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Copyright of Slovak Journal of Political Sciences / Slovenská Politologická Revue is the property of Faculty of Social Sciences University of Ss. Cyril and Methodius in Trnava and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

For decades the European Commission’s possible legislative influence has interested scholars of EU studies, yet few empirical studies on the determinants of the Commission’s influence exist. This paper analyses quantitative data on 60 EU proposals to show to which degree rather endogenous resources of the Commission, external conditions determined by the EU member states or institutional constraints determine the Commission’s influence on EU legislation. Modeling the Commission as an agent having resources and strategic options, I demonstrate that the Commission’s ability to defend the content of its original proposals is to a large extent dependent on its principals, the member states. Endogenous resources of the Commission such as expertise and experience influence only to a small extent the legislative success of the Commission. Thus, this study allows gaining a deeper understanding on the factors influencing the European Commission’s influence on legislative affairs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The smooth adoption of the European Union (EU) defence procurement directive in 2009 is puzzling, because member states had fiercely opposed legislation for the sensitive defence-industrial sector before. We argue that the Commission's strategic usage of judicial politics changed member states' opportunity structure and, by this, transformed a blocking majority of member states into legislative consensus. As it drew on new case law, the Commission pushed member states and threatened to leave the regulation of defence procurement uncontrolled to the European Court of Justice (ECJ). In parallel, it promised member states to restore legal certainty and political control if they would approve EU legislation on defence procurement. Following a process-tracing logic, we compare the failed Commission initiatives until 2005 with the adoption of the directive in 2009. Finally, the available evidence is checked against alternative explanations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper contributes to the discussion surrounding interest groups in the European Commission. We inspect the Commission's lobbying register and assess the density and diversity of the interest group population per policy domain. The results suggest that while at the system level élite pluralism with its preponderance of business interests is a credible hypothesis, this is not the case at the sub-system level, where chameleon pluralism better conceptualizes variation of the interest group populations as a function of the age of the Directorate General (DG), capacity of the DG, nature of the policy domain, and involvement of member states. Bridging theoretical considerations on input/output legitimacy with informational approaches, we argue that different policy domains demand different types of legitimacy that are supported by the provision of different types of information (technical/political). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Treaty of Lisbon’s institutional modifications narrowed the options for member states within the formal decision-making rules, mainly due to the broadening of the ordinary legislative procedure. This paper hypothesises that the actors in EU institutions seek to strengthen their influence through coordination across the EU legislative institutions, along either national or political party lines. The research data consist of co-decision files that include information on the national and political identities of all the relevant actors in the legislative process in 2004–2011. Statistical tests assess the likelihood of changes in the dynamics of the legislative process as related to the affiliation of the actors after Lisbon. The results show a clear difference in the post-Lisbon legislative process, indicating that the political party identity of the actors may play a more significant role, although other factors must be considered as well. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The European Union’s system of delegated powers, ‘comitology’, underwent significant changes after the Lisbon Treaty entered into force. This paper assesses the impact of these changes on the European Parliament, European Commission and Council. It distinguishes between the changes that occurred at the level of treaty reform (which generally favoured the EP in assuming a greater role in the process of policy-implementation) and subsequent legislative reforms and developments in soft law (through which the Council and the European Commission have reasserted their powers). While the system of delegated powers has significantly changed through the Lisbon reforms, it falls short of the expectations and intentions that led to these changes. The key objectives behind the reform – a simplification of a highly complex system of centralised policy implementation and greater democratic accountability through an upgrading of the EP’s role – have only partially been achieved. To some extent recent developments indicate a step back. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In February 2012 the European Commission presented a proposal for a Regulation on the Statute for a European Foundation (FE). Foundations play an important role in the EU civil society with significant public benefit contributions at national, regional and local level. This paper provides a general introduction to this tentative European legal entity - Fundatio Europaea. Special focus is given to the possible opportunities and challenges the European Foundation could present at the local and (cross-border) regional (governmental) level if this regulation was ever adopted. Authors bring in also a special focus on the national perspectives of Slovenia and Slovakia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to analyze the evolution of the European Union in the economic and financial field during the global crisis that stroke Europe, from January 2008 until December 2012. My argument is that the European Union has faced