Blogpost 31/2023 On 26 June 2023, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) announced that it had received written statements from 31 States Parties and eight intergovernmental organisations with regard to Case No. 31 (Request for an Advisory Opinion submitted by the Commission of Small Island States on Climate Change and International Law). As expected, this included European Union (EU) member states’ submissions. More precisely, from Poland, Germany, Italy, Latvia, France, Portugal and the Netherlands. However, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, the European Commission (EC) also ..read more

A decade after one of the most high-profile cases on the extraterritorial reach of EU law concerning the inclusion of global aviation emissions in the EU emissions trading system (‘ETS’) (Case C-366/10 Air Transport Association of America ‘ATAA’), the ECJ’s judgment in Case C-561/20 brought to light its lasting significance and its extension to a different aspect of air transport concerning passenger rights. It also reaffirmed the CJEU’s key role as a transnational actor when reviewing the geographic scope of secondary legislation. The CJEU has consistently extended EU regulation through two t ..read more

The question of whether the use of force can be justified based on humanitarian grounds has in recent years re-attracted considerable attention due to a range of incidents, including the air strikes in Syria in April 2018, Turkey’s ongoing military incursions in Syria, and the killing of Iranian major general Soleimani in January 2020. As shown by research conducted by the Just Security blog, the reactions to the air strikes in Syria highlight that the approaches to the illegal use of force among states around the world differ widely. While this is perhaps not altogether surprising, state prac ..read more

Introduction In a recent Opinion, Advocate General Juliane Kokott (AG) suggested that the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) should strike down a Hungarian national legislation which limits the operations of foreign academic institutions in Hungary. While the Opinion is a strong affirmation of academic freedom in the European Union (EU), it also gives guidance on the applicability of the World Trade Organization (WTO) provisions of the General Agreement on Trade in Services agreement (GATS) in the EU legal order. The most striking statement of the Opinion is that the EU shall enforc ..read more

Editor’s introduction On September 25, 2019, the Grenoble Alpes Data Institute, in cooperation with the Cross Border Data Forum and Microsoft, held in Brussels an academic workshop on the topic of cross-border access to electronic evidence, entitled: “E-Evidence: The Way Forward”. The goal of this workshop, organized by Professor Theodore Christakis, was to provide a convening space for European researchers and experts working on these issues to advance thinking about the challenges in the domain of government access to digitally stored data. At the meeting, the participants were invited to ..read more

By Theodore Christakis [1] I. Introduction: The Need to Unpack the Long-Awaited UK-US Data Sharing Agreement After four years of negotiations surrounded by secrecy, the United Kingdom and the United States finally released on October 7, 2019, the text of their Data-sharing agreement aiming to facilitate the cross-border access to electronic data for the purpose of countering serious crime. This long-awaited agreement is the first of the executive agreements envisioned by the CLOUD Act. It is, as rightly said, “critically important providing not just a window into the US and UK’s approach but a ..read more

Call for Chapters: Personal Data Protection and Legal Developments in the European Union Deadline for proposal submissions: 18 October 2019. Conference “Judges in Utopia: Civil Courts as European Courts” Amsterdam, 7-8 November 2019. Deadline for (free) registration: 18 October 2019. Conference “Socially Responsible Foreign Investment under International Law” Catholic University of Portugal, 24-25 October 2019. (Free) registration necessary. Workshop “Gender Based Approaches to the Law and Juris Dictio in Europe” University of Pisa, 19-20 June 2020. Deadline for abstract submissions: 15 Januar ..read more

Conference “Recognition of status filiationis established abroad: European perspectives and national resistance” University of Udine, 24 October 2019. Deadline for abstract submissions: 15 September 2019. 2020 ESIL Research Forum “Solidarity: The Quest for Founding Utopias of International Law” University of Catania, 23-24 April 2020. Deadline for abstract submissions: 30 September 2019. First Jean Monnet NOVA-EU workshop “Digitalisation, Ethics and EU Fundamental Rights” Maastricht University, 9-10 January 2020. Deadline for abstract submissions: 31 October 2019. Call for Papers “European Sta ..read more

By Sebastian Bechtel Currently pending before the CJEU is a fundamental issue regarding the assessment of environmental effects of major projects: Should their impacts only be reassessed when construction takes place? Or should there also be an environmental impact assessment (‘EIA’) if an aging project is allowed to continue operation many years beyond its originally projected lifetime, without any physical alterations? Case C-411/17 requires the Court to address its own interpretation of the EIA Directive in an earlier judgement which arguably contradicts the EU’s obligations under internati ..read more

Radboud Economic Law Conference “New Directions in Competition Law Enforcement” Radboud University, 24 May 2019. Deadline for abstract submissions: 22 February 2019. Doctoral Workshop “Bilateralism versus Multilateralism” University of Geneva, 19-20 September 2019. Deadline for abstract submissions: 15 March 2019. Summer School “Human Rights in Theory and Practice” University of Leipzig, 1-7 September 2019. Deadline for early bird registration: 31 March 2019. American Society of Comparative Law Annual Meeting “Comparative Law and International Dispute Resolution Processes” University of Missou ..read more