European Union Law Research Articles

Is a distributive analysis enough? A critical take on the case law of the European Court of Justice

ABSTRACT This essay articulates both empirical and historical insights of a distributive analysis, which entails presenting a critical intervention in a legal field dominated by a mainstream scholarly or policy view that is both ideologically tainted and empirically inaccurate. The transition from distributive consequences to what critical scholars refer to as a distributive analysis is a strategic intervention within each specific legal field that ought to be historicised. This article shows how the application of a distributive analysis to two canonical case studies in consumer law and gender discrimination as two distinct and relatively marginal fields in European Union law developed through the jurisprudence of the European Court of Justice. Finally, this article questions whether a distributive analysis, without a theoretical grounding in critical theory, is sufficient to ensure that it is not only an empirical tool but also committed to not perpetuating the existing inequalities within the liberal or neoliberal foundations of the European legal order.

LEGAL ANALYSIS OF EU ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ACT (2024): INSIGHTS FROM PERSONAL DATA GOVERNANCE AND HEALTH POLICY

Background: This study correlates the up-to-date ethical, functional and legal evaluations related to the management and governance of artificial intelligence (AI) under European Union (EU) law, particularly impacting the health data sector and medical standards as provided by the Artificial Intelligence Act within the Regulation adopted by the European Council in May 2024. The initial proposal for the management and governance of the AI sector was submitted in April 2021. Three years later, on 13 March 2024, the European Union Artificial Intelligence Act (EU AIA) was adopted by the European Parliament. Subsequently, on 21 May 2024, the Council adopted an innovative legislative framework that harmonises the standards and rules for AI regulation. This framework is set to take effect in May 2026, with the central objective of stimulating and motivating a fair, safe, legal single market that respects the principles of ethics and the fundamental rights of the human person. Methods: The current legal analysis focuses on the European Union’s new institutional governance involving a multistage approach to managing health data, ethical artificial intelligence, generative artificial intelligence and classification of types of AI by considering the degree of risk (e.g. artificial intelligence systems with limited risk and systems with high risk) and medical devices. It outlines the legal framework for AI regulation and governance in the EU by focusing on compliance with the previously adopted legislation in the Medical Devices Regulation (2017) and the In-Vitro Diagnostic Regulation (2017). The paper also examines the application of the newly adopted EU Artificial Intelligence Act in relation to national justice systems, previous EU regulations on medical devices and personal data protection regulation, and its correlation with the European Court of Human Rights jurisprudence. This opens up complex discussions related to judicial reform and access to justice. For this purpose, as a research objective, the legal analysis includes an innovative perspective following an integrative discussion on the latest legal reforms and regulations of the AI sector in Eastern Europe launched in 2024 with a special focus on the latest developments in the EU Candidate Countries namely Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova. Results and conclusions: The present research facilitates the exploration of the real benefits of managing innovative AI systems for medical data, research, and development, as well as within the medical technology industry.

Burden of disease studies supporting policymaking in the European Union: a systematic review.

Burden of disease (BoD) studies quantify the health impact of diseases and risk factors, which can support policymaking, particularly in the European Union (EU). This study aims to systematically analyse BoD studies, which address EU public policies to contribute to the understanding of its policy uptake. A systematic search of six electronic databases and two grey-literature registries was carried out for articles published between 1990 and 2023. The thematic area, type of legislation and the respective policymaking stage were extracted. A textual analysis of the discussion was conducted to assess the inclusion of specific EU policy implications. Overton was used to detect citations in policy documents. Out of the 2054 records screened, 83 were included. Most studies employed secondary data, with 37 utilizing GBD data. Disability-adjusted life year was present in most of the studies (n = 53). The most common type of the EU legislation mentioned was the directive (n = 47), and the most frequent topic was environment (n = 34). Policy implications for EU laws were discussed in most papers (n = 46, 55.4%), with only 8 conducting evaluation of EU policies. Forty-two articles have been cited at the EU-level, in a total of 86 EU policies. Despite increasing efforts in integrating EU legislation impact within BoD studies, these results denote a low consideration of the legal and policy changes. Greater efforts in directing research towards policy effectiveness evaluation might increase their uptake in EU policies.

