EU Law Blog

This is a little off topic but here goes. We’ve discussed issues of free movement of persons in the EU. But without rules on free movement of persons it can be difficult for people to move about. I was stunned to read today that the Halle Orchestra, founded in 1858 and based in my home town (city) of Manchester, has cancelled a planned US tour because it decided that the enormous cost of obtaining visas (because of lost work days due to the need to visit the US embassy in London for personal interviews) meant that the visit was not sensible from an economic point of view. I have heard similar stories about academics deciding not to try to come to the US because it is too complicated.

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The Registrar’s office will carry out evaluations of this class tomorrow at 12.05 pm.

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The Guardian’s story on the UK media regulator’s (Office of Communications, commonly known as Ofcom) proposals about restricting the advertising of food to kids is here. The full report is available here. Here is an excerpt from the proposals:

The aim of the revised advertising standards would be to reduce the level of hildren’s emotional engagement with food and drink advertisements. In summary,
• food and drink advertisements must avoid anything likely to encourage poor nutritional habits or an unhealthy lifestyle in children;
• advertisements for food and drink must not advise or ask children to buy, or ask their parents to buy, the products. There must be no appearance of encouraging children to pester others to buy the products on their behalf;
• promotional offers (including collectables and giveaways) in food and drink advertisements must not be targeted at children under 10;
• food and drink advertisements must not encourage children to eat or drink the product only to obtain a promotional offer;
• celebrities must not be used in food and drink advertisements whose content is targeted directly at children under 10. This would prevent advertisers from drawing on the authority and trust that children might vest in these characters;
• licensed characters must not be used in food and drink advertisements whose content is targeted directly at children under 10. This would prevent advertisers from using licensed characters (e.g. film or cartoon characters) that might make it difficult for younger children to distinguish between programmes and advertising;
• advertisers would remain free to use brand characters (that is those solely associated with a particular brand) on the grounds that they do not carry the same authority as licensed characters;
• nutrition claims must be supported by sound scientific evidence, and must not give a misleading impression of the health benefits of the product as a whole;
• no nutritional or health claims may be targeted at pre-school children (under 5 years); and
• advertisements must not condone or encourage excessive consumption of any food or drink.
These provisions would apply also to sponsor credits. Government sponsored or endorsed healthy-eating campaigns would not be exempted from these rules.

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Meanwhile, the EU has launched an online forum (in 20 different language versions) for debate about the EU’s future.

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As we have noted, English is becoming increasingly dominant as the language in which the EU functions. But some people are unhappy about this development. Last week Jacques Chirac, the French President, walked out of the summit meeting when the French head of UNICE (organisation of employers) addressed the meeting in English. According to the BBC story, President Chirac explained why he walked out as follows:

Faced with the efforts that we are making constantly, particularly within the European Union… I must say that I was deeply shocked to see a Frenchman speak at the council in English. That is the reason why the French delegation and I left, rather than have to listen to that.

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As I announced this morning, the week after next we will focus on EU environmental law. On Thursday 6 April we will move to Room 352 to hear from Margot Wallstrom, a Vice President of the EU Commission.

On Tuesday April 4 we will meet in our normal room and hear from Tomas Grönberg on the subject of the EU’s Climate Change Policy. Before the class please could you listen to this interview of Tim Flannery, an Australian paleontologist by Terry Gross (the audio link is at the top of the page).

Tomas Grönberg (B.A. with honors in Russian and Russian and Eastern European Studies, Grinnell College, 1982; Master of Arts in International Relations, Yale University, 1985) is EU Fellow for the academic year 2005/06 at the University of Miami European Union Center. A Swedish national, he represents the European Commission in Brussels, where he has been an administrator on environmental issues since 1996. Most recently he has worked as a political advisor (“Member of Cabinet’) to the European Commissioner for Environment with a particular responsibility for the preparation of new legislation on chemicals and for relations with the European Parliament. He was active in the “Yes to Europe” campaign before the Swedish referendum on whether to join the EU in 1995 and prior to that he was political advisor to the Swedish Minister for Culture and Immigration Affairs. He started off his professional career as Program Specialist at the U.S. Information Service at the American Embassy in Stockholm.

