{"title":"The European Court of Justice's Transformation of its Approach towards Preliminary References from Member State Administrative Bodies","authors":"Morten Broberg, N. Fenger","doi":"10.1017/cel.2022.4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/cel.2022.4","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract According to Article 267 TFEU, a ‘court or tribunal of a Member State’ can make a preliminary reference to the Court of Justice. The Court applies a single, homogeneous definition of a ‘court or tribunal’. This has allowed it to admit references from those specialised, independent, administrative bodies that in several Member States have been established instead of administrative courts to decide claims under public law, including EU law. Whether such a ‘dispute settling’ body is entitled to submit a preliminary reference normally depends upon whether it commands sufficient ‘independence’ vis-à-vis both the parties to the dispute and the public administration as such. The Court has tightened these requirements appreciably in connection with the threats against the independence of the judiciary in some Member States, and the consequent more prominent roles that Articles 19 TEU and 47 of the Charter have come to play. Whereas safeguarding the rule of law is of utmost importance, these provisions pursue objectives within the Union's legal order which are materially different from those pursued by Article 267. In this article, it is therefore argued that the Court should apply different constructions of the independence criterion with respect to these provisions.","PeriodicalId":52109,"journal":{"name":"Cambridge Yearbook of European Legal Studies","volume":"24 1","pages":"169 - 200"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-11-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47069836","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Saving Football from Itself: Why and How to Re-make EU Sports Law","authors":"S. Weatherill","doi":"10.1017/cel.2022.3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/cel.2022.3","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract EU sports law has conventionally been understood to involve the assembly of the several decisions of the Court of Justice and the Commission that apply free movement and competition law to the practices of governing bodies. The influence of these decisions has generated change in some aspects of sporting governance, in the EU, and beyond. But the EU does not set the terms according to which sport shall be organised. This article makes the case for the EU moving beyond its orthodox approach to sports law, which is rooted in the accidents of litigation, and also choosing to embrace a role as a regulator. This will diminish the autonomy that governing bodies in sport have long prized, but the article asserts the need for this in order to address the conflict of interest to which governing bodies fall prey when they perform regulatory functions while also making commercially significant choices. It is, however, unclear whether the political will needed to propel EU sports law beyond the application of internal market law to embrace also the establishment of mandatory ex ante standards can be assembled.","PeriodicalId":52109,"journal":{"name":"Cambridge Yearbook of European Legal Studies","volume":"24 1","pages":"4 - 23"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42944398","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Block Exemption Regulations and Public Policy: in The Defence of BERS","authors":"O. Brook","doi":"10.1017/cel.2022.1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/cel.2022.1","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article defends Block Exemption Regulations (‘BERs’) as a legitimate and effective tool for the consideration of public policy within Article 101 of the TFEU enforcement. Going against popular opinion, it argues that as the expression of a clearly defined EU-wide political consensus, BERs carry several advantages over the traditional balancing tools of Article 101(1) and (3) individual exceptions, guidelines, or balancing by the exercise of enforcement discretion. BERs offer pre-determined and transparent rules, safeguarding the independent competition authorities’ political accountability and democratic legitimacy, promoting uniformity and legal certainty, reducing compliance and enforcement costs, inviting scrutiny and debate, and fostering experimentalism and flexibility.","PeriodicalId":52109,"journal":{"name":"Cambridge Yearbook of European Legal Studies","volume":"24 1","pages":"111 - 142"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45715632","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"CEL volume 23 Cover and Back matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/cel.2021.15","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/cel.2021.15","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":52109,"journal":{"name":"Cambridge Yearbook of European Legal Studies","volume":"23 1","pages":"b1 - b1"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43237275","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Sincere Cooperation between EU and Member States in the Field of Readmission: The More the Merrier?","authors":"Caterina Molinari","doi":"10.1017/cel.2021.10","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/cel.2021.10","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Cooperation with third countries on readmission has occupied an increasingly prominent place in the EU's migration management strategy. The EU and its Member States have progressively concluded an extensive set of bilateral and multilateral, binding and non-binding, cooperation instruments on readmission. This proliferation questions the field's coherence with the principle of sincere cooperation, governing the interplay between the Union's and Member States’ action. By taking this principle as a benchmark, the article highlights the ineffective nature of the current ‘unprincipled’ pursuit of readmission goals. It also demonstrates that sincere cooperation—if read together with subsidiarity—does not necessarily favour the Union's international action, to the detriment of the Member States’. Rather, it requires a good faith effort to identify, and stand by, the most effective level of action.","PeriodicalId":52109,"journal":{"name":"Cambridge Yearbook of European Legal Studies","volume":"23 1","pages":"269 - 289"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43303347","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Promoting Fair Private Governance in the Platform Economy: EU Competition and Contract Law Applied to Standard Terms","authors":"J. Rutgers, W. Sauter","doi":"10.1017/cel.2021.11","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/cel.2021.11","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In recent years, a platform economy has emerged that is dominated by undertakings such as Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft. They have established a form of private governance vis-à-vis their consumers and customers by means of standard terms that create a risk of exploitation. This trend clashes with the internal market effort of the EU that is predicated on consumer rights and fair competition to address market failures such as market power, information