International Law

Patent Court, National Courts and EU Law: Opinion 1/09

Posted on March 19, 2011
The Court of Justice has handed down a very significant Opinion in Case Opinion 1/09 on the compatibility with EU law of a draft agreement which aims to set up a new European Patent Court system. We?ve written about that...

Court Statistics for 2010

Posted on March 03, 2011
The Court of Justice, the General Court and the Civil Service Tribunal have published a summary of their case statistics for 2010. There's good news and bad news. The good news first: The average time for dealing with cases before...

Cannabis, Coffee Shops, Non-Discrimination and Public Policy: Case C-137/09

Posted on December 28, 2010
The Court of Justice has handed down an intriguing judgment in Case C-137/09 Marc Michel Josemans v. Burgemeester van Maastricht about the right to restrict the access of non-residents to places called "coffee shops" which sell dope legally in the...

Population, Voting in Council and Qualified Majority: Council's Rules of Procedure

Posted on December 27, 2010
Season's greetings, Dear Readers ! To help you in those end of year trivia quizzes, you'll be pleased to know that the Council has once again amended its Rules of Procedure to quantify the 62% population threshold set out in...

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New Commission Communication on Penalty Payments in Infringement Procedures: Article 260 §3

Posted on December 11, 2010
Consequently, since the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, if the Commission considers that a member State has not complied with a Court judgment, it has to accomplish only one pre-litigation procedural step, namely the sending of a letter of formal notice requesting the member State to submit its observations...

Workload of the Court of Justice: The House of Lords EU Committee Inquiry

Posted on December 08, 2010
The House of Lords European Union Select Committee - of which we are big fans - is currently conducting an inquiry into the workload of the Court of Justice and the impact of the Lisbon Treaty. In the words of...

Internet Sales, Jurisdiction and Consumer Protection: Joined Cases C-585/08 and C-144/09

Posted on December 07, 2010
The Court of Justice has handed down an interesting, well written and important judgment on the competent jurisdiction to deal with disputes concerning services offered on the internet in Joined Cases C-585/08 and C-144/09 Pammer and Hotel Alpenhof. The Court...

Bilateral Investment Treaties, Arbitration and EU Law: Eureko BV v Slovak Republic

Posted on November 27, 2010
We may have hinted at this before: Bilateral investment treaty litigation is the new, big frontier of EU law. This arbitral award in the case of Eureko BV v. The Slovak Republic will delight some, worry others. The story, much...

New Financial Market Supervision Authorities: Interesting Article

Posted on November 17, 2010
The enduring financial crisis in Europe has exposed a tremendous weakness in the supervision of financial markets. What supervision was actually exercised not only failed to prevent a crisis but may have precipitated it. In September 2010, the European Parliament...

Judicial Appointment to the General Court: Judge Dimitrios Gratsias

Posted on November 14, 2010
After the difficulties surrounding the appointment of a judge from Greece to the General Court (about which see here), a brilliant appointment appointment has been made. Judge Dimitrios Gratsias has been appointed to the General Court, to replace Judge Mihalis...

New Framework Agreement between the European Parliament and Commission

Posted on November 14, 2010
There's big trouble brewing between the Council and the Commission. The European Parliament and Commission have, apparently, concluded a new "Framework Agreement" on how the two institutions should coöperate (for a press release see here). This new agreement, signed on...

We are back!

Posted on November 12, 2010
After a long break, we are back! Many thanks to our patient readers for sticking with us.

Judicial Appointments in the General Court and Court of Justice

Posted on July 08, 2010
There's been quite a lot of activity on appointments of judges to the Court of Justice and, especially, the General Court lately. They are the first appointments to be made under the new procedure laid down in Article 255 TFEU...

State Aid Procedure, Access to File and Transparency: Case C-139/07 P

Posted on July 04, 2010
The Court of Justice has handed down a controversial judgment in Case C-139/07 P Commission v. Technische Galswerke Ilmenau GmbH. It held that the EU institutions may refuse under Regulation 1049/2001 to grant members of the public access to documents...

Mobile Phones; Roaming Charges, Price Caps and Harmonization: Case C-58/08

Posted on June 08, 2010
The Court of Justice has handed down an important judgment in Case C-58/08 Vodafone and Others v. Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform upholding the legality of Regulation 717/2007 - the Roaming Regulation. Anyone who has used...

