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The Court of Justice has recently rendered four judgments (C-302/19; C-94/20; C-350/20; C-462/20) concerning the access to social security and social assistance for third-country nationals. In the recent years, there have been attempts by some Member States to restrict or exclude access to social security or social assistance for third-country nationals. The goal of this paper is not only to inform the reader about the Court of Justice’s judgments but also to put those judgments in perspective with previous cases as well as to discuss potential future EU legislative responses to it.

This article examines the structural elements of the Collective Complaints Procedure, seen as an avenue of socio-economic rights strategic litigation, that potentially enable or impede NGOs and trade unions in addressing violations of the European Social Charter before the European Committee of Social Rights. The findings show that the procedure is a unique form of collective redress in the human rights system, with exceptional structural characteristics, which render it an avenue of strategic litigation by its nature. Its main strength lies in that it enables the participation of organisations and vulnerable groups of people that are denied access in political or judicial fora, either at the domestic or supranational level, to deliberate on social policy issues and put pressure on States to address social issues on the basis of economic and social rights.

The ruling of the Grand Chamber of the Court of Justice in Case C-118/20 JY v. Wiener Landesregierung EU:C:2022:34 follows the judgments in Rottmann and Tjebbes. These cases concern the relationship between EU law and national citizenship. In particular, they deal with the compatibility of national authorities’ decisions on loss of nationality with the proportionality principle. The JY v. Wiener Landesregierung case highlights the contradictory nature of nationality law, which cannot be fully understood from a purely domestic perspective and yet remains within the sphere of Member States’ competences. Overall, the decision of the CJEU in JY v. Wiener Landesregierung leaves a bittersweet taste in EU lawyers’ mouths. On the one hand, the Court appears to implicitly make clear its aversion for certain national practices. In doing so, it ensures, in the case in question, a higher degree of protection of EU law-derived rights. On the other hand, the ruling does not adequately ensure sufficient safeguards for similar future cases. Finally, the Court seems to have missed a significant opportunity provided by the principle of mutual trust.

In light of the limited possibility to seek legal recourse against screening of foreign investments on grounds of national security, can insurance provide an alternative avenue to compensate affected investors? The answer is: Yes, but with caveats. For investors, even if insurance does not provide an equivalent to full reparation, it can serve as a useful mitigant of the risk that contemplated investment transactions cannot be consummated as anticipated due to screening measures. For host States, insurance provides a useful mechanism by which they can facilitate compensation of investors without having to disclose information contrary to their essential security interests and thus a means by which host States can remain attractive to foreign direct investment in spite of investment screening.

The article presents a legal analysis of the EU’s COVID-19 recovery plan, adopted to deal with the economic consequences of the COVID pandemic. The plan was proposed by the European Commission in May 2020 under the name “Next Generation EU”, was adopted in the final weeks of 2020 and will be implemented from mid-2021. After briefly presenting the sequence of events leading to the adoption of the recovery plan and the political context at the outset of the pandemic, the article examines the main legal issues raised by the NGEU programme. The adoption of the recovery plan was not only a politically bold move but also a case of creative legal engineering. Its architects had to deal with a number of central issues of EU institutional law, including the principle of conferral and the choice of the appropriate legal basis, the constraints imposed by the EU’s public finance system, the respect of the institutional balance, and the shaping of a governance mechanism for the plan’s implementation.

The EU Whistleblower Directive, adopted in 2019, shifts whistleblowing in the European Union from a marginal issue to a world leading example of empowering public voices. What explains this shift? The EU Whistleblower Directive cannot be understood without an inquiry into its legislative background. The latter also sheds new light on EU law-making practice, particularly how public participation can have a considerable influence and how the Commission steers legislation, to abide by principles of conferral and subsidiarity, when primary law is silent on its legislative powers. Central in this article is the legal assessment of the EU Whistleblower Directive. The article, however, seeks to go a step further. Drawing on a range of incremental legal developments in whistleblowing, it offers the first sustained account of what it argues has become a field of law of its own – EU whistleblower law.

The increased recourse to soft law by the European Union (EU) as a flexible solution to complex social and policy issues has raised several questions about the democratic legitimacy of decision-making at the EU level. With the aim to provide a normative direction for future empirical assessment of EU soft law, this article explores the democratic credentials that EU soft law measures should fulfil to ensure their legitimacy. Drawing from the intersections of liberal, republican and deliberative conceptions of democracy, this article proposes four democratic legitimacy standards for the evaluation of soft law measures in practice: parliamentary involvement, transparency, participatory quality and reviewability.

