Blogpost 27/2024 Transparency and environmental policy are two key issues in the upcoming European Parliament elections. In this regard, the General Court’s (‘the Court’) ruling on 13 March 2024 in the case of ClientEarth and Leino-Sandberg v Council provides some highly relevant insights. The Court annulled two Council decisions refusing to disclose the Council Legal Service’s opinion on the 2021 proposal to amend the Aarhus Regulation. While the Court’s critical approach to the Council’s justifications for secrecy is to be applauded, and the outcome of the case is certainly to be welcomed, t ..read more

Blogpost 26/2024 1. Introduction Air carriers often use clauses which prohibit the assignment of passenger claims. Such clauses have a generic scope but were mainly introduced to deter the assignment of claims under Regulation 261/2004 on air passenger rights (Air Passenger Rights Regulation – APRR) to commercial companies. The fairness of such clauses under the Directive 93/13/EEC on Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts (UCTD) has been disputed. In its judgment in C-173/23 Eventmedia Soluciones SL v Air Europa Líneas Aéreas SAU ECLI:EU:C:2024:295 (Judgment), the European Court of Justice (ECJ ..read more

Blogpost 25/2024 On 18 April 2024 the European Commission issued a recommendation for a Council Decision authorising the opening of negotiations for an agreement between the EU and the UK on youth mobility. This is the first time since the signing of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) in 2021 that the EU has proposed the conclusion of a legal framework for mobility of persons between the EU and UK. Free movement of persons ceased between the two as from 1 January 2021. Since then there has been a continuing exodus of EU nationals from the UK: 87,000 more EU nationals left the UK than ca ..read more

Blogpost 24/2024 The coming of spring promises many changes, including a newly elected European Parliament and a new college of Commissioners leading the European Commission. The re-opening of the Spitzenkandidaten system has also stirred the debate on the democratic legitimacy of the EU institutions. Focusing on the European Commission, one question that needs answering is about its members: are the European Commissioners creatures of the world of politics or instead independent experts of a technocratic ‘government’? Looking at it from a constitutional perspective, the Commission is a unicum ..read more

Blogpost 23/2024 For six months, Israel has been waging a brutal offensive on Gaza, killing over 30.000 Palestinians, destroying more than 60% of the homes in Gaza, and making Gazans account for 80% of those facing famine or catastrophic hunger worldwide. High Representative Borrell described the situation as an ‘open-air graveyard’, both for Palestinians and for ‘many of the most important principles of humanitarian law’. Yet, the Union and its Member States seem unwilling to use their capacity to deter Israel from further atrocities. European leaders continue to express steadfast political s ..read more

Blogpost 22/2024 The Digital Markets Act (DMA) is a regulation enacted by the European Union as part of the European Strategy for Data. Its final text was published on 12 October 2022, and it officially entered into force on 1 November 2022. The main objective of the DMA is to regulate the digital market by imposing a series of by-design obligations (see Recital 65) on large digital platforms, designated as “gatekeepers”. Under to the DMA, the European Commission is responsible for designating the companies that are considered to be gatekeepers (e.g., Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta ..read more

Blogpost 21/2024 In February, the German Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) rejected a motion regarding electoral thresholds in EU electoral law, finally allowing for the necessary national approval of Council Decision 2018/994. This Decision intends to amend the European Electoral act and, according to Article 223 (1) TFEU, must be approved by all Member States. Up until now, the court had held that thresholds in European elections were not compatible with German constitutional law. However, a draft legislative act proposes that some Member States would be obliged to esta ..read more

Blogpost 20/2024 On 7 March 2024, the ECJ released two very important decisions on the extent of the definition of ‘personal data’ under EU data protection law in cases C-479/22 P and C-604/22. The latter case involves a Belgian non-profit organisation called IAB Europe which designed a tool, a framework called TCF, with the purpose of enabling website providers and data brokers to process personal data lawfully (see Paragraph 20). The preferences that a user select via a consent management platform (CMP) are subsequently encoded in the TCF string which is a combination of letters and characte ..read more

Blogpost 19/2024 The Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive at risk In December 2023, following a lengthy Trilogue, a political agreement was reached regarding the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD); the first EU economy-wide mandatory due diligence legislative measure. The Directive aims to promote sustainable corporate conduct across global value chains, which include the full range of activities involved in the creation of a product or service. While the CSDDD is not a panacea, it is expected to foster a level playing field and improve corporate sustainabilit ..read more

Blogpost 18/2024 Since C-300/21 Österreichische Post, the first ECJ decision on non-material damages under GDPR, the ECJ has handed down multiple other decisions on the topic (C-340/21 Natsionalna agentsia za prihodite, C-667/21 Krankenversicherung Nordrhein, C-456/22 Gemeinde Ummendorf and C‑687/21 MediaMarktSaturn). There seems to be a marked effort by the Court to create a reliable jurisprudence for non-material damages. In fact, all the decisions have been assigned to and decided by the Third Chamber under Article 60 of the Rules of Procedure of the Court of Justice. This post analyses the ..read more