certain political and economical imbalances since its beginnings in 1992 which have worsen the European economic and financial scenario. These imbalances -- rooted in the EU architecture -- were the result of a primary political choice: building a European market based on neoliberal values and setting aside any political controversy that may have caused a slowdown in the economic and financial integration. Since 1992, the Maastricht Treaty has shown some incongruities which were not resolved in the following two decades. Moreover, the decision-making process became more intricate so that Europe faced the worst post-war financial crisis without the instruments to answer rapidly to the financial speculation. The ECB, following its price stability mandate, was not able to react with counter-cyclical measures, thus exacerbating the financial imbalances between Northern and Southern European States. After an economic "perfect storm", EU Member States need to have enough farsightedness to implement some fundamental reforms in order to give the necessary means to EU institutions to erect an efficient firewall against financial speculations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Sozialreform is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Transformations in Business & Economics is the property of Vilnius University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The aims of the present paper are (i) to introduce ways of checking the procedures of awarding public procurement contracts and (ii) to suggest a few practical examples for applying financial corrections in case of errors or fraud in the field of public procurement. Under the applicable Community law, this article provides technical information to the attention of public authorities, experts, beneficiaries or potential beneficiaries and other bodies involved in monitoring, control or implementation of cohesion policy regarding the interpretation and enforcement of Community provisions for public procurement. Article seeks to provide explanations and interpretations of the European Commission services on these rules to facilitate implementation of operational programs and encourage good practice as well as to enhance knowledge of public procurement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Great Recession after 2008 did not turn out to be as deep and severe as the Great Depression of the 1930s. According to the European Commission, this positive result is due to the fact that economic policymakers around the world learned their lessons in stabilizing their financial systems from the Great Depression and, moreover, that particularly the European Union and its economic governance system has become a shelter against negative external shocks in coordinating stabilization policies to maintain aggregate demand.This paper argues that the claim of the European Commission needs some qualifications. The lessons have not been applied appropriately in all EU- and eurozone, in particular-member states. Yet this is not merely the result of mismanagement by individual governments but the systematic outcome of an ineffective and even counterproductive European economic governance system. Although, in the wake of the euro crisis, some crisis control and emergency measures have been established, crisis resolution has failed, as the core of the inefficient governance system-the European Stability and Growth Pact (ESGP)-has not been reformed adequately. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Member states of the European Union (EU) respond differently when they get caught for violations of European law and face prosecution. While Portugal tends to settle its non-compliance cases quickly and at an early stage of the EU's official infringement proceedings, Italy and Belgium like to sit them out and do not even comply with rulings of the European Court of Justice after being convicted twice – first for violating EU law and then for not acting upon the court's original judgment. This paper explores the explanatory power of prominent compliance theories to address these diverging patterns of persistent non-compliance across EU member states and tests a set of hypotheses that accounts for the non-compliance dynamics across the different stages of the EU's infringement proceedings and over time. We find that both differences in capacity and power explain the variation in longitudinal non-compliance patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Socialinių Mokslų Studijos is the property of Mykolas Romeris University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In November 2011, the European Commission published legislative drafts proposing radical reforms for statutory audits in Europe, fuelling heated political and academic debates. This paper presents cornerstones for a new regulatory framework of auditing and thereby contributes to the ongoing debate on the role of auditors and their independence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of language awareness has been highlighted in the most recent policy document of the European Commission, in response to the disappointing progress of European citizens towards the aim of proficiency in a first language and in two other languages. Language awareness has a long history and many meanings and is well placed to draw together a range of strategies aiming to improve language learning and teaching in European education. This paper argues that the broad scope of language awareness provides both opportunities and challenges for educators and policy makers. It examines the experience of language awareness in the UK and suggests lessons that might be learned from its achievements and from the challenges it encountered. In particular, targeted initiatives will be required to explore the barriers that remain to be overcome, new research will be required, along with the development of tools, strategies and collaborations to extend language awareness into areas where it can bring fresh benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the discussions on the need for fiscal rules and their usefulness in a monetary union, researchers have not agreed if financial markets have a sufficiently disciplining effect on governments, which would mean that the fiscal