The EU and its Member States both contribute to the informalization of international relations’ tools by concluding bilateral soft law instruments which prepare, implement, and especially replace international agreements. This contribution analyses the EU practice of applying international soft law and focuses on the institutional challenges deriving from external relations’ soft law instruments. It has the three-fold aim of explaining why the informalization or ‘softification’ of EU bilateral instruments has proliferated, categorizing them according to their function and purpose in international law and EU external relations law and finally assessing the legal implications in EU law resulting from their application. The paper will argue that while, in practice, differences between international treaty law and bilateral soft law disappear, more legal challenges arise in the EU system through bilateral soft law measures than international agreements. This is caused by the rules on EU external representation, dispersed among supranational and intergovernmental EU actors and characterized by their general wording. International soft law tools operate in a politically contested area with several actors and a variety of informal instruments. The flexibility and hybrid character of soft law form an advantage for the institutions at the expense of the rule of law, legal certainty, and legal review.

Provisional application has become a quasi-automatic corollary to the signature of mixed bilateral European Union (EU) agreements. Resort to provisional application is thereby informed by a rationale hitherto unknown in international law: it allows federal polities where the federal level does not have exclusive treaty making powers to develop an effective external action that is not hindered by that polity’s complex internal division of competences. This article argues that the EU has also developed a rather consistent practice in relation to provisional application. The EU thereby distinguishes between its treaty partners whereby some of them simply agree that the EU unilaterally determines the scope of provisional application. Because of the reference to the EU’s internal division of competence, the internal law of the parties, something that is typically not relevant under international law, acquires legal significance. The EU’s practice is found to be largely in line with the Draft Guidelines on Provisional Application that are being elaborated by the International Law Commission, although clearly it is also more refined on some points. Lastly, the article identifies one pressing issue which requires clarification, and which is not properly addressed in the Draft Guidelines. That is the question on the fate of the provisional application by the EU of part of a mixed agreement where one individual EU member state has decided not to ratify that agreement.

The conflict rules enshrined in Regulation 883/2004 on the coordination of social security were created six decades ago to offer those who exercise free movement rights ‘constant social security protection’. The main idea was to ensure that beneficiaries are always subject to the legislation of a single Member State and to indicate which Member State that was. Because beneficiaries were above all ‘standard’ employees working on a full-time basis for an indefinite period of time, it was initially quite easy to determine the ‘competent’ Member State. The processes of flexibilization, digitalization, enlargement and globalization, however, have posed new and often formidable challenges. In today’s dynamic labour market it is often particularly difficult to identify the applicable legislation, issues arise as regards swift and frequent switches in the applicable legislation, increased worker and company mobility may affect social security rights and problems have arisen because of the possible fraudulent use of the rules determining the applicable legislation. This contribution analyses some of the recent CJEU case law on topics like working in to or more Member States, posting, abuse and fraud, employment and/or residence outside the EU and gaps in in social security protection by EU workers. The overarching question is how, in the view of the CJEU, the classic conflict rules are to be applied so as to ensure cross-border movers continue to enjoy constant social security protection.

Developed and developing countries are increasingly cooperating on migration management, and human rights NGOs have harshly criticised these instruments for cooperation. This article asks how and to what extent parliaments are challenging policies for international cooperation on migration management. On the one hand parliaments have traditionally been described as ?moral tribunes? in international relations, due to their principled support for human rights. On the other hand, parliaments are increasingly operating in political systems marked by anti-immigrant sentiment and increased support for right-wing populist parties. How do parliaments navigate between these two poles when it comes to international cooperation on migration management? Based on examples from Australia, the EU and Israel, this article shows that the use of non-legally binding instruments for cooperation limits the formal role of parliaments, but also and more importantly that there is a lack of political will to scrutinise these instruments and hold executives to account (notwithstanding attempts by some members of parliament or some political groupings to challenge policies through informal means). The lack of political contestation implies that, as far as migration management is concerned, ?politics stop at the water's edge?.

