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Summary Most western contemporary legal systems are grounded in natural law principles established by modern humanism even though various alternatives, post-humanism being among the most influential, start influencing their understanding. In addition, the effect of the rapid pace of technological development on humanity has made the inherent limitations of its rules and other social arrangements manifest, as the use of technology is growingly used for human enhancement. The advocacy seeking to expand the catalogue of human rights and to cover transhumanism has started to bear fruit, but more conceptual developments are needed to lay the foundations for a more systemic regulatory development. This reflection paper focuses on the use of microchip implants, from among the augmentation practices that have recently flown under the radar of legal scientific research. These electronic devices re-shape the experience of being human and their various applications suggest that the penetration levels of capacity enhancing technologies will continue to be on the rise. It will discuss and clarify whether and to which extent transhumanism, personal rights and private autonomy are connected, and the former sufficiently covered by the right to bodily integrity (RBI). The reflection will rely on a comparative and interpretative approach based on the extant literature, national and European Union (EU) regulatory initiatives, and recent doctrinal developments found in case law.

Following the declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic, the restrictions imposed by the Member States (MSs) of the European Union (EU) led the tourism and commercial air transport industry to face serious financial difficulties that required airlines to apply for state support. In March 2020, the European Commission adopted a State Aid Temporary Framework (TF) for the COVID-19 period to simplify the process of granting aid, allowing the MSs rapid economic interventions. Claims regarding the approval of State aid to certain airlines reached the EU General Court (EGC), on the grounds of violation of the fair competition principle. It became clear that the processes enabled by the TF dispensed unequal treatment to airline companies and that the flexibility of the TF created competition imbalances. In spite of these events, little attention has been given to the way its application ignores the requirements of EU State aid control and other procedural justice and fairness principles, by failing to ensure neutrality and equality. This article addresses the matter using a standard legal interpretive approach to explain the imbalances created by the regulation. It presents a systematic review of the current regime, identifies the TF inefficiencies affecting competition principles, and argues for specific adjustments that could enhance its transparency. These contributions are useful to improve the existing framework and help prepare for a better management of future crises.

Estonia is known for its technological and regulatory/institutional innovation proposals and the development of one of the most efficient electronic government models in the world. Besides the "X-road" project (also known as the X-tee), benchmarking the state’s innovativeness and digital capabilities at the domestic level, the e-Residency could be said to be the most important flagship programme positioning the country internationally. This article will expand earlier contributions about the political significance of the programme to explain further and characterize the concept according to its legal and political grounds, practical uses and continued strategic benefits to the country. It will revisit some of the strengths and weaknesses of the initiative, and present scenarios suggesting that its relevance will increase with the evolution of the European Union (EU) public sector digital ecosystems, leading to efficiency gains in cross border cooperation among the EU Member States (MSs). Resumen Estonia es conocida por sus propuestas de innovación tecnológica, regulatoria e institucional, y, asimismo, por haber desarrollado uno de los modelos de gobierno electrónico más eficientes del mundo. Además del proyecto "X-road" (también conocido como X-tee), que se ha convertido en referente de sus capacidades digitales a nivel nacional, se podría decir que la residencia electrónica - e-Residency- es el programa insignia más importante que ha permitido posicionar al país a nivel internacional. Este artículo ampliará escritos y aportes anteriores sobre su significado político, para profundizar sobre la caracterización del concepto desde la perspectiva legal, sus funcionamiento, y el papel estrategico que cumple en terminos de politica exterior. Adicionalmente, se revisarán algunas de las fortalezas y debilidades de la residencia electrónica según fue concebida, y se presentarán escenarios que sugieren que su relevancia aumentará a medida que los ecosistemas digitales del sector público de la Unión Europea (UE) se configuren. Lo anterior, porque establece estándares que podrían facilitar la cooperación transfronteriza entre los Estados Miembros de la Unión Europea.

