Member States are supposed to be the Maîtres des Traités, the Masters of the Treaties. So I started to wonder: […]
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 […]
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 […]
The Ferry post raised an interesting issue that I’d only casually discussed elsewhere: if we are going to weigh the damage done by collusion against one or more associated benefits, which benefits for which consumers do we get to include? Inconveniently, it seems like the answer is benefits for the same set of individuals who […]
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 – […]
Virtually all Europeans imagine their right to an attorney to be more or less the way they see it in American cop shows on TV. In reality, however, the law in most European countries is not quite so generous. Even under the 2008 ECtHR ruling of Salduz v. Turkey, the right to have an attorney […]
Now that Commissioner Dalli suddenly appears to have un-resigned, the question is what to do. As far as I can see, under the Treaties there are two ways to get rid of a Commssioner. On the one hand, there is the approach that President Barroso has taken so far, which is codified in art. 17(6) […]
As part of her ongoing fight over the EU’s agreement with the US over the exchange SWIFT data, MEP Sophie in ‘t Veld is trying to get her hands on the full version of this Europol inspection report. The problem is that it is classified UE SECRET, which predictably led to Ms. In ‘t Veld’s […]
UACES and Ideas on Europe do not take responsibility for opinions expressed in articles on blogs hosted on Ideas on Europe. All opinions are those of the contributing authors.