The present article aims to examine the admissibility requirements of the European Citizens’ Initiative in the light of primary law provisions and general principles, in particular the principles of conferral, participatory democracy, legal certainty, protection of legitimate expectations and good administration, as reflected in the recent case law of the General Court. More specifically, it is examined how these principles and the primary law features of the instrument provide a clear theoretical underpinning for determining its material scope and serve as guidance for the legislator when regulating the admissibility mechanism and for the European Commission when applying the relevant rules. The recent Commission proposal on a new Regulation on the European Citizens’ Initiative is also assessed against this backdrop.

The European debt crisis (Eurozone crisis) precipitated an unprecedented reconfiguration of the institutional architecture of the Economic and Monetary Union. At the core of such overhaul was the establishment of a financial assistance function specific to the Eurozone. From the outset, there has been a clear will to closely involve the European Central Bank (ECB) at all stages of the operation of this new function. The ECB, an institution endowed with a monetary mandate, has thus entered the field of economic policy. Against that background, this paper intends to investigate the legal and political accountability arrangements the ECB is subject to in that new context. Both the texts organizing the intervention of the ECB and its subsequent practice reveal, so the paper will show, that the ECB’s action in that particular context is mainly conceived as falling under its monetary mandate, and thus as being covered by its independence. The paper will argue that this situation is legally problematic, especially in view of the deep interpenetration between the economic and the monetary policy fields and the redistributive effects of the choices made. It will also claim that the ECB’s independence in that particular context, and the accountability structures it is subject to, should be adjusted.

Following the Great Financial Crisis, the European Central Bank’s functions have been significantly altered. It is now involved in the functioning of a variety of European Union bodies and agencies, new powers in the field of banking supervision have been attributed to it and it has resorted to unconventional monetary policy. Such a concentration of powers arguably gives rise to issues of accountability and institutional balance within the European Union: (i) the resulting institutional framework is particularly complex and difficult to understand; (ii) the numerous functions the European Central Bank assumes makes it increasingly difficult to identify in which arena(s) it should be held to account for which action; and (iii) its role in the different bodies or agencies may vary in theory and in practice, which, in turn, influences the degree to which the European Central Bank should be held to account. This article aims at showing to what extent the European Central Bank’s role has multiplied and diversified with a view to assess how it is held to account in those different instances, and what the consequences are for the European Central Bank’s democratic accountability, primarily towards the European Parliament, as well as towards the Council of the European Union and national parliaments where applicable.

This introductory article sets the ground for the analysis performed in the articles included in this Special Issue. It shows why a new analysis of the European Central Bank (ECB)’s accountability is required by referring to recent developments, and by underlining how much the ECB’s role and standing have changed since its creation 20 years ago. Indeed, its resorting to unconventional monetary policies in response to the recent economic and financial crisis, as well as the creation of the Banking Union, have significantly affected the ECB. This introduction also recalls the main elements of the debate on the balance between accountability and independence, and shows how this balance has evolved. On the basis of the findings of the articles included in this Special Issue, some conclusions and hypotheses as to the way forward are formulated.

Unintended consequences arising from EU external migration policy are a result of the multi-actor nature of this policy and of policy interactions. In addition, scholars face serious methodological challenges in establishing what the EU’s ‘intent’ is in external migration policy and, therefore, in determining which consequences are intended and which are unintended. The literature on the implementation and evaluation of EU external migration policy is in its infancy, and future work should take into account all policy outcomes – both those that were intended and those that were not.

The concept of the autonomy of European Union law plays an important role in the fundamental rights domain. Autonomy has been expressly invoked by the Court of Justice of the European Union (cjeu) when reviewing international legal norms on human rights grounds, and when denying the possibility for the eu to accede to the European Court of Human Rights (echr). The article also describes other constellations in which the cjeu has sought to preserve the distinctiveness of the eu’s approach to the protection of rights but without resorting to the use of autonomy language. The article concludes by advocating a positive rather than merely defensive use of autonomy, namely to describe the distinctive role that eu human rights policies can play in ensuring the effective enjoyment of human rights in the world.

Even though EU agencies are poorly embedded in the EU’s constitutional framework their proliferation continues. If and when these agencies establish relations with international counterparts, they sometimes also conclude arrangements or agreement with those counterparts. This brings together two constitutionally problematic issues: the EU’s external action and the limits to the empowerment of EU agencies. This article aims to identify the constitutional and positive law frameworks applying to EU agencies’ external action, and looks at a number of examples. It is shown how the positive law framework does not properly reflect the requirements of EU constitutional law, resulting in legal ambiguity and accountability problems. Some EU agencies seem to go beyond what is allowed under the positive and constitutional law frameworks.