rules are not necessary. This paper investigates whether the European Union's main fiscal rule, the Stability and Growth Pact, could be substituted by financial markets, taking into account the effects of the latest financial and economic crisis. The findings presented in this paper suggest that there is certain interaction between financial markets and government' decisions on fiscal policies and that this reaction has become stronger after the beginning of the crisis. However, the institutional setup and market conditions in the European Union are such that this interaction is biased and thus the paper concludes that the Union needs to have fiscal rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the great financial crash, the need for new fiscal rules to prevent unsustainable fiscal policies is universally recognised. In practice such rules, including those in the Stability and Growth Pact, have proved to be impossible to enforce. Thus, to avoid unsustainable fiscal policies reappearing, and to prevent monetary policy from being undermined by undisciplined governments, there is a need for a framework capable of imposing fiscal discipline. This paper considers an intertemporal assignment, where fiscal policy focuses on long-term objectives and monetary policy on short-term stabilisation. We argue for public sector debt targets as a practical way to achieve such a set up, and an excess debt protocol is constructed to give enforceable form to those targets. The ideas of 'fiscal space' and optimal debt levels are used to provide a mechanism for identifying a stable region within which the debt targeting regime should operate. Making these factors explicit would both improve the credibility of planned fiscal policies and reduce risk premia on borrowing costs. We finally show how Europe's competitiveness pact, and debt restructuring operations, can be used to maximise the available fiscal space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to reveal the institutional interests of the Council of Ministers, the European Parliament and the Commission in the comitology system. This is done by an investigation of the 2006 comitology reform, which introduced the regulatory procedure with scrutiny. This reform was the result of developments in four areas: the Lamfalussy reform in the area of financial regulation; the controversial use of comitology in the area of GMOs, food safety and the environment; the failed Constitutional Treaty; and the amending of the 1999 comitology decision. The analysis shows that the reform was the result of a two-dimensional constitutional struggle. The first dimension concerns the relative supervisory position of the two legislative actors, the Council and the European Parliament. The second dimension concerns the relationship between the legislative and the executive branch of the EU system. In theoretical terms, the analysis demonstrates an example of T.M. Moe's 'politics of structural choice'. The paper ends by drawing lessons for the negotiations on the new comitology system following the Lisbon Treaty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recognition of the growing importance of broadband to the public presents challenges for policy-makers in introducing efficient strategies, not only to serve the increasing demand for broadband among people in society but also to increase their economic contribution both in the short run and in the long run. Different measures and strategies have been implemented in many countries and regions in order to encourage broadband deployment. Among them, the inclusion of broadband in the scope of universal service has been discussed. In the European Union, the discussion on broadening the scope of the Universal Service Directive (USD) to include broadband has been raised since the first periodical review in 2005. At that time, the European Commission concluded that only a small, although rapidly growing, minority of European consumers currently make use of broadband services. Therefore, the conditions for including broadband services within the scope of universal service as set out in the USD were not fulfilled. Later, the European Commission launched the second periodical review of universal service in 2008 with the preliminary conclusion that broadband has not yet reached the majority of people, implying that the conditions of the USD for expanding the scope of universal service were not yet fulfilled. However, the public consultation on broadening the scope of the USD to include broadband has been opened since March 2010 and was last on May 7, 2010. In the meantime, the public workshop organized in the context of the public consultation on universal service principles in e-communications was held on March 30, 2010. The workshop provided wide-ranging views on the topic, including an assessment of the cost of broadband availability and also the rapid change of broadband penetration rate throughout Europe. Against this background, this paper provides an analytical survey of the current state and trends of universal service with focus on broadband access in the European Union. First it presents an overview of broadband deployment and regulation in Europe. Then, it analyzes the USD reviews by taking into account the previous and the recent review, in particular by comparing the discourse evolution of the public submissions from stakeholders in the two consultations. A framework to evaluate broadband universal service will be provided. In conclusion, the paper will identify selected issues regarding broadband universal service in Europe, especially the pros and cons of broadband universal service.blablabla. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers updates on the financial institution regulations initiated by the European Union (EU). The European Commission (EC) has proposed to revise the Directive 94/19/EC on Deposit Guarantee Schemes (DGSs) to enhance protection for bank account holders as well as retail investors. The EU Parliament's Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) has published a draft on regulations of trading in financial instruments and dark pools. The EU Parliament has also adopted amendments to the proposed reforms of its supervisory architecture on financial institutions.

