La Banque centrale européenne et la nouvelle gouvernance économique européenne: le défi de l’intégration différenciée = The European Central Bank and the new European economic governance: the challenge of differential integration. Research Paper in Law 01/2015

No abstract.

The Future Organisation of the European Courts. Research Papers in Law, 2/2005

From the Introduction. According to Article 220 of the EC Treaty, the Court of Justice and the Court of First Instance (hereinafter CFI) “each within its jurisdiction, shall ensure that in the interpretation and application of [the EC] Treaty the law is observed”. The “pre-Nice” allocation of jurisdiction between the two Community courts can be summarized as follows. At Court of Justice level, mention should first of all be made of references for a preliminary ruling. A national court, in a case pending before it, can - or in some circumstances must - refer to the Court of Justice a question relating to the interpretation of provisions of the EC Treaty or of secondary Community law, or relating to the validity of provisions of secondary Community law.1 Moreover, the Court of Justice ensures the observance of the law in the context of actions for annulment or failure to act brought before it by the Community institutions, the European Central Bank (hereinafter ECB) and the Member States.2 These actions concern, respectively, the legality of an act of secondary Community law and the legality of the failure of the institution concerned to adopt such act. The Court of Justice also has jurisdiction in actions brought by the Commission or by a Member State relating to the infringement of Community law by a Member State (hereinafter infringement actions)3 and in actions relating to compensation for non-contractual damage brought by Member States against the Community.4 Finally, as regards the jurisdiction of the Court of Justice, mention should be made of appeals which can be lodged on points of law only against rulings of the CFI.5

Answering the Call of the European Court of Justice in Eurofoods a Proposed Package of Due Process Rights with a View Toward the 2012 Revision of the European Insolvency Regulation. IES WORKING PAPER 3/2011

This paper anticipates the 2012 revision of the European Insolvency Regulation, which is the sole Union legislation on the subject of cross border insolvency proceedings. The paper first describes the historical background of the Regulation. The salient point of the historical discussion is that the Regulation is the product of forty years of negotiation and arises from a historical context that is no longer applicable to current economic realities, i.e. it provides for liquidation, not reorganization, it doesn’t deal with cross border groups of companies, and it lacks an effective mechanism for transparency and creditor participation. The paper then reviews the unique hybrid jurisdictional system of concurrent universal and territorial proceedings that the Regulation imposes. It looks at this scheme from a practical viewpoint, i.e. what issues arise with concurrent proceedings in two states, involving the same assets, the same creditors, and the same company. The paper then focuses on a significant issue raised by the European Court of Justice in the Eurofoods case, i.e. the need to comply with fundamental due process principles that, while not articulated in the Regulation, lie at the core of Union law. Specifically, the paper considers the ramifications of the Court’s holding that “a Member State may refuse to recognize insolvency proceedings opened in another Member State where the decision to open the proceedings was taken in flagrant breach of the fundamental right to be heard.” In response to the Court’s direction, this paper proposes a package of due process rights, consisting principally of an accessible, efficient and useful insolvency database, the infrastructure of which already exists, but the content and use of which has not yet been developed. As part of a cohesive three part due process package, the paper also proposes the formation of cross border creditors' committees and the establishment of a European Insolvency Administrator. Finally, on the institutional level, this paper proposes that the revision of the Regulation and the development of the insolvency database not only need to be coordinated, but need to be conceptualized, managed and undertaken, not as the separate efforts of diverse institutions, but as a single, unified endeavor.