This Article gives an overview of the legal framework governing the exercise of the delegated and implementing powers foreseen in Articles 290 and 291 TFEU in light of the most recent jurisprudence of the EU Courts in this field. It clarifies what essential elements are under Article 290 TFEU, how the Courts test this requirement and how it relates to the requirement under Article 290 TFEU that a delegation must also be specific. The article subsequently discusses and compares the control regimes in place under Articles 290 and 291 TFEU, noting that in post-Lisbon institutional practice they have evolved towards each other. Linked to this is the question how delegated and implementing powers differ. In light of the Court’s jurisprudence the article concludes that it is up to the legislature to make this distinction and that the legislature can also create executive powers outside the framework of Articles 290 and 291 TFEU and grant them to EU agencies. The article concludes by flagging some open questions which the Court has not resolved yet.

The 2019 Work-life Balance Directive prohibits discrimination whenworkers exercise the rights contained in the Directive, which includerights to take leave for reasons related to caring responsibilities and theright to request flexible working arrangements for caring purposes. Thisarticle explores the relationship between the Work-life Balance Directiveand EU non-discrimination law. It analyses the provisions of the Directiverelated to non-discrimination and compares these to equivalent provisionsfound elsewhere in EU non-discrimination law. It argues that theWork-life Balance Directive should be regarded as forming a new branchof EU non-discrimination law. Such a characterization will be importantfor its interpretation by the Court of Justice. This is also significant for ourunderstanding of how EU non-discrimination law is evolving.

This research paper aims to highlight hurdles that EU citizens may encounter when exercising their social security rights while working across borders. With the focus on the worker who is highly mobile in the sense of performing various work activities in two or more Member States, the paper analyses how the current system of coordination copes with the increasing mobility in the European labour market. On the basis of an illustrative case, it demonstrates where and explains why high mobility leads to legal and practical ambiguities due to the different interpretations of the rules determining the applicable law, particularly Article 13 of Regulation 883/2004.

Environment is a policy field where the role of NGOs is paramount in implementation conflicts. This contribution shows that the Commission has not been able to fully push through its decentralization agenda and environmental NGOs are currently faced with an ambiguous behavior on the part of the Commission with regards to their role in implementation conflicts: on the one hand, the Commission relies on environmental NGOs to discover infringements at national level, but on the other hand, it actively tries to cut them out of any form of involvement in the discussions with the Member States. Similarly, on the one hand, it aims at promoting wide access to justice through the Aarhus Convention and pledging to have the Member States promote it, but on the other hand, through still allowing divergent and restrictive access rules at Member State level, it does not fully live up to its promises.

Interparliamentary conferences and other permanent forums for interparliamentary cooperation are blossoming in the European Union. Following more or less lengthy negotiations between national and European parliamentarians, two new conferences and a new joint parliamentary scrutiny group for Europol have been created since 2012. Against this background, this article examines to what extent the Joint parliament scrutiny group is comparable to the previously existing interparliamentary conferences. Beyond that, it asks the question as to whether any better-defined guidelines or procedures could be adopted to rationalise the process of creation of new forums for interparliamentary cooperation. It makes some concrete proposals in that direction.

The EU has not yet found effective answers to constitutional crises in its Member States, in particular Hungary and Poland. Due to systemic problems of compliance with the common values of Art. 2, the legitimacy of the EU constitutional order and its smooth functioning are under threat, but the EU lacks instruments of direct enforcement and coercion. Several authors have therefore proposed to 'federalize' EU mechanisms and to guarantee to EU institutions, in particular the Court of Justice, more powers to intervene vis-a-vis Member States. However, the current Treaty framework presents a series of obstacles to federal-like enforcement. Solutions to national crises must ultimately respect the constitutional balance between the Union and the Member States. © 2018. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 License.

National parliaments were long absent from the European integration process. Following the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, the economic and monetary crisis and the beginning of the Juncker presidency, an important intensification in national parliaments’ relationship to European institutions can be observed. This begs the question as to whether national parliaments have now become self-standing actors in European governance. The present analysis shows that relationships as they currently exist do not allow to qualify parliaments as ‘actors’, though they are undoubtedly more engaged in this domain than they were before.