The literature on comitology has largely ignored the European Commission's actual behaviour in the daily workings of the numerous comitology committees that were designed to control it. On the basis of survey data of Danish and Dutch representatives on nearly all comitology committees, this paper investigates the Commission's role in the system. We find that the Commission acts both as a mediator and as a policy advocate, but to varying degrees. We take a first step towards understanding this behaviour by an inspection of four arguments found in the literature on comitology and the Commission: the constraining or enabling impact of the comitology procedures; the institutional position of the responsible Directorate-General; the nature of the cases dealt with by the committees and, finally, the intensity of the member states' preferences in relation to the committees' cases. In comitology, each of these arguments shapes the mediating or the advocating behaviour of the Commission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the better part of the past decade, the European Commission has engaged in a dialogue with European Union (EU) citizens and businesses in an attempt to strengthen an almost nonexistent private competition enforcement system. In the United States, where private antitrust lawsuits are most prevalent, litigation is justified on the grounds of both deterrence and compensation. While the Commission wants to make private damages actions the primary vehicle for the compensation of aggrieved parties, recent political pressure has made EU officials claim that government enforcement will remain the predominant means for the deterrence of EU antitrust violations. Furthermore, many EU policy makers have emphasized that they want to avoid what they perceive as shortcomings in the U.S. private enforcement system. In its 2008 White Paper on Damages Actions for Breach of the EC Antitrust Rules, the Commission proposed procedural reforms to incentivize antitrust litigation in member state courts, but it stopped short of offering the full range of rights granted to U.S. plaintiffs. Nonetheless, the Commission drafted a directive in late 2009 that effectively included U.S.-style antitrust class actions, but it quickly withdrew its proposal due to strong opposition in the member states. This Note argues that the EU needs to implement greater procedural reforms than suggested in the White Paper to make antitrust litigation practical and desirable for most parties. It also contends that the need for private enforcement would be more credible if the Commission once again embraced deterrence as one of its central goals. Finally, this Note challenges the notion, perpetuated by many critics and EU policy makers, that the U.S. system is wrought with unrestrained excesses and attorney mischief. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses how the EU regulatory state expands into fiscal surveillance and what conflicts arise in the process. That the EU should have gone down the route of regulating budgets is puzzling. In Majone's original concept, the regulatory state is meant not to interfere with member states' budgetary redistributive policies. Yet the revision of the Pact strengthened the regulatory content of fiscal surveillance by reformulating the policy problem, strengthening delegated monitoring by the Commission, with Eurostat rather than DG Ecfin at its helm, and by extending control through specialised information. The analysis implies that the revision of the Pact in March 2005 cannot simply be dismissed as a watering down of its fiscal rules. However, there are limitations to regulatory expansion. One limitation is the inherent tension between the requirements of control and the economic justification of fiscal rules, another that economic justifications remain ambiguous and contentious. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

European state aid control, a part of competition policy, typically follows the logic of negative integration. It constrains the potential for member states to distort competition by reducing their ability to subsidise industry. In addition, this paper argues, ambiguous Treaty rules and heterogeneous member state preferences have enabled the European Commission to act as a supranational entrepreneur, not only enforcing the prohibition of distortive state aid, but also developing its own vision of 'good' state aid policy. In order to prevent or to settle political conflict about individual decisions, the Commission has sought to establish more general criteria for the state aid that it still deems admissible. These criteria have been codified into a complex system of soft law and, more recently, hard state aid law. The Commission has thus created positive integration 'from above' and increasingly influences the objectives of national state aid policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Politik is the property of Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The author reflects on European political impasse regarding the use of genetically modified (GM) crops, known also as transgenic crops, and the loss of alternatives for the European Commission. Topics include the authors thoughts on the involvement of the European Union's council of environment ministers who are voting on insect-resistant maize, the potential for a regulatory deadlock, and why countries opposed to GM crops should opt out of legislation.

