7 Colum. J. Eur. L. 159 (2001) Udo Di Fabio. Justice of the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany (Second Senate); Professor of Law, Universität Munchen. The European Charter of Fundamental Rights opens the door to a constitutional debate. The discussions, which revolve primarily around guaranteeing fundamental rights, express familiar entrenched positions that range from guaranteeing liberties to engineering social outcomes. However, more fundamentally the Charter is about what form the European Union (EU) will take in the future and about the core concept that will give the Union its identity. Categories based upon the closed nation-state are important starting points, […]
Jerald Khoo
495 posts
7 Colum. J. Eur. L. 173 (2001) Larry Catá Backer. Professor of Law. Pennsylvania State University, Dickinson School of Law, 150 S. College Street. Carlisle, PA 17013, USA, 717.240-5243 (direct), 717.240-5126 (fax). “I’ll be damned. So, if Gouverneur Morris were drafting today, he would have had to write ‘We, the Peoples of the United States.’ How different that sounds.” St. John pursued her advantage. “Good stylist that he was, that’s what Governeur Morris would have to write. But more correctly, ‘We, the Peoples of the signatory States.’ If he had had then to compose the phrase in the French he spoke so well, it would have been […]
7 Colum. J. Eur. L. 241 (2001) Clare McGlynn. Reader in Law, Department of Law, University of Durham, UK. “The beginning of the twenty-first century is a symbolic moment to give shape to the new social contract on gender, in which de facto equality of men and women in the public and private domains will be socially accepted as a condition for democracy, a prerequisite for citizenship and a guarantee of individual autonomy and freedom, and will be reflected in all European Union policies… Both men and women, without discrimination on the grounds of sex, have a right to reconcile […]
7 Colum. J. Eur. L. 273 (2001) Dr. Geert van Calster. Institute of Energy and Environmental Law, K.U.Leuven, member of the Brussels Bar (geert.vancalster@law.kuleuven.ac.be). Judgment of 15 June 2000 in Joined Cases C-418/97 and C-419/97, Arco Chemie Nederland Ltd. v. Minister van VROM, and Vereniging Dorpsbelang Hees & Others v. Directeur van de dienst Milieu en Water van de Provincie Gelderland & Others (not yet reported). Waste – Framework Directive – Definition – Secondary raw materials. Once a substance falls within the definition of “waste”, an extensive regime of permits, taxes, etc., is set in motion. Consequently, qualifying a substance […]
7 Colum. J. Eur. L. 280 (2001) Dries Van Eeckhoutte. K.U. Leuven. Facts International trade in textile products has, since 1974, largely been regulated by the Multifibre Arrangement (“MFA”), a pragmatic arrangement between developing (i.e. exporting) countries, on the one hand, and developed(i.e. importing) countries on the other, which contravened many of the fundamental tenets of the GATT system. Indeed, the MFA was simply an instrument of trade restriction which was forced upon textile-exporting developing countries who had to adhere to it lest more stringent unilateral restrictions be imposed by their developed country partners. To the extent that it was […]
7 Colum. J. Eur. L. 293 (2001) Sophie A. Hausler. The directive combating late payment in commercial transactions represents yet another example of the European Union’s influence on the contract law regimes of EU Member States. Efforts to arrive at Community legislative action on the subject of late payment reach back as far as 1994, when the European Parliament, in connection with its resolution on the integrated program in favor of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), asked the Commission to submit proposals to deal with the problem. In reaction, on May 12, 1995, the Commission adopted a recommendation on payment […]
7 Colum. J. Eur. L. 297 (2001) reviewed by Lawrence B. Landman. Dr. Landman earned his B.A. from SUNY, Stony Brook; his J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law; his M.B.A. from Columbia University; and his Ph.D. from Roskilde University in Denmark. He works with Oxford Research in Copenhagen, Denmark, and Magle International Business Law in Lund, Sweden, helping high-technology firms develop, market, and license their technology. Morten Broberg’s The European Commission’s Jurisdiction to Scrutinise Mergers offers a thorough, comprehensive analysis of the jurisdictional aspects of the European Community’s Merger Control Regulation (the Regulation). This well- researched […]
7 Colum. J. Eur. L. 1 (2001) Christian Joerges. Professor of Law, European University Institute (EUI), Florence (at present Thyssen Visiting Professor of European Economic Law, Columbia University Law School). The main title of this contribution is theoretical and ambitious. The subtitle, however, announces more easily comprehensible narratives. It would indeed be hardly manageable to discuss systematically and comprehensively with all the complex issues which this contribution is going to deal with. On the other hand, any effort to address the “real life” of modern markets will have to take the issues named in the main title seriously. Our market […]
7 Colum. J. Eur. L. 21 (2001) Pavlos Elefiheriadis. Lecturer in Law, London School of Economics and Political Science and Visiting Professor, Columbia Law School in Spring Term 2001. CAN EUROPE HAVE A CONSTITUTION? Can Europe have a Constitution? The question is complex. All the words involved are ambiguous. First, what do we mean by “Europe”? We casually restrict the term to the European Union forgetting that many states that are part of Europe are not and do not wish to become part of the European Union. Even if our focus is explicitly on the European Union, shall we include […]
7 Colum. J. Eur. L. 41 (2001) Donato F. Navarrete. Rosa Maria F. Egea. Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Autonomous University of Madrid). European history has taught us two lessons. The first is that the unification of Europe has not been achieved by armed force despite the various attempts to do so over the last two centuries (e.g., Napoleon, Hitler, etc). The second, which also serves to explain the failure of these attempts, is that the countries of Europe have used every means possible to prevent the emergence of a preeminent power among them which could threaten their security. The corollary of […]