This commentary offers an analysis of the Florescu ruling, rendered by the ECJ in June 2017. Among others, it offers insights on the legal status of the MoU bailed-out countries enter into, the reviewability of these instruments, and the applicability of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights to financial assistance in the EU.

In 2015, the General Court’s Rules of Procedure introduced for the first time an EU closed evidence procedure that allows the use of closed or semi-closed evidence, i.e. reliance on evidence that is not, or not fully, disclosed to the applicant. This article shows that the EU closed evidence procedure does not comply with the requirements of the ECHR where even the essence of the evidence is kept from the applicant. It also identifies procedural ambiguities where compliance with the ECHR depends on the interpretation of the Rules by the GC.The article further argues that as the Rules were not introduced through publicly debated law, but were drafted and developed mostly behind closed doors, they lack democratic legitimacy.

Following the adoption of Eurocrisis Law, the European Parliament (EP) has been strongly empowered in the Economic and Monetary Union. It may intervene mostly in three ways: by the means of control mechanisms around Euro summits, during Economic Dialogues and in the framework of the European Parliamentary Week and the Interparliamentary conference on Stability, Economic Coordination and Governance. An analysis of the practice reveals however that thus far this empowerment has remained largely theoretical; The EP could still better exploit the potential of its newly attributed capacities.The reform proposals currently under discussion were found to bear some potential if adequately used, despite being (still) of a soft nature like the ones currently existing.

After the British referendum of June 2016, the other 27 States of the EU sought to make common cause and affirmed the “undivided and indivisible” nature of the Union. At the same time, many leading political actors (foremost the French president Macron) and EU institutions stressed the need for greater differentiation of rights and obligations among the Member States in the future EU of 27 States. One of the plausible scenarios for the EU’s future, according to the Commission, is: “those who want more do more”. This article maps the recent surge of interest in pursuing new projects of differentiated integration, and discusses their legal and political feasibility in light of the characteristics of the main forms of differentiated integration currently offered by the European Treaties.

This article explores whether the Global Strategy for the EU’s Foreign and Security Policy adds new significance to the human rights commitment spelled out in EU Treaties and elaborated in other sectoral, strategic documents. In particular, it investigates whether the Strategy’s take on human rights continues or complements the Union’s earlier approach in the field or prioritises them in the Union’s activities. The article commences with an identification of the modalities through which the new Strategy voices human rights both as values and objectives in EU external policies. This is done against the background of coherence and resilience as organising concepts of the Union’s external action and the Global Strategy itself. It goes on to draw from our research findings of three case studies as focused on the EU human rights and rule of law failure at home (Poland and Hungary), at its borders (in relation to migration), and in its closest vicinity (Ukraine). These serve as the background for the analysis of how the pursuit of human rights objectives is continued, complemented or prioritised against the background of and with the use of the two foundational concepts. It is contended that coherence and resilience advance (if at times modestly) the existing EU human rights agenda, continuing earlier approaches (for example, ensuring a comprehensive human rights approach to conflict and crisis) or complementing them (for example, using and investing in all instruments aimed at conflict prevention, management, resolution and stabilisation; connecting the internal and external spheres and policies). The migration policy remains a problematic one, as the implementation of the rhetorical commitment to the prioritisation of human rights does not stand trial with the general atmosphere in European and world politics.

The EU fundamental right to data protection and the secondary legislation in this field are undergoing a constant process of expansion both through decisions of the Court of Justice of the EU as well as by means of legislative measures. This right is not only expanding in terms of its material and personal scope of application, but it is also gradually gaining importance compared to other fundamental rights and competing interests. Moreover, its scope of application is expanding outside of the EU borders as EU data protection becomes progressively more important for third-country controllers. The General Data Protection Regulation foresees further expansion of the scope of application of EU data protection. This article aims to assess the consequences of this gradual expansion of EU data protection and to determine whether the EU data protection regime could potentially expand to an undesirable extent, creating imbalances in the overall regime of fundamental rights protection.

