Authorisations under EU internal market rules. Research Paper in Law, 05/2013

From the Introduction. That the requirement of a prior authorisation, as a precondition for the exercise of any economic activity, may restrict the freedom of establishment and the free provision of services is a truism. If an authorisation is required in the Member State where establishment is to take place or the service is to be offered (host Member State), then operators who lack such authorisation are in no right to proceed to the projected activity. Therefore, as soon as it is being accepted that the EU internal market rules are not only about discriminatory measures, but also cover mere restrictions, it comes as no surprise that national authorisation systems come to be scrutinized under the Internal Market rules.

The EU essential facilities doctrine. Research Papers in Law, 6/2006

Introduction. The essential facilities doctrine may be seen as the ‘extra weight’ which is put onto the balance, in order to give precedence to the maintenance of competition over the complete contractual freedom of undertakings controlling an important and unique facility. The main purpose of the doctrine is to impose upon such ‘dominant’ undertakings the duty to negotiate and/or give access to the facility, against a reasonable fee, to other undertakings, which cannot pursue their own activity (and therefore will perish) without access to such a facility. This very simple description of the content of the doctrine underlines its limitations: through the imposition of a duty to negotiate or contractual obligations, the rule tends to compensate for the weaknesses of the competitive structure of a market, which are due to the existence of some essential facility. In other words, the doctrine does not by itself provide a definitive solution to the lack of competition, but tends to contractually maintain or even create some competition.1 The doctrine of essential facilities originates in the US antitrust case law of the Circuit and District Courts, but has never been officially acknowledged by the Supreme Court. It has been further developed and hotly debated by scholars in the US, both from a legal and from an economic viewpoint. In the EU, the essential facilities doctrine was openly introduced by the Commission during the early 1990s, but has received only limited and indirect support by the Court of First Instance (the CFI) and the European Court of Justice (the ECJ). It also indirectly inspired the legislation concerning the deregulation of traditional ‘natural’ monopolies. The judicial origin of the doctrine, combined with the hesitant application by the appeal courts, both in the US and the EU, cast uncertainty not only on the precise scope of the doctrine, but also on the issue of its very existence. These questions receive a particular light within the EU context, where the doctrine is called upon to play a different role from its US counterpart. In order to address the above issues, we will first pretend that an EU essential facility doctrine does indeed exist and we shall try to identify the scope and content thereof, through its main applications (Section 1). Subsequently, we will try to answer the question whether such a doctrine should exist at all in the EU (Section 2).

Liberalising trade in services: creating new migration opportunities? Research Paper in Law, 1/2010

Introduction. It is quite uncommon to associate migration with the rules on services trade. Indeed, all economic definitions of services insist on their immaterial nature and on the increased possibility of trading them ‘virtually’ over networks or else, without any physical movement of the parties involved. Somehow this ‘immaterial’ nature of services reflects on their providers/recipients which seem to be ‘invisible’. Even though most services still require the physical contact of the provider with the recipient1 and, when provided over national borders, do entail migration, service providers and/or recipients are rarely thought of as ‘immigrants’. This may be due to the fact that they enter the foreign territory with a specific aim and, once this aim accomplished, move back to their state of origin; technically they only qualify as short term non-cyclical migrants and are of little interest to policy-makers. A second reason may be that both service providers and recipients are economically desirable: the former are typically highly skilled and trained professionals and the latter are well-off ‘visitors’, increasing consumption in the host state. The legal definition of services in Article 57 TFEU (ex Art. 50 EC) further nourishes this idea about service providers/recipients not being migrants: the relevant Treaty rules only apply when the provisions on free movement of workers and freedom of establishment – themselves clearly linked to migration – do not apply. This distinction has been fleshed up by the ECJ which has consistently held that the distinction between the rules on establishment, on the one hand, and the rules on services, on the other, lies on duration.2 Indeed, all EC manuals state four types of service provision falling under the EC Treaty: a) where the service provider moves to the recipient’s state, for a short period of time (longer stay would amount to establishment), b) where the service recipients themselves move to the state where the service is offered (eg for medical care, education, tourism etc), c) where both service providers and recipients move together in another member state (eg a tourist guide accompanying a group travelling abroad) and d) where the service itself is provided across the borders (typically through the use of ICTs). None of these situations would typically qualify as migration. The above ‘dissociation’ between services and migration has been gradually weakened in the recent years. Indeed, migration is increasingly connected to the transnational provision of services. This is the result of three kinds of factors: developments in the European Court of Justice’s (ECJ) case law; legislative initiatives in the EU; and the GATS. Each one of these is considered in some detail below. The aim of the analysis which follows is to show the extent to which (legislative and judicial) policies aimed at the free provision of services actively affect migration conditions within the EU. The EC rules on the provision of services primarily affect the movement of EU nationals. As it will be shown below, however, third country nationals (TCNs) may also claim the benefits of the rules on services, either as recipients thereof or as employees of some EC undertaking which is providing services in another member state (posted workers).