Europe-wide cashless payments are soon set to become reality with the 'single euro payments area' (SEPA). In line with plans by the European Commission and the European Central Bank, from January 2008 bank customers in all EU countries will be able to make cross-border credit transfers, direct debit and card payments as easily and securely as they already do in their home countries. This paper will also outline the viewpoint on SEPA of the Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe (group of German savings banks, Landesbankert and associated companies), who believe this transformation of cashless payment transactions must be customer-oriented -- in other words private customer-oriented too -- and improve rather than worsen the competitive landscape in Europe. As far as existing debit methods in Europe are concerned, the German banking industry views a network of competitive European systems working in collaboration with global methods as a viable solution for meeting the requirements of the SEPA Cards Framework (SCF) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Last year the European Commission published itsAction Planon European contract law. That plan forms an important step towards a European Civil Code. In its Plan, the Commission tries to depoliticise the codification process by asking a group of academic experts to prepare what it calls a‘common frame of reference’. This paper argues that drafting a European Civil Code involves making many choices that are essentially political. It further argues that the technocratic approach which the Commission has adopted in the Action Plan effectively excludes most stakeholders from having their say during the stage when the real choices are made. Therefore, before the drafting of the CFR/ECC starts, the Commission should submit a list of policy questions regarding the main issues of European private law to the European Parliament and the other stakeholders. Such an alternative procedure would repoliticise the process. It would increase the democratic basis for a European Civil Code and thus its legitimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the empirical basis for the European Commission's diagnosis of its member states, as suffering from excessive market fragmentation, using a trade model derived from monopolistic competition. Links between the initial size and subsequent evolution of boarder effects within European Union; European consumers' attitude towards imported products.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the interplay between variables pertaining to the satisfaction of life and economic sentiments of citizens of selected European countries. The analysis of the connections will be conducted based on existing subjective primary data. The data in question are results of international comparative surveys (European Social Survey, ESS; the OECD's Better Life Initiative) and results of consumer economic sentiment surveys ordered by the European Commission. The research procedure also benefitted from the selected items of literature available in the form of books and articles. Population economic sentiments are subject to cyclical changes connected with the changes in economic situation in individual countries. The analysis of secondary data allows for the conclusion that there is a statistically significant direct or indirect strong relationship between assessments of life satisfaction and consumer confidence indicator. The grouping of the researched countries based on secondary data has made it possible to capture the similarities between individual states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dropouts are not only a weakness and a threat level of any human community. Due to the importance of reducing or even eliminating it, the main objectives of the European Commission's education policies include prevention of early school leaving. A comparative analysis of school drop-out in European Union countries highlights the fact that it is not uniform but shows wide variations from country to country and even from region to region. The aim of the paper is to identify different macro-regions developed within the EU28 according to the level and dynamics of school abandonment in the year 2016. The research method used was the cluster analysis with the help of which seven clusters were identified in terms of dropout. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author reflects on the initiatives taken by the European Commission in the legislative field to strengthen European Union (EU) merger control, nearly ten years after the overhaul of the EU Merger Regulation. Particular focus is given to the two major objective of the initiatives, which are to make EU merger control more efficient and to ensure sources of potential competitive harm driven by corporate restructuring are addressed. The plan of the Commission to publish a White paper is noted.