The European Parliament's role in EU external relations and treaty-making has increased over the years through constitutional practice and Treaty amendments. Finally, with the Treaty of Lisbon, the European Parliament's constitutional rights in treaty-making establish – in the words of the European Court of Justice (CJEU) – ‘symmetry between legislation-making and treaty-making in compliance with institutional balance provided for by the Treaties’. In a comparative overview, the European Parliament has ascertained more extensive powers over treaty-making compared to the majority of national parliaments which are only involved in politically important international treaties. This contribution addresses the consequences of this symmetry or parallelism and asks whether it leads to structural symmetry or even procedural symmetry which synchronizes the acts of legislating and treaty-making with each other. This contribution analyses the role of the European Parliament in the different phases of international treaty-making against the backdrop of this constitutional practice. This constitutional practice is shaped by intergovernmental agreements, bilateral arrangements and European Parliament resolutions and is influenced by the mounting case law of the CJEU. It also assesses the European Parliament's role in concluding international administrative agreements concluded by the Commission and Europol and how far the constitutional practice is in line with EU primary law.

European policies are increasingly implemented through the joint production, gathering, management and exchange of information. These information exchange mechanisms may pose problems in the context of judicial protection because it may be difficult to identify the actor responsible for a piece of information which was the basis for a final measure, and the act of information sharing may not be challengeable before a court. The purpose of this article is to examine the gaps in judicial protection – if any – arising from the widespread use of information sharing activities in European administrative law. After an overview of the information exchange and management activities in European administrative law, the gaps in judicial protection are identified and discussed in the context of two case studies. The central argument is that although the system of administrative decision-making is becoming increasingly integrated, the disintegrated system of judicial protection poses a serious threat to the principle of effective judicial protection in information sharing activities that are aimed at implementing EU policies. The article ends with recommendations on how these judicial protection gaps could be filled.

This introduction sets the context of the analysis conducted in this special issue. In particular, it examines the issue of the democratic legitimacy of the European Union (EU) Economic Governance, the role of national parliaments and of the European Parliament in the European integration process. It also addresses the question of throughput legitimacy within the EU that guides all contributions. This serves as basis to study the urgency of the democratic challenge in the EU economic governance, as well as its specificity. After the contributions to this special issue are briefly presented, this introduction examines what they bring to the overall debate on democratic legitimacy in this policy domain, among others in terms of the difficulties that have arisen across Member States. At the same time, perspectives of possible future developments are also spelt out, in particular in the context of an EU-27 post Brexit.

The newly established European Banking Union has introduced a unique accountability framework of the European Central Bank vis-a-vis the European Parliament (EP), but also vis-a-vis national parliaments, in the form of Banking Dialogue. The ECB was thus far held to account for its monetary policy actions by the EP in the framework of the long-existing Monetary Dialogue. However, some shortcomings have become apparent in this procedure, especially with the economic crisis. Beyond this, the recent attribution of new competences to the ECB calls for a reflection as to the accountability mechanisms in place to control its actions. Based on an empirical and normative analysis of both types of dialogues, we contend that the Banking Dialogue could serve as a model to reform the Monetary Dialogue to enhance the legitimacy of the ECB's actions and of the EU as a whole.

This article explores and reviews the approach of the Court of Justice of the EU to defining disability under the Employment Equality Directive and concentrates, in particular, on the two most recent cases which were decided in 2014: Z and Kaltoft and the relevance of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), to which the EU is a party. The article argues that the Court's approach to defining disability, as applied in practice, is not compatible with either the wording or spirit of the CRPD, and there is a real danger that the CJEU's mistaken approach will also trickle down to national courts. This is in spite of the fact that the Court pays lip service to the social contextual model of disability as outlined in the CRPD in its judgments.

The EU’s role in the field of human health is solidifying in terms of law and policy, but also with respect to the institutional organisation of human health expertise. In light of the emerging health-care union and questions regarding the nature and scope of a European health law, the institutional organisation deserves attention as it may affect the nature of the policy and law in this field. Looking back in history, this article maps the consolidation of human health expertise in the main legislative and policy-making institutional actors in the European Union: The European Commission; the European Parliament; the Council of the European Union; and the European Agencies and committees.

The role of national parliaments in EU decision-making has generally been considered marginal since national parliaments participate indirectly through national executives. The Lisbon Treaty, however, triggered important developments in this regard. Direct involvement of national parliaments through the Early Warning System and Political Dialogue has prompted internal reforms. This article argues that, because of the new procedures provided for by the Lisbon Treaty and the direct relationship between the Commission and national parliaments, certain legislatures such as the French and Italian have become stronger in their involvement in EU affairs. However, seven years of practice post-Lisbon show that the innovations brought about by the new Treaty have fallen short of fully satisfying national parliaments’ thirst for active engagement. We also observe that changes at the national level have only been implemented progressively and have not yet been exploited to their full potential.

