17 Colum. J. Eur. L. 601 (2010) Natalie L. St. Cyr Clarke, LL.B, King’s College, London, 2011; J.D., Columbia Law School, 2011. Despite increasing revenues in European football, the overwhelming majority of club finances are in disarray. Many calls have been made for UEFA  and national football associations to institute salary caps and other financial restrictions on clubs in order to combat the high levels of debt that many face. This note looks to North American practices, which views sport primarily as a business opportunity, in order to ascertain what profit-maximizing practices can be  incorporated/adopted into European football culture. This paper discusses the new Financial Fair Play Regulations and hypothesizes the compatibility […]

17 Colum. J. Eur. L. 557 (2010) Andrew T Hopkins, Notes and Comments Editor, Emory International Law Review; J.D. Candidate, Emory University School of Law (2011). This Article advances the nascent discussion of individuals’ Internet access rights. Scholarship on Internet access rights becomes more necessary as many public services, as well as occupational and educational devices, move into the online realm. This Article provides a full analysis of “three strikes” laws, which provide that an individual may be denied Internet access by a government agency when that individual has been found to engage in online file-sharing without permission. The Article looks specifically at Europe, where France and the U.K.  have adopted such laws and […]

17 Colum. J. Eur. L. 477 (2010) Amedeo Arena, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in European Union Law at the University of Naples ‘Federico II’, Ph.D. in International Law (University of Naples ‘Federico II’), LL.M. in International Legal Studies (New York University), LL.M. in European Law (King’s College London). The introduction by  the Treaty of Lisbon of a catalogue of competencies into the TFEU  eliminated the overlap between the preclusion of national lawmaking powers resulting from the exclusive character of E. U.  competences and that attributable to the enactment of E. U.  legislation. This opened the door for scholarly investigation of Union Preemption as a general theory of the effects of E. U.  legislation […]

17 Colum. J. Eur. L. 447 (2010) Aaron Schwabach, Professor of Law, Thomas Jefferson School of Law; J.D., University of California at Berkeley (Boalt Hall), 1989. In the United Kingdom, and to a lesser extent the United States, an inter vivos gift, once given, cannot be reclaimed by  the giver’s heirs. In civil law countries the situation is quite different: Not only spouses, but issue and in some cases even ascendants, are entitled to a forced share of a decedent’s estate –  and these forced shares are assessed against a notional “estate” that includes the testator’s inter vivos gifts. If the total of these forced shares exceeds the amount actually […]

17 Colum. J. Eur. L. 395 (2010) Matthew C. Turk, Associate, Sullivan & Cromwell, LLP; J.D., New York University School of Law, 2010. The European debt crisis that started in 2009  has revealed underlying structural problems in the European Monetary Union that threaten the viability of  the common currency in its current form. An unraveling of monetary coordination in Europe would mark a significant event of disintegration in the face of a decades long trend of integration that was commonly considered to be an inevitable and self-sustaining process.

17 Colum. J. Eur. L. 375 (2010) Nathan Cambien, Ph. D.; Fellow of the Research Foundation-Flanders, Institute for European law, University of Leuven; Visiting Research Fellow, Columbia Law School.

17 Colum. J. Eur. L. 307 (2010) Nicolas A.J. Croquet, DPhil in Law, University of Oxford; LL.M., Columbia Law School; M.I.A., Columbia University (SIPA); MJUR, University of Oxford. The ECtHR has resorted to an extra-textual interpretation of the ECHR at three different normative phases of human rights reasoning: definition of scope, review of external limits placed on the exercise of rights not subject to a limitation clause, and review of suspension measures in case of public emergency. Whilst the first phase is characterized by the Court’s over-inclusiveness in the protection of human rights standards, the second and third phases reflect, for the most part, the Court’s under-inclusiveness in the protection of human rights standards. […]

17 Colum. J. Eur. L. 263 (2010) Sharon Pardo, Jean Monnet, Chair in European Studies at the Department of Politics and Government and the Director of the Centre for the Study of European Politics and Society, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Lior Zemer, Lecturer in Law, Interdisciplinary Centre Herzliya and Visiting Associate Professor, Boston University School of Law. Transnational economic integration has long been one of the preferred ways in which powerful global players signal their political and economic strength to potential trade partners. A main goal of the European Union in becoming an influential political and economic elite is expanding its transnational relations. The Mediterranean region receives special attention in this process. […]

17 Colum. J. Eur. L. 231 (2010) Aurdlian Portuese, University of Paris II Panthéon-Assas. The principle of subsidiarity-whereby a power shared between the European Union and its Member States is exercised at the lowest appropriate level of governance-is a general principle of European Union law the justiciability of which has been widely discussed. The justiciability of the subsidiarity principle has been criticized for underlining its political relevance. However, this critique lacks the power to explain both the weight of the principle of subsidiarity in the E.  U. Treaties and the case law regarding the subsidiarity principle. What is the principle of subsidiarity and what degree of justiciability does it have?

17 Colum. J. Eur. L. 151 (2010) Bart M.J. Szewczyk, Senior Associate at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr LLP in Washington, D.C., adjunct professor of international law at George Washington University Law School, Member of the Executive Council at the American Society of International Law, fellow at the Truman National Security Project, member of the European Society of International Law, and stylistic editor of the Polish Yearbook of International Law. The European Union, established with the Treaty of Maastricht and expanded through three subsequent treaties, has been granted new powers across extensive policy areas. Most importantly, the consolidation of Qualified Majority Voting (“QMV”) in the Council of Ministers as […]

17 Colum. J. Eur. L. 129 (2010) Toon Moonen, Fellow of the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO), Belgium at the Centre for Government and Law, Hasselt University.