Mixed Public-Private Enterprises in Europe: Economic Theory and an Empirical Analysis of Italian Water Utilities. Bruges European Economic Research (BEER) Papers 4/July 2006

Mixed enterprises, which are entities jointly owned by the public and private sector, are spreading all over Europe in local utilities. Well aware that in the vast majority of cases the preference of local authorities towards such governance structure is determined by practical reasons rather than by the ambition to implement new regulatory designs (an alternative to the typical “external” regulation), our purpose is to confer some scientific value to this phenomenon which has not been sufficiently investigated in the economic literature. This paper aims at proposing an economic analysis of mixed enterprises, especially of the specific configuration in which the public partner acts as controller and the private one (or “industrial” partner) as service provider. We suggest that the public service concession to mixed enterprises could embody, under certain conditions, a noteworthy substitute to the traditional public provision and the concession to totally private enterprises, as it can push regulated operators to outperform and limit the risk of private opportunism. The starting point of the entire analysis is that ownership allows the (public) owner to gather more information about the actual management of the firm, according to property rights theory. Following this stream of research, we conclude that under certain conditions mixed enterprises could significantly reduce asymmetric information between regulators and regulated firms by implementing a sort of “internal” regulation. With more information, in effect, the public authority (as owner/controller of the regulated firm, but also as member of the regulatory agency) can stimulate the private operator to be more efficient and can monitor it more effectively with respect to the fulfilment of contractual obligations (i.e., public service obligations, quality standards, etc.). Moreover, concerning the latter function, the board of directors of the mixed enterprise can be the suitable place where public and private representatives (respectively, welfare and profit maximisers) can meet to solve all disputes arising from incomplete contracts, without recourse to third parties. Finally, taking into account that a disproportionate public intervention in the “private” administration (or an ineffective protection of the general interest) would imply too many drawbacks, we draw some policy implications that make an equitable debate on the board of the firm feasible. Some empirical evidence is taken from the Italian water sector.

The Economics of Subsidies for R&D: The Intrinsic Difficulty of Determining Optimum Subsidies and Implications for Reform of EU State Aid Rules on R&D. Bruges European Economic Research (BEER) Papers 26/February 2013

The European Commission is reforming state aid rules. An important element of the reform is to prevent the granting of excessive subsidies. This paper shows that the determination of the optimum subsidy for research is difficult. What appears to be the socially optimum level of research effort depends on the benchmark of comparison and whether this benchmark is the situation before subsidies or the situation after subsidies. In the presence of asymmetric information, policy makers should induce firms to reveal their true costs and should grant subsidies to the relatively more efficient firms by allocating subsidies not on a first-come-first- serve basis but through a competitive process. However, competitive selection of subsidy recipients is not a panacea as it may not be possible to be effectively used in all cases and for all research programmes. This is because in principle public subsidies should support those programmes with the largest value for society, rather than with the lowest costs. Although this paper focuses on R&D, its findings are relevant to any subsidy whose aim is to remedy market failure caused by positive externalities.

Citizenship in the discourse of Egyptian political parties. EUSpring Working Paper No. 6, June 2015 [also Citizenship Report no. 3]

The concept of citizenship is one of the most complicated in political and social sciences. Its long process of historical development makes dealing with it particularly complicated. Citizenship is by nature a multi-dimensional concept: there is a legal citizenship, referring first to the equal legal status of individuals, for instance the equality between men and women. Legal citizenship also refers to a political dimension, the right to start and/or join political parties, or political participation more broadly. Thirdly, it has a religious dimension relating to the right of all religious groups to equally and freely practice their religious customs and rituals. Finally, legal citizenship possesses a socio-economic dimension related to the non-marginalisation of different social categories, for instance women. All of these dimensions, far from being purely objects of legal texts and codifications, are emerging as an arena of political struggle within the Egyptian society. Citizenship as a concept has its roots in European history and, more specifically, the emergence of the nation state in Europe and the ensuing economic and social developments in these societies. These social developments and the rise of the nation state have worked in parallel, fostering the notion of an individual citizen bestowed with rights and obligations. This gradual interaction was very different from what happened in the context of the Arab world. The emerging of the nation state in Egypt was an outcome of modernisation efforts from the top-down; it coercively redesigned the social structure, by eliminating or weakening some social classes in favour of others. These efforts have had an impact on the state-society relation at least in two respects. First, on the overlapping relation between some social classes and the state, and second, on the ability of some social groups to self-organise, define and raise their demands. This study identifies how different political parties in Egypt envision the multi-dimensional concept of citizenship. We focus on the following elements: Nature of the state (identity, nature of the regime) Liberties and rights (election laws, political party laws, etc.) Right to gather and organise (syndicates, associations, etc.) Freedom of expression and speech (right to protest, sit in, strike, etc.) Public and individual liberties (freedom of belief, personal issues, etc.) Rights of marginalised groups (women, minorities, etc.)

State-of-the-art-report : pesticide disposal research /

Mode of access: Internet.

The Role of health research in support of EPA's regulatory programs.

Mode of access: Internet.

Cooperative research and development agreement with Frandon Enterprises : development and evaluation of multi-media test kits for lead and other trace metals.

Mode of access: Internet.

Assessing the geochemical fate of deep-well-injected hazardous wastes : summaries of recent research.

"July 1990."

DOE/EPA/NSF/ONR joint program on bioremediation : interagency announcement of opportunity : Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Energy, National Science Foundation, Office of Naval Research jointly announce the availability of 1996 grants for research.

Mode of access: Internet.

The United States Environmental Protection Agency announces the availability of 1996 grants for research on endocrine disruptors, role of interindividual variation in human susceptibility to cancer, risk-based decisions for contaminated sediments.

Mode of access: Internet.

A research strategy for social assessment of lake restoration programs /

Mode of access: Internet.

Summaries of the USAEC basic research program in chemistry : (off site) /

"TID-4500(46th Ed.)."

Summaries of the USAEC basic research program in chemistry : (on site) /

"(TID-4500, 33rd. Ed.).