Published online: July 13, 2017 A special report by The Economist on the future of the European Union, published on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, was significantly entitled ‘The case for flexibility’. The report argued that ‘the EU must embrace greater differentiation or face potential disintegration’, and that ‘a more differentiated Europe, based around the idea of variable geometry, a range of speeds or concentric circles, would be a good way to ease the tensions and problems that afflict the present, overly rigid EU’.1 On the same day, as they commemorated the EEC Treaty’s anniversary, the leaders of the 27 EU Member States (all of them, except the UK) adopted, together with the EU institutions, a Rome Declaration in which a more cautious version of the same idea was rendered as follows: ‘We will act together, at different paces and intensity where necessary, while moving in the same direction, as we have done in the past, in line with the Treaties and keeping the door open to those who want to join later’.

The Court of Justice of the European Union (cjeu) has taken a restrictive approach when interpreting the standing requirements applicable to private parties wanting to challenge eu legal measures. The Lisbon Treaty introduced some change, but access to the Court remains overly restricted for private parties. The European Union is by far the most successful regional integration community there is, and it has been widely imitated. This article seeks to explore and compare the standing requirements applicable to private parties before the cjeu and other regional courts in order to see if the cjeu has something to learn from the others.

The architecture of the EU system of protection of fundamental rights is uniquely complex. The web of Charter and Convention articles is closely interwoven with general principles of EU law,Treaty provisions as well as with rights enshrined in EU legislation. The latter have received limited attention to date. EU legislation increasingly directly or indirectly, explicitly or implicitly, sets fundamental rights standards or marks the presence of Union law - thereby allowing the European Court of Justice to do so. The variety of EU legislation with fundamental rights implications sheds light on the active dimension of EU fundamental rights policy and poses multiple challenges for the interaction between the European and domestic legal orders that are explored in this article). © 2014 Kluwer Law International. ispartof: Common Market Law Review vol:51 issue:1 pages:219-245 status: published

EnglishThere are no universally applicable procedural standards under international law for independence referenda. However, in contemporary comparative practice, a minimum requirement has emerged for clarity of both the winning majority and the referendum question. This article demonstrates that Scotland could become an independent state with the lowest popular support in recent international practice, yet this outcome would not compromise the legitimacy of the vote. Even the referendum question is an exemplar of textual clarity. However, the possibility of a referendum on the United Kingdom's (UK) exit from the European Union (EU) complicates the matter. The author argues that, with independence, Scotland would, prima facie, also exit the EU, unless negotiated otherwise. However, with a potential referendum on the UK's EU membership on the horizon, Scots do not know whether a vote to remain within the UK is also a vote to remain within the EU. Given the complexity and significance of the EU legal order, Scots have a right to know whether, at least in the near future, the alternative to independence is the UK within or outside the EU. Ift he two referenda fall too close to each other, the clarity of the Scottish independence referendum could be unduly compromised francaisIl n'existe pas, en droit international, de normes procedurales universellement applicables aux referendums sur I'independance. Cependant, la pratique comparative contemporaine revele une exigence minimale de clarte quant a la majorite gagnante requise ainsi que sur la question referendaire elle-rneme. L'auteur demontre que I'Ecosse pourrait devenir un etat independant avec le plus faible soutien populaire dans la pratique internationale recente, mais que ceci ne remettrait pas en cause la legitimite du vote. Meme le texte de la question referendaire ecossaise est un modele de clarte. Cependant, la possibilite d'un referendum sur le retrait eventuel du Royaume-Uni de l'Union europeenne (UE) complique la situation. L'auteur pretend qu'advenant son independance du Royaume- Uni (R-U) , I'Ecosse quitterait egalement l'UE s'il n'en est pas convenu autrement. Mais avec un eventuel referendum sur le retrait du R-U de I'UE a l'horizon, les Ecossais ne peuvent savoir si un vote pour demeurer partie du R-U est egalement un vote pour demeurer partie de I'UE. Etant donne la complexite et l'importance de I'ordre juridique de l'UE, les Ecossais ont le droit de savoir si I'alternative a l'independance est de demeurer partie du R-U a l'interieur, ou a l'exterieur, de l'UE. Si les deux referendums sont trop rapproches l'un de l'autre, la clarte du referendum sur I'independance ecossaise pourrait etre indument compromise