asymmetry, and asymmetrical contractual dependency. In this article we examine how the resulting tensions can be addressed by means of EU competition and contract law. This is based on enforcing fairness by requiring (1) the implementation of proportionality—balancing interests—and (2) respect of the duty of care, in the sense of compliance by design. Jointly this can be seen as an expression of accountability that needs to be made explicit. Apart from pre-existing case law and legislation, we take into account the December 2020 Commission proposals for platform regulation, as well as behavioural insights into consumer behaviour.","PeriodicalId":52109,"journal":{"name":"Cambridge Yearbook of European Legal Studies","volume":"23 1","pages":"343 - 381"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43380840","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"CEL volume 23 Cover and Front matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/cel.2021.14","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/cel.2021.14","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":52109,"journal":{"name":"Cambridge Yearbook of European Legal Studies","volume":"23 1","pages":"f1 - f5"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47774513","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"EU Competition Law as Responsive Law","authors":"Stavros Makris","doi":"10.1017/cel.2021.9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/cel.2021.9","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article proposes two broad ways to conceptualise EU competition law. EU competition law could be viewed as ‘autonomous law’ (‘AL’), namely as a closed normative system a technocratic tool consisting in a set of rules that prohibit undue restraints of trade. Or, EU competition law could be viewed as ‘responsive law’ (‘RL’), namely as a relatively open normative system and an interpretive practice that oscillates between openness and integrity. The responsiveness approach offers a compelling conceptualisation as it explains certain endogenous features of EU competition law: its fuzzy mandate, conceptually elastic vocabulary, and use of rules and standards. In addition, the responsiveness approach can clarify the role economics plays in EU competition law. It views economics as an ‘ideological science’, which, even though it cannot insulate this legal field from value disagreements and make it ‘autonomous’, it can provide a source for positive and normative interpretive statements. On this basis the responsiveness approach maintains that EU competition law is by design open—ie conceptually elastic and factually sensitive—and that its openness can enhance, but also undermine its integrity—ie its capacity to realise its objective in a rule of law compatible manner. These conflicts between openness and integrity are the cause of EU competition law's relative indeterminacy. To deal with the problem of indeterminacy, the RL approach proposes a tripartite legal-institutional modus operandi consisting in constructive interpretation, responsive enforcement, and catalytic adjudication. Hence, considering EU competition law as a form of responsive law has three major implications: first, it offers a new way for understanding how this legal field works and changes; second, it suggests a strategy for dealing with EU competition law's indeterminacy, and third it proposes a new framing for the discursive practices of EU competition law's epistemic community.","PeriodicalId":52109,"journal":{"name":"Cambridge Yearbook of European Legal Studies","volume":"23 1","pages":"228 - 268"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48451574","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"EU Competition Law Devours Its Children: The Proliferation of Anti-Competitive Object and the Problem of False Positives","authors":"C. Nagy","doi":"10.1017/cel.2021.2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/cel.2021.2","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In the last decade, EU competition law reached a major turning point in its history. Anti-competitive object became an elusive and unpredictable rule, which boosts the risk of false positives and has a significant chilling effect. This article analyses this metamorphosis and the social damages it is causing, and proposes an alternative conception. The article demonstrates that the emerging new concept of anti-competitive object erroneously conflates ‘contextual analysis’, which has been part of the object-inquiry from the outset, and ‘effects-analysis’, which has no role to play here. It submits that both doctrinal and policy reasons confirm that anti-competitive object should be a category-building principle of ‘judicial rule-making’ (‘definition of the definition’) and not applicable to individual arrangements directly.","PeriodicalId":52109,"journal":{"name":"Cambridge Yearbook of European Legal Studies","volume":"23 1","pages":"290 - 310"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47987397","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"So Long Solange? The PSPP Judgment of the German Constitutional Court and the Conflict between the German and the European ‘Popular Spirit’","authors":"P. Hilpold","doi":"10.1017/cel.2021.3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/cel.2021.3","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The judgment by the German Constitutional Court (‘BVerfG’) of 5 May 2020 has caused a stir all over Europe. The relationship between the BVerfG and the European Court of Justice (‘ECJ’) has never been an easy one, especially after the Solange judgment of 1974. The Solange jurisprudence has, however, not only been synonymous with conflict and rivalry but also for dialogue and, eventually, mutual respect. With the PSPP judgment, this dialogue seemed to have found an end, while by the order of 29 April 2021 the BVerfG appears to have returned to a more conciliatory tone. Nonetheless, the disruption between Karlsruhe and Luxembourg persists. In this article, the PSPP judgment will be examined in detail, presenting it as the last step of long, contorted jurisprudence. It will be shown that the rupture that occurred in May 2020 was technically unnecessary and rather the result of deep-rooted cultural conflict with a clear economic background. The legal reasoning on both sides—that of the BVerfG and that of the PSPP judgment's most outspoken critics—is problematic at best. While for the time being the BVerfG seems to have learnt the lesson from the conflict provoked by its own judgment, the underlying, substantive conflict is still unresolved. It will be shown that this conflict can only be solved on a political level. Thereby, cultural pre-concepts will have to be overcome. Uncompromising reliance on a national ‘popular spirit’ (Volksgeist) will not offer a way out but neither will, for the time being, exclusive reference to a European Volksgeist ignoring Member State realities. The ‘weighing and balancing’ the BVerfG has missed in the previous Weiss ECJ preliminary ruling (again on the PSPP programme) will have to take place on a far broader scale.","PeriodicalId":52109,"journal":{"name":"Cambridge Yearbook of European Legal Studies","volume":"23 1","pages":"159 - 192"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41828707","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}