Volume 10, Issue 2


JULIO BAQUERO CRUZ, BETWEEN COMPETITION AND FREE MOVEMENT: THE ECONOMIC CONSTITUTIONAL LAW OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITY

10 Colum. J. Eur. L. 415 (2004) Aaron Page. Much recent attention has been paid to the European Union’s drafting of a formal constitution. Legal scholars have scrutinized the proposed provisions and political pundits have postulated as to ability of a formal constitution to modify and/or expand the collective conception of Europe. As a result, Between Competition and Free Movement: Economic Constitutional Law of the European Community, by Julio Baquero Cruz, reads with a touch of irony. Cruz forcefully contends that the European Union already has a constitution – even if it is not of the type that most Americans […]


CHIARA ZILIOLI AND MARTIN SELMAYR, THE LAW OF THE EUROPEAN CENTRAL BANK

10 Colum. J. Eur. L. 411 (2004) Blaine Evanson. In The Law of the European Central Bank, Chiara Zilioli and Martin Selmayr attempt to explain and emphasize what they call the sui generis nature of the European Central Bank (ECB) and its interaction with the national central banks(NCBs) within the European System of Central Banks (ESCB). Much of the book details the background of the European Union and its pillars as established by the EC treaty; the authors explain the authority structure both inside the ECB and its relation to other EC entities. Ultimately, the overarching theme is that the […]


REGULATION 1745/2003 OF THE EUROPEAN CENTRAL BANK ON THE APPLICATION OF MINIMUM RESERVES

10 Colum. J. Eur. L. 405 (2004) Blaine Evanson. The purpose of the new ECB Regulation on minimum reserves is to amend current reserve legislation by delineating specific procedures for the calculation and maintenance of minimum reserves. The new legislation is an attempt to decrease uncertainty about the maintenance period for reserve calculation, while maintaining the provisions for stabilizing money market interest rates and enlarging structural liquidity shortages in the banking system. This Regulation, therefore, replaces past Regulations and amendments, bringing previous legislation together in a single text.


CASE C-191/01 P, OFFICE FOR HARMONISATION IN THE INTERNAL MARKET (TRADE MARKS AND DESIGNS), V. WM. WRIGLEY JR. COMPANY (DOUBLEMINT)

10 Colum. J. Eur. L. 393 (2004) Patrick S. Ryan, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Interdisciplinair Centrum voor Recht en Informatica (ICRI), Leuven, Belgium. In 1994, the European Union passed a law establishing the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM), whose task is to register trademarks and designs at the Community level, called a Community Trademark. Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company, (Wrigley) a U.S. corporation, has registered its chewing gum brand DOUBLEMINT in almost all European countries, and many other locations, including, of course, the United States. Most of its registrations have been made on a country-by-country basis since the early […]


CASE C-266/01, PRÉSERVATRICE FONCIÈRE TIARD SA V. STAAT DER NEDERLANDEN

10 Colum. J. Eur. L. 385 (2004) Johan Verlinden, Assistant at the Institute for International Trade Law, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium. This judgment of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) came as a response to preliminary questions posed by the “Hoge Raad” (Supreme Court) of the Netherlands. At issue was the interpretation of Article I of the European Convention on Jurisdiction and Enforcement of Judgements in Civil and Commercial matters.  The Convention determines which court has jurisdiction over a case with linkages to several national legal systems within the EU. The Convention applies if the defendant is domiciled in a Member […]


CASE C-438/00, DEUTSCHER HANDBALLBUND EV V. MAROS KOLPAK

10 Colum. J. Eur. L. 379 (2004) Andrea Ott, Lecturer in European Law, Maastricht University, The Netherlands. Exactly ten years passed between the conclusion of the first Europe Agreements in 1991 and the first judgments on the Europe Agreements by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in 2001. The Europe Agreements have prepared the central and eastern European countries Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Bulgaria for accession and established a free trade area. EU and CEEC (central eastern European countries) citizens had certain mutual rights in this free trade area, which was further […]


CONSTITUTIONALISM OF THE EUROPEAN UNION AFTER THE DRAFT CONSTITUTIONAL TREATY: HOW MUCH HIERARCHY?

10 Colum. J. Eur. L. 339 (2004) Volker Röben, Dr. jur., LLM, College of Europe, Bruges, Belgium; LLM, UC Berkeley; Senior Research Fellow Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, Heidelberg, Germany. Europe finds itself in the midst of the first self-conscious attempt to reflect on the public authority that has been created over fifty years of the European integration. The ‘Declaration on the future of the Union,’ adopted by the European Council meeting in Nice in 2000, has set in motion a process, to be completed by the end of 2004, of defining the political status […]


TAXING EUROPE: TWO CASES FOR A EUROPEAN POWER TO TAX (WITH SOME COMPARATIVE OBSERVATIONS)

10 Colum. J. Eur. L. 297 (2004) Agustin José Menéndez, Ramón y Cajal Researcher, Departamento de Derecho Público, Universidad de León, Cidel-fellow, ARENA, Universitetet i Oslo. The tax ought to be uniform; because the present constitution was particularly intended to affect individuals, and not states, except in particular cases specified Je préfere la réalité d’un souveraineté partagée à l’illusion d’une souveraineté nationale tournant à vide This paper considers the need for granting the European Union a genuine power to tax. The argument is developed in several steps. First, it is shown that the granting of such a power to tax […]


THE BRITISH UNREGISTERED DESIGN RIGHT: WILL IT SURVIVE ITS NEW COMMUNITY COUNTERPART TO INFLUENCE FUTURE EUROPEAN CASE LAW?

10 Colum. J. Eur. L. 265 (2004) Estelle Derclaye, Lecturer in Intellectual Property Law, Queen Mary Intellectual Property Research Institute, University of London. The article compares the British unregistered design right (“UDR”) and the new Community Unregistered Design Right (“CUDR”). The conclusion draws on the lessons learned from this analysis to evaluate whether CUDR will erase UDR from the legal landscape and whether UDR case law will influence future Community design case law.


THE PROPOSED EUROPEAN UNION CONSTITUTION – WILL IT ELIMINATE THE EU’S DEMOCRATIC DEFICIT?

10 Colum. J. Eur. L. 173 (2004) Stephen C. Sieberson, Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Oregon School of Law. The author has previously taught at the University of Washington School of Law, Seattle, at the Faculty of Law, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, and at the Faculty of Law, University of the Netherlands Antilles, Curaçao. Throughout its first half-century the European Union has been the subject of an ongoing and vigorous discussion as to its form. For a 17-month period beginning on February 26, 2002, that discussion was carried out in the grandest manner possible – a constitutional convention. […]