In-house lawyers of NRAs may not represent their clients before the European Court of Justice: A case note on UKE (2011). Research Papers in Law, 3/2011

From the Introduction. It is not frequent for a National Regulation Authority (NRA) to bring an action against the Commission decision and, cynically speaking, case Prezes Urzędu Komunikacji Elektronicznej2 v Commission3 shows that the avoidance of a sweeping retaliation may be one of the reasons for it. The General Court followed the Commission‟s argument that, notwithstanding the peculiarities of the employment conditions of the Polish Regulator‟s legal counsel giving it virtually full independence, as well as the fact that the Polish law itself does not differentiate between in-house counsel and third party attorneys, the claim should be rejected on the grounds of inadmissibility. The GC based its judgment on Art 19 of the Statute of the Court of Justice4, which requires that, with the exception of the Member States' Governments and the EU Institutions, parties to the dispute must be represented by a lawyer. In so doing, the Court explicitly referred to the infamous Akzo Nobel Chemicals and Akcros Chemicals v Commission5 and EREF v Commission6. Most importantly, the Court stated that the lawyers representing Prezes Urzędu Komunikacji Elektronicznej (UKE) are bound to enjoy a degree of independence inferior to that of lawyers who are not linked to their clients by an employment contract7.

Economic Incentives for Indirect TTIP Spillovers. CEPS Special Report No. 94/October 2014 [TTIP Series No. 2]

A deep, comprehensive and ambitious TTIP should not undermine or otherwise negatively affect the WTO and its signatories. Among other things, this means that trade diversion ought to be minimised and positive spillovers stimulated. The present CEPS Special Report provides some elementary quantification, which helps to understand the economic incentives for third countries to seek regulatory alignment with TTIP results, where relevant, and for which TTIP should be ‘open’. It focuses on ‘indirect’ spillovers and employs a rather aggregate economic approach. We find that, of three groups of countries that are important for trade with the EU and the US, the ‘closest’ neighbours (NAFTA, EEA, Switzerland and Turkey) exhibit powerful incentives to align so as to benefit from positive spillovers. This is less clear for two other groups. Of the (seven) ‘biggest traders’ (in manufactured goods, for which spillovers matter most), China turns out to have the greatest interest in alignment in selected sectors, followed by Israel, Japan and South Korea. Whereas the latter three either have or are negotiating FTAs with the US and the EU, precisely China has none and remains outside TPP as well. In terms of sectors, the chemical sector followed by electronic equipment are by far the most important, with agro-products and fish as a good third (SPS issues). However, in chemicals and electrical equipment, the TTIP negotiations so far, and recent US/EU regulatory cooperation, do not indicate an ambitious approach, which could reduce regulatory barriers to market access drastically.

The Composition and Drivers of Energy Prices and Costs in Energy-Intensive Industries: The Case of Ceramics, Glass and Chemicals. CEPS Special Report No. 85, 27 March 2014

In May 2013, the European Commission received a mandate from the European Council to “to present an analysis of the composition and drivers of energy prices and costs in Member States, with a particular focus on the impact on households, SMEs and energy intensive industries, and looking more widely at the EU's competitiveness vis-à-vis its global economic counterparts”. Following such mandate and in view of the preparation by the Commission of a Communication and a Staff Working Document, DG Enterprise and Industry commissioned CEPS to carry out a set of studies aimed at providing well-grounded evidence about the evolution and composition of energy prices and costs at plant level within individual industry sectors. A team of CEPS researchers conducted the research, led by Christian Egenhofer and Lorna Schrefler. Vasileios Rizos served as Project Coordinator. Other CEPS researchers contributing to the project included: Fabio Genoese, Andrea Renda, Andrei Marcu, Julian Wieczorkiewicz, Susanna Roth, Federico Infelise, Giacomo Luchetta, Lorenzo Colantoni, Wijnand Stoefs, Jacopo Timini and Felice Simonelli. In addition to an introductory report entitled “About the Study and Cross-Sectoral Analysis”, CEPS prepared five sectoral case studies: two on ceramics (wall and floor tiles and bricks and roof tiles), two on chemicals (ammonia and chlorine) and one on flat glass. Each of these six studies has been consolidated in this single volume for free downloading on the CEPS website. The specific objective was to complement information already available at macro level with a bottom-up perspective on the operating conditions that industry stakeholders need to deal with, in terms of energy prices and costs. The approach chosen was based on case studies for a selected set (sub-)sectors amongst energy-intensive industries. A standard questionnaire was circulated and respondents were sampled according to specified criteria. Data and information collected were finally presented in a structured format in order to guarantee comparability of results between the different (sub-)sectors analysed. The complete set of files can also be downloaded from the European Commission’s website: http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/newsroom/cf/itemdetail.cfm?item_id=7238&lang=en&title=Study-on-composition-and-drivers-of-energy-prices-and-costs-in-energy-intnsive-industries The results of the studies were presented at a CEPS Conference held on February 26th along with additional evidence from other similar studies. The presentations can be downloaded at: http://www.ceps.eu/event/level-and-drivers-eu-energy-prices-energy-inten...

Greater TTIP Ambition in Chemicals: Why and how. CEPS Special Report, 28 July 2015. Paper No. 10 in the CEPS-CTR project ‘TTIP in the Balance’ and CEPS Special Report No. 114/July 2015.

To date, the negotiations over chemicals in the Translatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) have not shown sufficient ambition. The talks have focused too much on the differences in the two ‘systems’, rather than on the actual levels of health and environmental protection for substances regulated by both the US and the EU. Given the accomplishments within the OECD and the UN Globally Harmonised System of Classification and Labelling of Chemicals (GHS), the question is whether TTIP can be any more ambitious in the area of chemicals? We find that there is no detailed or systematic knowledge about how the two levels of protection in chemicals compare, although caricatures and stereotypes abound. This is partly due to an obsessive focus on a single US federal law, the Toxic Subtances Control Act (TSCA), whereas in practice US protection depends on many statutes and regulations, as well as on voluntary withdrawals (under pressure from the Environmental Protection Agency) and severe common law liability. This paper makes the economic case for firmly addressing the regulatory barriers, discusses the EU’s proposals, finds that the European Parliament’s Resolution on TTIP of July 2015 lacks a rationale (for chemicals), argues that both TSCA and REACH ought to be improved (based on ‘better regulation’), discusses the link with a global regime, advocates significant improvement of market access where equivalence of health and environmental objectives is agreed and, finally, proposes to lower the costs for companies selling in both markets by allowing them to opt into the other party’s more stringent rules, thereby avoiding duplication while racing-to-the-top. The ‘living agreement’ on chemicals ought to be led by a new TTIP institution authorised to establish the level of health and environmental protection on both sides of the Atlantic for substances regulated on both sides. These findings will lay the foundation for a highly beneficial lowering of trading costs without in any way affecting the level of protection. Indeed, this is exactly what TTIP is, or should be, all about.This paper is the 10th in a series produced in the context of the “TTIP in the Balance” project, jointly organised by CEPS and the Center for Transatlantic Relations (CTR) in Washington, D.C. It is published simultaneously on the CEPS (www.ceps.eu) and CTR websites (http://transatlantic.sais-jhu.edu).