Volume 13, Issue 3


EU FISCAL GOVERNANCE: HARD LAW IN THE SHADOW OF SOFT LAW?

13 Colum. J. Eur. L. 705 (2007) Waltraud Schelkle. Lecturer in Political Economy, European Institute, London School of Economics and Political Science. A key element of economic governance in the European Union, the Stability and Growth Pact (Pact), underwent a major revision in March 2005. The many critics of this change claim that what was once a hard law institution for fiscal surveillance has now become so soft as to jeopardize its functioning. This Article examines, first, how exactly the fiscal rules have changed, using a framework which distinguishes hard law from soft law along a continuum in three dimensions of […]


NARROWING THE GAP: LAW AND NEW APPROACHES TO GOVERNANCE IN THE EUROPEAN UNION

13 Colum. J. Eur. L. 513 (2007) Gráinne de Búrca. Professor of Law, Fordham Law School. Joanne Scott. Professor of European Law, University College London; Visiting Professor, Columbia Law School. The collection of articles in this special issue of The Columbia Journal of European Law represents the results of a conference held in London in 2006. The aim of the conference was to develop a better understanding of how the increasing use of new governance in the European Union has affected our understanding of law and the role of law. In so doing, we hoped also to bring more clarity […]


RECONCEIVING LAW & NEW GOVERNANCE

13 Colum. J. Eur. L. 519 (2007) Neil Walker. Professor of Law, European University Institute, Florence, Italy. Gráinne de Búrca. Professor of Law, Fordham Law School. This Article re-examines the concepts of Law and New Governance with a view to pursuing three cumulative objectives. First, it emphasizes that both law and new governance are deeply contested concepts whose meaning and inter-relationship cannot just be assumed or taken for granted, as is the tendency in some empirical studies of their interconnection. Second, it suggests that both concepts be situated and understood within an explicitly normative framework, one that takes account of […]


NEW GOVERNANCE-THE SOLUTION FOR ACTIVE EUROPEAN CITIZENSHIP, OR THE END OF CITIZENSHIP?

13 Colum. J. Eur. L. 595 (2007) Stijn Smismans. Reader, School of Law, University of Cardiff. With its focus on decentralized participation, new governance may appear as strengthening active citizenship. It may, therefore, provide a solution for European citizenship that has, until now, mainly been defined as a rights-based status. Whilst new governance may contribute to the participatory dimension of citizenship, it may be at odds with the rights and the identity dimension of the concept. This article shows the difficulties of linking the idea of participatory governance to the concept of European citizenship. It subsequently analyzes how new governance […]


NEW GOVERNANCE & LEGAL REGULATION: COMPLEMENTARITY, RIVALRY, AND TRANSFORMATION

13 Colum. J. Eur. L. 539 (2007) David M. Trubek. Voss-Bascom Professor of Law Emeritus, University of Wisconsin Law School; Senior Fellow, Center for World Affairs and the Global Economy (WAGE), University of Wisconsin. Louise G. Trubek. Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the Health Law Project, University of Wisconsin Law School. New approaches to regulation have emerged to deal with inadequacies of traditional command and control systems. Such “new governance” mechanisms are designed to increase flexibility, improve participation, foster experimentation and deliberation, and accommodate regulation by multiple levels of government. In many cases, these mechanisms co-exist with conventional […]


COURTS AS CATALYSTS: RE-THINKING THE JUDICIAL ROLE IN NEW GOVERNANCE

13 Colum. J. Eur. L. 565 (2007) Joanne Scott. Professor of European Law, University College London and Visiting Professor, Columbia Law School. Susan Sturm. George M. Jaffin Professor of Law and Social Responsibility, Columbia Law School. This Article offers a step forward in developing a theory of the judicial role within new governance, drawing on the emerging practice in both the United States and Europe as a basis for this reconceptualization. The traditional conception of the role of the judiciary–as norm elaborators and enforcers-is both descriptively and normatively incomplete, and thus needs to be rethought. There is a significant but […]


FREEDOM TO PROVIDE HEALTH CARE SERVICES WITHIN THE EU: AN OPPORTUNITY FOR A TRANSFORMATIVE DIRECTIVE

13 Colum. J. Eur. L. 623 (2007) Tamara Hervey. Professor of Law, University of Sheffield, United Kingdom. Louise Trubek. Clinical Professor of Law, Director of Health Law Project, University of Wisconsin-Madison, United States. In the context of free movement of health care services, “the classic Community method” (CCM) of regulation through harmonized internal market law, underpinned by Treaty-based litigation, has failed At the same time, a plethora of new governance activities concerned with health care have grown up in the EU. This article argues that the current situation represents an opportunity to develop and design, ex ante, a new Trans- formative […]


LAW, GOVERNANCE, OR NEW GOVERNANCE? THE CHANGING OPEN METHOD OF COORDINATION

13 Colum. J. Eur. L. 649 (2007) Kenneth Armstrong. Professor of European Union Law, Queen Mary, University of London. Claire Kilpatrick. Senior Lecturer in Law, London School of Economics and Political Science.  As a novel technique of governance within the European Union, the “open method of coordination” (OMC) has attracted a significant degree of attention from the political science and legal community. Typically, analyses of the OMC characterize it with regard to two dominant conceptual reference points: the dichotomies of old/new governance and of hard/soft law. In this Article, the authors signal their dissatisfaction with the explicit or implicit deployment […]


ECONOMIC GOVERNANCE: HYBRIDITY, ACCOUNTABILITY AND CONTROL

13 Colum. J. Eur. L. 679 (2007) Imelda Maher. University College Dublin School of Law, Dublin, Ireland.   The aim of this Article is to explore the challenges posed for conventional accountability mechanisms by “new governance, ” understood as the wide range of processes with a normative dimension that do not operate through the formal mechanism of traditional legal institutions. It examines at what level of government and to what extent there should be accountability mechanisms and what those mechanisms should be, taking economic (specifically fiscal) governance as a case study. Economic governance in European Economic and Monetary Union is […]


CASE LAW: CASES C-94/04, CIPOLLA & MACRINO: THE EMERGENCE OF A POLITICAL APPROACH TO THE REGULATION OF PROFESSIONALS IN EUROPE?

13 Colum. J. Eur. L. 733 (2007) Marco Amorese. PhD, University of Brescia; LL.M., Harvard Law School, J.D., University of Milan, Studio legale Amorese (Bergamo). The Grand Chamber of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has delivered a judgment in joined cases once again addressing the issue of competition in legal services and the scope of Articles 49, 81, and 82 of the European Community (EC) Treaty. This judgment focuses on mandatory tariffs and establishes principles that should further competition in the provision of professional services, which has become an object of renewed attention from the Commission. At the same […]


LEG. DEV.: APPROXIMATION OF EUROPEAN ENVIRONMENTAL CRIMINAL LAWS: WITHIN OR BEYOND THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITY COMPETENCE?

13 Colum. J. Eur. L. 747 (2007) Dionysia-Theodora Avgerinopoulou. LL.M., J.S.D. Candidate, Columbia University School of Law. The objective of environmental protection requires an integrated approach employing a variety of instruments appropriate to influence conduct, ranging from public participation  to the  use of sanctions. Regulatory environmental administrative law remains at the heart of European Union (EU) Member States’ instruments for environmental protection. Recently, the European Community (EC) issued a proposal for a new Directive on the Protection of the Environment through Criminal Law (2007 Directive Proposal, Directive Proposal), which follows the example of both the Council of the European Union […]