The Legal Status and Influence of Decisions of International Organizations and other Bodies in the European Union. College of Europe Research Paper in Law 01/2014

Introduction. The European Union’s external action is not only defined by its influence on international developments, but also by its ability and the need to respond to those developments. While traditionally many have stressed the EU’s ‘autonomy’, over the years its ‘dependence’ on global developments has become more clear.2 International law has continued to play a key role in, not only in the EU’s external relations, but also in the Union’s own legal order.3 The purpose of this paper is not to assess the role or performance of the EU in international institutions.4 Rather it purports to reverse the picture and focus on a somewhat under-researched topic: the legal status of decisions of international organizations in the EU’s legal order.5 While parts of the status of these decisions relate to the status of international agreements and international customary law, it can be argued that decisions of international organizations and other international bodies form a distinct category. In fact, it has been observed that “this phenomenon has added a new layer of complexity to the already complex law of external relations of the European Union”.6 Emerging questions relate to the possible difference between decisions of international organizations of which the EU is a member (such as the FAO) and decisions of organizations where it is not (irrespective of existing competences in that area – such as in the ILO). Questions also relate to the hierarchical status of these decisions in the EU’s legal order and to the possibility of them being invoked in direct or indirect actions before the Court of Justice. This contribution takes a broad perspective on decisions of international organizations by including decisions taken in other international institutions which do not necessarily comply with the standard definition of international organizations,7 be it bodies set-up by multilateral conventions or informal (transnational / regulatory) bodies. Some of these bodies are relatively close to the EU (such as the Councils established by Association Agreements – see further Section 5 below); others operate at a certain distance. Limiting the analysis to formal international organizations will not do justice to the manifold relationships between the European Union and various international bodies and to the effects of the norms produced by these bodies. The term ‘international decisions’ is therefore used to refer to any normative output of international institutional arrangements.

European Corporate Governance Reform and the German Party Paradox. CES Germany & Europe Working Papers, No. 03.1, 2003

This paper addresses the current discussion on links between party politics and production regimes. Why do German Social Democrats opt for more corporate governance liberalization than the CDU although, in terms of the distributional outcomes of such reforms, one would expect the situation to be reversed? I divide my analysis into three stages. First, I use the European Parliament’s crucial vote on the European takeover directive in July 2001 as a test case to show that the left-right dimension does indeed matter in corporate governance reform, beside cross-class and cross-party nation-based interests. In a second step, by analyzing the party positions in the main German corporate governance reforms in the 1990s, I show that the SPD and the CDU behave “paradoxically” in the sense that the SPD favored more corporate governance liberalization than the CDU, which protected the institutions of “Rhenish,” “organized” capitalism. This constellation occurred in the discussions on company disclosure, management accountability, the power of banks, network dissolution, and takeover regulation. Third, I offer two explanations for this paradoxical party behavior. The first explanation concerns the historical conversion of ideas. I show that trade unions and Social Democrats favored a high degree of capital organization in the Weimar Republic, but this ideological position was driven in new directions at two watersheds: one in the late 1940s, the other in the late 1950s. My second explanation lies in the importance of conflicts over managerial control, in which both employees and minority shareholders oppose managers, and in which increased shareholder power strengthens the position of works councils.

Cdk1 Restrains NHEJ through Phosphorylation of XRCC4-like Factor Xlf1

Eukaryotic cells use two principal mechanisms for repairing DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs): homologous recombination (HR) and nonhomologous end-joining (NHEJ). DSB repair pathway choice is strongly regulated during the cell cycle. Cyclin-dependent kinase 1 (Cdk1) activates HR by phosphorylation of key recombination factors. However, a mechanism for regulating the NHEJ pathway has not been established. Here, we report that Xlf1, a fission yeast XLF ortholog, is a key regulator of NHEJ activity in the cell cycle. We show that Cdk1 phosphorylates residues in the C terminus of Xlf1 over the course of the cell cycle. Mutation of these residues leads to the loss of Cdk1 phosphorylation, resulting in elevated levels of NHEJ repair in vivo. Together, these data establish that Xlf1 phosphorylation by Cdc2(Cdk1) provides a molecular mechanism for downregulation of NHEJ in fission yeast and indicates that XLF is a key regulator of end-joining processes in eukaryotic organisms.

Die Synoden von den Anfängen bis zum Vorabend des Nicaenums /

Includes bibliographical references (p. [ix]-xxi) and index.

Concilia Galliae.

Mode of access: Internet.

Das Konzil von Pavia-Siena, 1423-1424 /

Revised and enlarged ed. of of the 1st part of Das Konzil von Pavia-Siena, 1423-1424, published in 1968 as Bd. 16 of Vorreformationsgeschichtliche Forschungen--Cf. p. [ix].

Minutes of the county council and reports and minutes of committees of the council and other documents submitted to the council /

Name of County Council varies slightly.

Proceedings /

Vols. for Aug. 1926-Sept. 1930 in 2 pts., pt. 2 being a pamphlet of "news and notes."

Statement of devises, bequests, & grants to the corporation of the city of Philadelphia, in trust,

Mode of access: Internet.

Histoire des conciles d'après les documents originaux,

Translator's name appears on t.p. of v. 2, pt. 2, and succeeding volumes.

The post-Nicene Greek fathers.

The Alexandrian and the Antiochian schools.--Symbols of the first four councils.--The post-Nicene Greek fathers: Eusebius. Athanasius. Arius. Cyril of Jerusalem. Ephraem Syrus. Marcelius and the Apollinaril. Basil. Gregory Nazianzen. Gregory Nyssa. Didymus. Epiphanius. Diodorus of Tarsus. Chrysostom. Synesius. Theodore of Mopsuestia. Theophilus. Cyril of Alexandria. Nestorius. Theodoret. The church historians. Other writers of the fouth and fifth centuries. John of Damascus. Other late writers. The Greek hymnologists.

Conciliengeschichte. Nach den quellen bearb,

Vols. 5-6, "besorgt von dr. Alois Knöpfler"; v. 8-9, "fortgesetzt von J. cardinal Hergenröther."

Histoire des conciles d'après les documents originaux,

Vols. 3-11, translated by Delarc.

Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, cujus Johannes Dominicus Mansi et post ipsius mortem Florentius et Venetianus editores ab anno 1758 ad annum 1798 priores triginta unum tomos ediderunt, nunc autem continuatat et absoluta : tomus 0, 1-53.

Conspectus pro t. 1-46; Index alphabeticus conciliorum, t. 36A.

Facing the future with the character-building agencies; including a paper "Focal points of emphasis in the interpretation of character-building agencies, 1936-37"

"Reading references": p. 30-31.