Administrative Capacity for Effective Implementation of EU Law

Article 197 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union stipulates that effective implementation of Union law by the Member States shall be regarded as a matter of common interest. This article considers how Member States may improve their administrative capacity to apply EU law effectively. A law or policy is effectively implemented when it can be confirmed that its objectives, targets or results are actually achieved. It is proposed that effective implementation in the EU is a ‘collaborative project’. This is not only because Member States benefit when others correctly implement common rules, but also because they learn from the experiences of other Member States. It follows that the public authorities responsible for implementation of EU law need to benchmark their performance against that of their peers in other Member States and therefore need to develop the institutional capacity for assessing and adjusting their own performance.

Syria and the red lines of international law. CEPS Commentary, 4 September 2013

As the US and its allies France and Turkey dither over whether or not to punish Assad for having used sarin gas to kill his own people, the crucial question is: What response might the outside world legally take without the authority of the UN Security Council, which remains blocked by two veto-wielding members, Russia and China? Sadly, international law provides no clear-cut answers to this dilemma. To respond to what US Secretary of State John Kerry has rightly called a “moral obscenity”, this commentary explores ways in which formal interpretations of international law might give way to a more pragmatic approach to punish the Assad regime for its use of chemical weapons.

Patenting Strategies of the EU Pharmaceutical Industry -Crossroad between Patent Law and Competition Policy. Research Papers in Law, 1/2011

From the Introduction. The pharmaceutical sector inquiry carried out by the European Commission in 2008 provides a useful framework for assessing the relationship between the patent system on the one hand and competition policy and law on the other hand. The pharmaceutical market is not only specifically regulated. It is also influenced by the special characteristics of the patent system which enables pharmaceutical companies engaged in research activities to enter into additional arrangements to cope with the competitive pressures of early patent application and the delays in drug approval. Patents appear difficult to reconcile with the need for sufficient and adequate access to medicines, which is why competition expectations imposed on the pharmaceutical sector are very high. The patent system and competition law are interacting components of the market, into which they must both be integrated. This can result in competition law taking a very strict view on the pharmaceutical industry by establishing strict functional performance standards for the reliance on intellectual property rights protection granted by patent law. This is in particular because in this sector the potential welfare losses are not likely to be of only monetary nature. In brief, the more inefficiencies the patent system produces, the greater the risk of an expansive application of competition law in this field. The aim of the present study is to offer a critical and objective view on the use or abuse of patents and defensive strategies in the pharmaceutical industry. It shall also seek to establish whether patents as presently regulated offer an appropriate degree of protection of intellectual property held by the economic operators in the pharmaceutical sector and whether there is a need or, for that matter, scope for improvement. A useful starting point for the present study is provided by the pharmaceutical sector competition inquiry (hereafter “the sector inquiry”) carried out by the European Commission during the first half of 2008. On 8 July 2008, the Commission adopted its Final Report pursuant to Article 17 of Regulation 1/2003 EC, revealing a series of “antitrust shortcomings” that would require further investigation1.

The Criminalisation of Migration in Europe: A State-of-the-Art of the Academic Literature and Research. CEPS Liberty and Security in Europe No. 61, October 2013

In the last 30 years, a clear trend has come to define modern immigration law and policy. A set of seemingly disparate developments concerning the constant reinforcement of border controls, tightening of conditions of entry, expanding capacities for detention and deportation and the proliferation of criminal sanctions for migration offences, accompanied by an anxiety on the part of the press, public and political establishment regarding migrant criminality can now be seen to form a definitive shift in the European Union towards the so-called ‘criminalisation of migration’. This paper aims to provide an overview of the ‘state-of-the-art’ in the academic literature and EU research on criminalisation of migration in Europe. It analyses three key manifestations of the so-called ‘crimmigration’ trend: discursive criminalisation; the use of criminal law for migration management; and immigrant detention, focusing both on developments in domestic legislation of EU member states but also the increasing conflation of mobility, crime and security which has accompanied EU integration. By identifying the trends, synergies and gaps in the scholarly approaches dealing with the criminalisation of migration, the paper seeks to provide a framework for on-going research under Work Package 8 of the FIDUCIA project.