Higher education institutions around the world have embarked on complex journeys of organizational change to facilitate the transition towards a more competent and educated society, especially one able to adapt to advanced and sustainable political, economic and sociotechnical paradigms. in this context, leading universities have adopted the Research-Based (rB) approach as a fundamental component of their strategies to bring closer together their main educational activities: teaching, learning and research. However, in spite of ample efforts, serious shortcomings at the implementation level are commonly reported. Especially revealing are the students’ limited self-reliance, confidence, and academic research and writing skills documented in the literature. This article examines and updates the concept of Research-Based maps and explores the multilevel regulatory framework that has conditioned the implementation and alignment of educational initiatives, including the institutional arrangements that are common in public universities in the European union, and in Estonia, as an example. it enhances the understanding of complex institutional and regulatory interactions in general, emphasizing the importance of reflexive and well justified normative determination.

Summary Fairness and empowerment are aspirational concepts in law. The scientific and professional legal community has not convened on their substance and the ways they can be achieved. Therefore, there is an inherent risk that the values they entail become lip services that lack determination and reliability. This section addresses the problem revisiting and expanding the Taxonomy of Legal Usability and User Experience Factors, one of the first attempts to synthetize parametric standards for transaction design. The paper adds factors and criteria that operationalise procedural legitimacy principles for transacting that increase the proactive capacities of contracting activities to prevent and/or resolve disputes. It speaks of transactions as the smallest constitutive units of all exchange relations that allow upgrades, assuming that planning, negotiating and managing contracts, as well as other legally relevant products, services, interactions, processes and systems, will benefit from an integrated epistemological perspective and its institutionalization.

Official reports and studies have shown that the formal institutionalization of Family Mediation in Estonia by way of implementation of the Mediation Directive has not resulted in a meaningful incr...

Smart contracting (SC) is a proactive proposal to operationalize the relational contract theory for the upgrade and improvement of legally relevant exchange. The dynamic institutional environment of the European Union (EU) is a suitable framework for this proposal. SC addresses the interests of the business management, law and information technology practices with a perspective of influence in digital exchange, communication processes and other human and human-machine interactions. This position paper restates the advantages of the concept by highlighting the practical transition pathway SC offers to moderate the growing haste towards the embeddedness of exchange in automated and distributed models. This theoretical contribution supports the systematization of the proactive and legal design research field, and explains the characterization, operationalization and specification of the SC concept.

This paper explores some of the social dimensions affecting higher education policies in Estonia, and in respect to the European Union (EU) institutional framework and priorities, and looking at higher education as a fundamental human right. From this perspective, the aim is to establish that understanding underlying phenomena becomes key to respond strategically, raise awareness and improve the development of academic policies at the national and institutional levels. The combination of work and studies is one of the most critical dimensions to factor into this assessment but it has been neglected in the practice. Lecturers and other faculty members intervene, developing independent academic policies and initiatives in the absence of a pre-concerted strategy, expertise, mandate and/or capabilities. Instead, universities should prepare for unorthodox engagements adapting to the students in need, and train their faculties to facilitate a shift towards less traditional learning environments. Responsive adjustments to the current social developments can be interpreted to be the proper way or the state to perform its duties and to better guarantee the exercise of the human right to education.

Gaining understanding about customers ’mindset and information on their experiences is a precondition for the formulation of an effective country branding strategy. What potential tourists might learn and how they can be made to feel about a place can help small and not very well-known countries compete with bigger and more popular tourist destinations. The article focuses on the effectiveness of Brand Estonia and claims that it is still a challenge, despite the existence of an ongoing strategy. It also favors the revision of the brand identity selection and the promotion of Estonian brand, and supports a customer-based approach for their assessment. Documentary and empirical evidence show that the image of Estonia among its most important target audiences in the field of tourism does not match the Estonian brand identity. The gap in-between was evidenced by the results and content analysis of 24 in-depth interviews made with a selected group of people well acquainted with the country as well as some branding experts. This article contributes to the existing case study literature with findings that also manifest opportunities to strengthen the country brand, if its formulation develops a realistic brand identity and its promotion is based on accurate, unique and appealing ideas. It proposes academic support to innovative or alternative concepts for the country branding, and comments on applications of this study to more specific fields and further research.