17 Colum. J. Eur. L. 101 (2010) Kfir Abutbul, J.D., Columbia Law School, 2010; LL. B., University College London, Faculty of Laws, 2010. The U.S.  and E.U  competition regulation regimes, or antitrust regulation, as the regime is known in the U.S.,  serve as the global leaders of competition compliance enforcement. Many of their developments percolate to other competition regulation regimes, and any cross-border transaction will usually require in depth knowledge of the enforcement regulations in either of these jurisdictions, if not both. Most importantly, international counsel must be able to assess enforcement trends and make a judgment on the efficiency of cross border enforcement in transactions that span markets. Local interests outside […]

17 Colum. J. Eur. L. 57 (2010) Kristin Henrard, Professor of Minority Protection and Associate Professor of Constitutional Law and Human Rights at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Notwithstanding the absence of an explicit minority policy for internal purposes, it is possible to identify the gradual emergence of a minority-conscious implementation of non-minority specific E.U.  policies (non-discrimination, social inclusion, integration, human rights, and cultural diversity). Nevertheless, this is not equally strong in all policy domains. It is argued here that a clear difference emerges between the approaches towards minorities, in particular towards new, immigrant minorities, in terms of  socioeconomic integration (the socio-economic sphere) on the one hand and in terms of […]

17 Colum. J. Eur. L. 23 (2010) Tomas Richter, Of Counsel, Clifford Chance LLP, Prague; Lecturer, Institute of Economic Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University, Prague. Between the years 1996  and 2006,  the Czech parliament and supreme court, in an attempt to protect shareholders from the consummation of private benefits of control, essentially shifted the agency costs embedded in internal governance of corporations from the corporations’ outside shareholders to the corporations’ counterparties. In this article, I hypothesize that this idiosyncratic outcome came about as an ill-considered, knee-jerk reaction to the asset-stripping excesses, often dubbed “tunneling,” that resulted from the country’s voucher privatization scheme in the early 1990s. To test the hypothesis, I compare-against […]

17 Colum. J. Eur. L. 1 (2010) Franck Lecomte, Teaching Fellow, Labour Studies Institute, Lyon, France; Ph. D. Candidate, European University Institute, Florence, Italy. The most recent European employment law saga arising from Viking, Laval,  and subsequent decisions has commonly been understood as perpetuating the infiltration of economic provisions into labor legislation. It has also been asserted, however, that these cases contain contradictory arguments, which offer a multifaceted narrative. The new construction ofArticle 151 TFEU (ex Article 136 EC)  is of particular interest. Considered to be the cornerstone of European employment policy, this provision had generally been regarded as programmatic. During the past few years, however, it has progressively metamorphosed into a substantive rule […]

16 Colum. J. Eur. L. 321 (2010) Agnieszka Janczuk, LLM, PhD Candidate, European University Institute. Recent legislative developments in the field of payment services in the European Union aim at building a uniform European payments market. The creation of an internal market for payments has been the result of both industry self-regulation and public regulation. The Payment Services Directive (PSD) and Regulation 924/2009 support and complement the private regulatory regime developed by the banking sector’s European Payments Council, the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA). The PSD provides a legal framework for SEPA by harmonizing certain core payments provisions, while Regulation 924/2009 substantially enabled the launch of SEPA Direct Debit by laying down the […]

16 Colum. J. Eur. L. 303 (2010) Marco Amorese, Ph.D., UniversitA degli Studi di Brescia, LL.M. Harvard Law School, J.D. University of Milan, Studio legale Amorese. In the cases in comment, the European Court of Justice tries to clarify two crucial concepts in the area of services of general interest: (a) the definition of concession and (b) the scope of the “in-house” exception. The strict definition so far formulated has prompted local bodies to create very complex and inefficient corporate governances in companies awarded services of general interest. The European Court of Justice seems to have taken a more permissive tack that should give local bodies more ample maneuvering power in operating […]

16 Colum. J. Eur. L. 261 (2010) Ira Lindsay When the Soviet Union collapsed, many observers hoped that decollectivization would improve the infamously inefficient Soviet agricultural sector and raise collective farm workers out of poverty. The initial results of market reform in Russian agriculture were a severe disappointment in both respects. Under Putin, Russia finally allowed agricultural land to be bought and sold. The effects of this latest reform neither met the expectations of its supporters nor realized the fears of its opponents. Russia’s experience with land reform suggests that while private ownership of farmland may offer significant advantages, successful land reform requires much more than the creation of legal rights. This Article […]

16 Colum. J. Eur. L. 233 (2010) Brian Sawers, J.D., Harvard; A.B., Duke. Heller explains the underperformance and informality of retail in transition Russia as the consequence of botched privatization. He calls this outcome anticommons: too many people hold a veto, leading to underuse. Heller argues that the existence of too many overlapping property rights prevents entrepreneurs from opening brick-and-mortar shops in Russia. The ubiquity of kiosks, however, is better explained by other factors. Kiosks are smaller investments than storefronts, hence their ubiquity in a credit-constrained environment. In addition, taxes, corruption, organized crime, and favor-exchange networks all discourage scale. Retail is informal in Russia for the same reasons it is informal in other […]

16 Colum. J. Eur. L. 191 (2010) Mattias Derlin & Johan Lindholm, Doctors of Law and Senior Lecturers in Law at Umea University, Sweden In June 2009 the European Court of Justice (E.C.J) decided the Mickelsson case (C-142/05). Mickelsson concerns the application of the (in)famous Article 28 E.C. prohibiting practical obstacles to the free movement of goods within the European Union. The meaning of Article 28 is notoriously vague and has given rise to extensive case law. Mickelsson brings attention to a little discussed dimension of Article 28 E. C.: the fact that rules on use (i.e. national measures regulating how, when, and by whom goods can be used) can constitute practical […]