This paper analyzes the determinants of the European Commission’s estimates of the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment (NAIRU) for 14 European countries during 1985–2012. The NAIRU is a poor proxy for ‘structural unemployment’. Labor market institutions – employment protection legislation, union density, tax wedge, minimum wages – underperform in explaining the NAIRU, while cyclical variables – capital accumulation and boom-bust patterns in housing markets – play an important role. This finding is policy-relevant since the NAIRU is used to compute potential output and structural budget balances and, hence, has a direct impact on scope and evaluation of fiscal policies in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Retail financial services are a core component of the European Commission's (EC's) Capital Markets Union (CMU) project that launched in September 2015. On 23 March 2017, the EC launched its Action Plan on retail financial services. This article assesses whether this newest plan delivers sufficient "action " in what it does contain and how it differs to the earlier Green Paper that closedfor consultation on 18 March 2016. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In late 2015, the European Commission announced a monumental U-turn on Value Added Tax rates policy. After decades of advocating the benefits of harmonization of VAT rates across the EU Member States, and after many failed legislative attempts at achieving it, the Commission declared its intention to do the opposite, namely to disharmonize VAT rates across Europe. The announcement was followed by a VAT Action Plan, and a public consultation on the reform of VAT rates, which, under the guise of modernization and consistency with the destination principle, presented two options for reform, both of which would give Member States further freedom and flexibility in the application of reduced rates. Against this background, the aim of this article is not to restate the benefits of VAT rate harmonization, but to assess whether the EU has legislative competence to approve disharmonizing VAT legislation. The article concludes that Article 113 TFEU could not be used as a legal basis for a Directive aimed at disharmonizing VAT rates, and that any such Directive, would lack legal basis and, consequently, be unlawful under the EU constitutional principle of conferral of powers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The economic and financial crisis opened a window of opportunity to place the Single Market back on top of the European agenda as part of a two-tiered crisis response, which also included reinforced financial supervision and economic co-ordination. We argue that the Commission acted as a 'purposeful opportunist' in both tiers; but whereas in economic governance issues there was breakthrough change in the Commission's achievements and competences, in the Single Market realm policy change was fairly modest. Using process tracing analysis our goal is to explain why the Commission did not succeed in furthering a genuine Single Market reform. Our findings suggest that the Commission's entrepreneurship was constrained by the limited salience of Single Market issues in the crisis context and by the lack of actual political commitment from the other relevant stakeholders. Thus, our research highlights the limits of the Commission's opportunistic behaviour in less advantageous circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was published in the Official Journal of the European Union on 4 May 2016 [4]. It will become applicable on May 25, 2018. The GDPR comprises a new right to data portability for individuals, which requires data controllers to ensure that they can hand over the personal data that has been provided by the data subject himself/herself, in a structured, commonly used and transferable format. This paper critically examines the right to data portability and suggests that in order to ensure comprehensive data portability that reaches out to all relevant stakeholders, including businesses, the provisions in the GDPR need to be analysed by taking into account EU competition rules. It suggests that lessons can be drawn from EU competition law to limit the potential adverse consequences of the right to data portability particularly for small and medium-sized enterprises. It also asserts that EU competition rules, especially Article 102 TFEU and the essential facilities doctrine, can complement data portability by facilitating mandatory access to specific data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Enforcement of European fiscal rules, to a large extent, hinges on fiscal forecasts prepared by the European Commission (EC). The reliability of these forecasts has received little attention in the literature, despite the fact that (i) the forecasts have potentially far-reaching consequences for national governments, especially in the euro area while (ii) the EC depends on information supplied by national officials in preparing its forecasts. We hypothesize that the EC's forecasts are biased upwards when national governments expect European fiscal rules to bind. Reconstructing this expectation using real-time information, we show that for euro area countries the EC's fiscal forecasts are indeed biased upwards when the budget deficit threatens to exceed the critical value of 3 % of GDP. For non-euro area countries, which do not face the risk of fines, this bias cannot be established. Our results are robust to various ways of controlling for crisis-induced budgetary problems and the exclusion of various country groups. We offer suggestive evidence that the presence of independent fiscal councils at the national level helps to attenuate the bias induced by the 3 % threshold. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Commission is building a Capital Markets Union (CMU) to counteract Europe's over-reliance on bankfunding. As the Commission s CMU communication often refers to peripheral projects and misapprehension of Europe's, capital markets, this paper aims to contribute by highlighting the main challenges and action points for realising the CMU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Efforts to develop a robust competition culture within the European Union, premised upon private enforcement of the EU competition rules, have gathered pace in recent years. This article examines the manner in which judicial innovation, coupled with legislative reinforcement, has rendered this area of primary importance in terms of the emergence of a distinct European tort law. In doing so, the article considers why this area has been singled out for such extensive vertical harmonisation, addressing this question from a variety of perspectives: those of a competition lawyer, a tort lawyer and a generalist EU lawyer. It is suggested that, while no single principled justification can explain the prioritisation of competition law in this respect, a constellation of contributory influences can be identified, including a notable comparative exemplar in the US experience, an increasingly central role for competition law within the framework of EU law more generally and, perhaps most importantly, significant institutional enthusiasm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]