This article studies the Internet from an evolutionary point of view, based on historic analysis, to confirm institutional change predictions suggested by Utterback’s innovation development theory. It explores the appearance of rules and the consolidation of public and private initiatives that could enhance the capacity of the private sector to coregulate in the digital sphere, which is especially relevant to the field of electronic commerce-related transactions. This institutional review distinguishes between two distinct layers of the Internet. Also, formal and informal regulatory patterns are identified in their evolutionary stages, revealing the prevailing models: unregulated, self-regulated, co-regulated, or regulated. These conceptual associations aim to provide a framework scheme to further study specific topics in the fields of Internet governance, digital economy, and the information society. This primer should also induce interdisciplinary research, for better understanding on how rules influence digital innovation and behaviour, in practice. Implicit in this account is that most of the credit for the efficient development of these technologies, in their two layers, during their first stages, might be attributed to the availability of collective, collaborating, or independent self-regulatory capacity. The most immediate observations show a growing tendency towards over-prescriptive regulatory systems, promoted to control its use and content; incompatible with the needs and interests of the majority of stakeholders. A concluding claim is that the Internet and telecommunication technologies in general, considered as enabling mediums, would benefit from dynamic and mixed regulatory solutions, according to and depending on whether their object is their infrastructure or the surface layer of its applications.

This book chapter contextualizes the origins of the proactive law movement to explain its current developments and advance its conceptual underpinnings towards applications of the perspective closest to the digital economy and electronic trade with regard to transactions and contracts. It aims at proposing transactional design as an expression of smart contracting practices, explaining its scope within the principled conflict management and dispute resolution collaborative culture. Additionally, standards of efficiency, effectiveness, and satisfaction are taken from within the computer sciences and the law to present an integrated taxonomy of usability parameters for the planning and assessment of sustainable business and other human transactions consigned in electronic texts mediated by technology. It is argued that the applicability of such integrated cross-disciplinary models is ensured given the growing reach and range of digital services and also because their formulation reflects the interconnected society principles, needs, and capacities. While featuring innovative aspects in alternative contracting practices, it refrains from addressing visualization in depth. However, the complexity of engaging with semiotic analysis of visualization techniques in legal interface design is signalled as an especially worthy field for further research.

This chapter represents an effort to link concepts that appear to be and are commonly placed in distant theoretical areas but belong much closer together in practical terms: the principles of internet governance, and the networked information society converging in rules on one hand; and self-regulation competences required for collaborative and alternative conflict management on the other. They condense the public and the private roles in compatible regulatory models that could match sociability, economics and technologies of the times. It is an essay on competences, public policies that are not preceded by standards and principles that do not seem to have been captured by the laws. The institutionalization strategy on Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) and Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) for cross-border consumer redress in the European Union will be the reference to assess regulatory impact and argue for consistency. Legislating ADR and ODR aims at supporting electronic commerce as an essential component of the digital agenda; the flagship initiative that establishes the digital single market according to the European 2020 Strategy. Questions must be raised considering the marked emphasis placed on promoting social changes merely by passing new laws. The importance of understanding that the European Union is not capable of supplanting its members in turning institutional formulas into operational strategies is underlined, as well as a reflection on the need to support the social and economic transformations that have followed the remarkable developments in telecommunications and other digital technologies. Conceiving a European dispute resolution culture, enabled and mediatized by technological solutions is a viable solution to prevent more of the perceived shortcomings of public actions, and a truly innovative ODR systems design, could support the transition. This text invites the integration of concepts, disciplines and practices, respect for principles and their consistent application to solutions that could improve human transactions for a sustainable digital economy where empowered private actors can efficiently contribute to the ongoing collective transformations of the global governance.

Statements such as ígambling can be a powerful economic development toolî are the kind fostering the acceptance of the proliferation of technologies to aid the spread and availability of gambling opportunities in countries with less sophisticated legal systems. These, together with slogans and the absence of reliable research, the indifference of the population and administrative policies that do not take a stand for a responsible regulation of new socio-economic phenomena, are the main negative factors that require reflection and that should be officially assessed. For long time Estonia showed very little interest in gambling related problems. It seems that all the state was interested in was tax collection. Other questions such as state control over this sector of the market, the corresponding organisation of administrative bodies as well as their specific responsibilities and the state policy concerning internet gambling, including the pathological gambling issue, have not been addressed at all. However, in the last two years the gambling addiction has acquired a special meaning in the country. The personal and sociological impact of this disease was denounced, and thus an official recognition of the problem finally took place: fighting against it has become a priority for different groups