Students, Free Movement, Discrimination and Restrictions: Case C-73/08

Posted on June 06, 2010
The Court of Justice has handed down an important and interesting judgment on the right of a member State to restrict the number of students coming from other member States. In its judgment in Case C-73/08 Nicolas Bressol and others...

Antitrust Fines, Due Process and the ECHR

Posted on May 20, 2010
Over at the highly recommended ECHR Blog, there's an excellent post on EU antitrust fines and ECHR fair trial rights. The author of the post, Felix Ronkes Agerbeek, is an eminent lawyer, who works in the Commission's presitigious legal service,...

Consumer Collective Redress: Comments of EESC

Posted on May 18, 2010
The European Economic and Social Committee has published an interesting opinion on the Commission's Green Paper on Consumer Collective Redress (or class actions, to call it by another name). For a brief explanation of what a Green Paper is, see...

Data Privacy, Independence of National Supervisory Authorities and Scrutiny: Case C-518/07

Posted on May 15, 2010
We need to catch up on some juicy judgments! A while back, the Court of Justice declared in Case C-518/07 Commission v. Germany that Germany had breached Article 28 §1 of Directive 95/46/EC on data protection because the authorities it...

Amendment to the Lisbon Treaty: Protocol N° 36 on Number of MEPs

Posted on May 04, 2010
There's a proposal to amend the Lisbon Treaty and its Protocol n° 36 already! It concerns the number of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs). At present there are 736 members. When the European elections were last held, in June...

Freezing of Terrorist Funds, Social Assistance to Spouses and Interpretation of EU Law: Case C-340/08

Posted on May 02, 2010
The Court of Justice recently narrowed the scope of EU measures taken to freeze the funds of designated terrorist organizations in Case C-340/08 M v. Others. The Council adopted Regulation (EC) No 881/2002 of May 27th 2002 imposing certain specific...

New Rules on Comitology Proposed

Posted on April 27, 2010
The Commission has made a proposal to the Council and European Parliament - COM (2010) 83 final - to reform the "comitology" procedure. The proposal seeks to implement Article 291 TFEU that lays down that the European Parliament and the...

Vertical Restrictions : New Block Exemption

Posted on April 24, 2010
The Commission has finally adopted its new regulation - Regulation 330/2010 - block exempting under Article 101 §3 TFEU certain distribution arrangements and other vertical restrictions. The new Regulation provides that manufacturers, in order to benefit from the block exemption,...

EU Accession to the ECHR

Posted on April 06, 2010
Article 6 §2 TEU provides that the EU shall accede to the European Convention of Human Rights. Easier said than done, of course. But now the wheels of accession are in motion. The Commission has proposed negotiating directives to the...

New Publication of Consolidated Treaties

Posted on March 30, 2010
There's a new publication of the consolidated version of the Treaties in the OJ, 2010 C 83, p. 1. You can download the complete version here. Here's the link to the full collection which includes the Treaty on the European...

Google, AdWords, Internet Referencing and Trade Marks: Joined Cases C-236/08 to C-238/08 and Case C-278/08

Posted on March 28, 2010
The Court of Justice has handed down two important judgments on trade mark protection and internet keyword advertising. The first is in Joined Cases C-236/08 to C-238/08 Google France and others v. Louis Vuitton and others and the second in...

ECJ Blog revamped, relauched

Posted on March 27, 2010
We're pleased to let you know that the ECJ Blog, another pioneer blog on EU law, has recently got a substantial facelift and has relaunched. The new design looks good. Perhaps we should redesign our own... But there are only...

Expansion of EU Competence: Paul Craig's Article on Competence and Member State Autonomy

Posted on March 23, 2010
Professor Paul Craig of Oxford University has written a short article that really needed writing. It is entitled "Competence and Member State Autonomy: Causality, Consequence and Legitimacy". You can download it on SSRN here. The article is very clearly written...

Dirty Movies, Solitary Pleasure and Concept of Cinema: Case C-3/09

Posted on March 21, 2010
Watching a dirty movie on your own in a cubicle is not, according to the Court of Justice, a cultural moment coming within the concept of "cinema". So held the Court in its judgment in Case C-3/09 Erotic Center BVBA...

Court Statistics for 2009

Posted on March 19, 2010
The Court of Justice has presented its statistics for 2009. It claims that it has it has completed in 2009 one of the highest numbers of cases in its history: 543 cases as compared to 495 in 2008. That is...

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