It’s not required for the classes or for the exam, but if you are interested in exploring EU environmental policy you can find some information on the Commission’s environment web pages (information on climate change is here).

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Some of the Member States are reluctant to welcome students from other Member States. Belgium now plans to limit the number of students from outside Belgium in its universities (see also the euractiv story here). In particular large numbers of French students have moved to Belgium to study medicine there:

The move comes as French students in particular come to Belgium to take advantage of easier access to medical studies and receive cheaper education in Belgium in their own language, reports Le Monde.

And another recent article says that Austria has similar issues:

Austria will cap the number of foreign students at its universities… in a bid to restrict German access to its medical faculties, despite a recent EU court ruling which declared earlier restrictions illegal.

The ECJ’s decision last year is here.

It’s worth noting that in the EU the Member States are prohibited from charging higher levels of tuition to students from other Member States than they charge to their own citizens (although they are permitted to charge higher tuition fees to students from outside the EU).

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For tomorrow’s class please read to page 19.

I asked you to think about whether the Austrian rule in the Trucks case was an indistinctly applicable rule or not. This matters because under Cassis, indistinctly applicable rules can be justified on the basis of public interest considerations that are not listed in Art 30. Rules which are not indistinctly applicable, but apply only to imports can only be justified by reference to the considerations listed in Art. 30.

The Court’s decision to examine whether the rule satisfied proportionality involved an assessment that environmental protection was a legitimate interest for the Member States. But the Court refers to “imperative requirements in the public interest endorsed by the case-law of the Court of Justice” rather than to Art. 30 as the basis for the Member States’ power in this area (para 84). The Court does not say that the rule in the case is indistinctly applicable.

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Daniel Davies at the Guardian distinguishes between traditional protectionism (protecting goods from competition) and a newer use of the term to refer to protecting businesses from foreign control. He argues that this new “protectionism” is much less harmful than the traditional variety:

There are, quite feasibly, a lot of uncommon but not impossible situations in which a democratic government might want to pass a law about the operations of a company, and not want to find itself being taken to a WTO tribunal for doing so.

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On Thursday 6 April in our usual class meeting time we will be moving to a different room for a special event:

Margot Wallström
Vice President of the European Commission
will be talking on
Governance and Democracy for a Sustainable Europe

When: Thursday, April 6, 2006, 11:00 am
Where: Room 352, Law School,
Coral Gables Campus, University of Miami

This is an event jointly organised by the Jean Monnet Chair, the UM/FIU EU Center, the UM Center for Ecosystem Science and Policy and the Law School.

Margot Wallström was born in Västerbotten, Sweden on 28 September 1954. Active in the Social Democratic Youth League, she was elected Member of the Swedish Parliament in 1979 after which she was appointed to the Government of Sweden as Minister of Civil Affairs (1988-91), Culture (1994-96) and Social Affairs (1996-98). With a keen interest for media and communications, she served as CEO of the Värmland Regional Television Network (1993-94) and Executive Vice President of Worldview Global Media in Colombo, Sri Lanka (1998-99).
Designated by the Swedish Government she was Environment Commissioner in the European Commission (1999-2004) ardently defending the Kyoto Protocol and putting forward a radical proposal for new European chemicals legislation. Since November 2004 she is Vice-President of the European Commission, responsible for Inter-institutional Relations and Communications Strategy, and also replacing Commission President Barroso in his absence. She wishes to use her present office to increase participatory democracy on a European level and believes that sustainable development could serve as a vision for European cooperation.
Ms. Wallström received honorary degrees from Chalmers University of Technology (2001) and Mälardalen University (2004) in Sweden, and University of Massachusetts, Lowell (2005) in the U.S. She received the International Association for Impact Assessment Global Environmental Award in 2004 and was voted the European Commissioner of the Year in 2002 by the readers of the European Voice.
Together with Göran Färm, Member of the European Parliament, she published in 2004 The Peoples’ Europe or Why is it so hard to love the EU? (“Folkens Europa eller Varför är det så svårt att älska EU?”)

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