EU Law Blog

We will begin with the questions we ended with today: should the EU harmonise contract law, property law, family law, criminal law, business organisation law etc? I tried to suggest that one alternative might be to try to make sure everyone could tell what the rules are in different jurisidctions and allow them to decide which rules they want to be subject to. Cf. the argument that in the US the states should be seen as little laboratories of democracy. Academics often like this sort of argument.

We will then move on to consider the core concepts of Community law, so you should read through to page 60. We’ll be starting another packet of materials soon.

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Will the EU continue to fund the Palestinian Authority after the elections in which Hamas prevailed?

Update: the answer appears to be yes (subject to conditions).

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This last weekend, the Austrian Presidency of the EU held a conference on the future of Europe called The Sound of Europe. The BBC interviewed some of the participants. Some commented that the event was elitist. This is an ongoing problem for the EU, that many EU citizens seem to feel that the development of the EU and those who are involved in it don’t have much to do with their lives (at least, not in any positive way). This week the Commission will publish its Communications White Paper which has been in preparation for some time and is supposed to show how the gap between the EU and its citizens can be bridged.

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We have been talking about whether enforcement actions are (consistently) effective. Today, Advocate General Poiares Maduro proposes a daily fine of EUR 265,500 for Italy (the Commission had asked for a fine of Eur 309,750 per day) for its failure to comply with a 2001 judgment of the ECJ:

On 26 June 2001, in Case C-212/99 Commission v Italy, the Court found Italy to have failed to fulfil its obligations under the provisions of the EC Treaty guaranteeing free movement of workers, by not guaranteeing recognition of the acquired rights of former foreign language assistants in six Italian universities (La Basilicata, Milan, Palermo, Pisa, La Sapienza in Rome and the Eastern University Institute in Naples), even though such recognition was guaranteed to Italian nationals.

The ECJ has not ruled on this question of whether the fine is appropriate and if so, how much it should be. I wonder how long it will take Italy to comply with the original judgment?

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Cyprus joined the EU in May 2004. Originally it was hoped that the Cyprus problem (the division of Cyprus after the Turkish invasion in 1974) would be resolved before Cyprus became part of the EU, but, despite the efforts of the UN, that did not happen. Turkey has now proposed an Action Plan to solve this problem and integrate the northern part of Cyprus into the EU. There are some useful links on Euractiv.

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Tomorrow we will continue to think about the relationship between the EU courts and national courts. We have learned that the EU’s court system is different from that in the US. There are EU courts but there isn’t a whole system of EU courts distributed throughout the EU (no equivalent to federal district courts and federal courts of appeals). As a practical matter the ECJ/CFI operate under severe resource constraints. In addition, EU legislation works differently from US federal legislation, and that has implications for jurisdiction.

Let’s consider an example. If Bill in Florida wants to complain that he has been defrauded by Ted he has a claim under state law which will (usually) be heard in state court. Diversity would make a difference but there is no equivalent in the EU system, although there are rules which are applied to decide which state’s courts have jurisdiction over the dispute. There is a European Judicial Network on Civil and Commercial Matters with a website which helps people decide where and how they should bring their claims.

There’s more.
(more…)

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Free movement of workers is one of the fundamental freedoms guaranteed by the EC Treaty, but, as Ambassador Bruton pointed out today, this freedom is not yet generally extended to workers from the Member States which joined the EU in 2004. EurActiv has collected some information resources on this issue, noting that there is a lack of transparency and clarity about what the EU and national rules are in this area.

The Ambassador referred to the “Polish plumber” the French were supposedly afraid of in context of the Constitutional referendum. Here is how (apparently as a joke) Poland tried to reassure the French about their plumbers (via Mahalanobis):

The director of the Polish tourist board who was responsible for this poster was subsequently fired.

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It seems that Turkey has dropped the case against Orhan Pamuk for denigrating Turkishness by writing about the Armenian genocide. The case was written about as indicating that Turkey did not protect speech sufficiently for membership in the EU.

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The EU has adopted an action plan on animal welfare. This isn’t just about harmonising existing standards:

The Action Plan proposes that current minimum standards for animal welfare be upgraded across the EU, in line with latest scientific information and public demand. It suggests expanding these minimum standards to include species currently not covered by EU provisions. Rules should also be designed to ensure proper application and enforcement of these standards.

Is this consistent with subsidiarity?

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The EU’s working languages are English, French and German, but Spain argues that Spanish should be regarded as a more significant EU language than it is on the grounds that very large numbers of people in the world speak Spanish. And in the context of enlargement and the reorganisation of translation services that is occurring as a result of enlargement, Spain has been arguing that the reorganisation does not adequately reflect the significance of the Spanish language.

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