7 Colum. J. Eur. L. 63 (2001) Vivian Grosswald Curran. Associate Professor of Law, University of Pittsburgh. B.A. University of Pennsylvania; M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D., J.D. Columbia University. [L]a grandeur du ginie ne consisterait-elle pas …à savoir dans quel cas il faut l’uniformité et dans quel cas il faut des différences? – Montesquieu. (Charles de Secondat, baron de), De I’Esprit des Lois, livre xxix, chapitre xviii (1990) (“[Dloes not the greatness of genius consist in knowing in which case uniformity is needed, and in which case differences?”) The main thrust of this article is to suggest why the European Union may succeed in […]
7 Colum. J. Eur. L. 127 (2001) Marlies Desomer. Assistant, Institute for European Law, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. Procedure: Application for leave to submit observations in response to the Opinion of the Advocate General; Fundamental rights Facts On December 19, 1997, the President of the Arrondissementsrechtbank in ‘s- Gravenhage (District Court, The Hague) referred twelve questions to the Court for a preliminary ruling under Article 177 (now Article 234) of the Treaty Establishing the European Communities (TEC) on, inter alia, the validity of Council Decision 97/803/EC of November 24, 1997, amending Council Decision 91/482/EEC on the association of the overseas countries […]
7 Colum. J. Eur. L. 134 (2001) Thalia Kruger. Assistant at the Institute for International and Foreign Law, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. This judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Communities (ECJ) considers two questions regarding the interpretation of the Convention on Jurisdiction and Enforcement of Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters, 1968 (“Brussels Convention”). It is in the form of an answer to preliminary questions referred by the Court of Appeals of Versailles, France. The first question, pertaining to the general scope of the Convention, is whether the Convention should be applied when the plaintiff is not domiciled […]
7 Colum. J. Eur. L. 141 (2001) E. Dana Neacsu. Reference Librarian, Arthur Diamond Law Library, Columbia University School of Law. On October 2, 2000, the European Union (EU) Convention, specially constituted by the European Council to compose an EU draft Charter of Fundamental Rights (Charter), officially issued its Charter. On October 13, 2000, Roman Herzog, the President of the Convention, forwarded the Charter to the European Council for a preliminary discussion at the Biarritz summit. At the end of the summit, the European Council unanimously endorsed the draft Charter and “no Member State … reopened the debate on its […]
7 Colum. J. Eur. L. 147 (2001) reviewed by Lisa Gambone. The Hague: Kluwer Law International, 2000. 260 pages. On October 2, 2000 the Human Rights Act of 1998 (the Act) came into full force in the United Kingdom. The Act constitutes something that the common law tradition of the United Kingdom has lacked for many years – a bill of rights. It is thought that the Act, taking its cues from the European Convention on Human Rights, “will change the fundamental relationship between citizens and the state.” The introduction of a written set of human rights laws poses many […]
6 Colum. J. Eur. L. 271 (2000) Petros C. Mavroidis. Professor of Law, University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, Visiting Professor of Law at Columbia Law School and CEPR (Centre For Economic Policy Research). The notorious ERTA decision by the European Court of Justice (ECJ), if viewed from a federalist perspective independently of its legal merits, represents an equilibrium: the quantity of the sovereignty transferred from European Community (EC) Member States to the Community at the internal (intra-EC) level equals the quantity of sovereignty that the Community can exercise on behalf of the EC Member States on the international scene. The ECJ’s […]
6 Colum. J. Eur. L. 275 (2000) Asteris Pliakos. Associate Professor of European Law, Athens University of Economics and Business. Jean Monnet Professor of European Law. No issue is of greater importance to the European Union in the opening decades of the twenty-first century than whether and how European political unity will be attained. After years of deepening the integration process, the EU continues to face a series of fundamental challenges that require novel political solutions. In the wake of politically highly sensitive events, above all the Balkan War, the EU has demonstrated obvious ineffectiveness as a unified political actor […]
6 Colum. J. Eur. L. 289 (2000) Barry J. Rodger. Senior Lecturer, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. There are a number of reasons why a contemporary analysis of competition policy in a global economy is necessary and instructive. First, the Thatcher/Reagan era attack on the welfare regulatory state has been questioned in the late 1990s and this has profound implications for the role of competition policy. The newer approach to markets and state regulation can perhaps be best indicated by the much-vaunted “third way” promoted by UK Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Labour Government. More particularly there has been a sustained critique […]
6 Colum. J. Eur. L. 321 (2000) János Volkai. Ph.D. Candidate, European University Institute, Florence (Thesis Title: The Present and Future Application of Community Antitrust Law in Hungary). Administrator, Competition Law and Policy Division, OECD, Paris (janos.volkai@oecd.org). Veri Juris – Nous n’en avons plus: si nous en avions, nous ne prendrions pas pour règle de justice de suivre les moeurs de son pays. C’est là que ne pouvant trouver le juste, on a trouvé le fort, etc. (B. PASCAL, PENSEES 121 (1936), point 235) INTRODUCTION On the basis of a submission by a Hungarian citizen, in Judgment No. 30 of […]