Brussels in Strasbourg: Theoretical Reflections on the Impact of European Union Law on the Case-Law of the European Court of Human Rights

Brussels in Strasbourg: Theoretical Reflections on the Impact of European Union Law on the Case-Law of the European Court of Human Rights

Mapping the moral foundations of the European Union: Why a lack of moral diversity may undermine perceived EU legitimacy.

The stability and effectiveness of supranational organizations, like the European Union (EU), will improve when citizens perceive them as legitimate. Across three studies, two of which were preregistered, and a preregistered pilot study, we combined EU legal expertise with social psychological theory on morality to understand how perceived EU legitimacy is influenced by a sense of moral alignment with the EU. We propose that, currently, the EU gives more weight to values linked to "individualizing" moral foundations (e.g. compassion, social justice, and equality) than to values linked to "binding" moral foundations (e.g. patriotism, religion, and traditionalism). As this may leave people who endorse binding moral foundations feel unrepresented, we investigated whether the EU could gain legitimacy by appealing to values that resonate with binding moral foundations. In study 1, text analyses revealed that the European Commission President's State of the Union speeches indeed appeal more to individualizing than to binding moral foundations. Study 2 (n = 595) provided correlational evidence that the negative relationship between binding moral foundations and perceived EU legitimacy was mediated by lower moral alignment with EU law. Finally, study 3 (n = 567) showed through an experiment that reframing or rebalancing EU law to better align it with binding moral foundations could increase perceived EU legitimacy among people who endorse these moral foundations. The results illustrate the importance of understanding and attending to moral diversity among EU citizens. More generally, our work shows how a collaboration between social psychology and law contributes to safeguarding the legitimacy of supranational organizations.

Role of court precedents in the development of EU law and the legal systems of the candidate states: Examples of Ukraine and Moldova

The judgements of the Court of Justice of the European Union play a fundamental role in shaping the EU acquis. The relevance of this study lies in their impact not only on the law enforcement practice within the Union, but also on the trends in the development and amendment of the EU regulations. Considering the above, the purpose of this study was to determine the role of judgements of the Court of Justice of the European Union in shaping the law of the European Union and the legal systems of the candidate states. The methodological framework of this study was based on general scientific and special research methods, such as analysis and synthesis, induction, interpretation, formal logical, and comparative legal methods. The study established the existence of a link between the structural and functional evolution of the Court of Justice of the European Union and the increasing weight of its judgements; the study identified the channels of influence of its judgements on the establishment and development of European Union law. The study outlined the current challenges faced by the judges of the Court of Justice of the European Union and which affect the efficiency of its work. Based on the analysis of the judicial practice of Ukraine and Moldova regarding the use of judgements of the Court of Justice of the European Union, the study substantiated the general significance of judicial precedent in the context of European integration of the candidate states, as well as potential problems of their widespread use in the judicial practice of these states. The practical significance of the findings obtained is that they can be used in educational programmes for training specialists in the field of European law, to develop strategies and policies aimed at integrating candidate states into the EU, ensuring their compliance with the legal standards of the Union

Enforcement Design Patterns in EU Law: An Analysis of the AI Act

In recent decades, the enforcement of European Union (EU) law has transitioned from being primarily the responsibility of Member States to becoming an increasingly shared or centralised task at the EU level. Drawing on the concept of legal design patterns, this article presents these two broadly understood enforcement approaches as decentralised and centralised enforcement patterns, and examines the AI Act through this conceptual lens. The objective of this exploration is to highlight that the choice of enforcement mechanisms for EU laws comes with different sets of challenges, in general, and to contribute to the understanding of the AI Act’s enforcement structure, in particular. In this paper, we ground our analysis on the theoretical framework of legal design patterns in order to reduce the regulatory complexity into comparable problem-solving elements. Under this framework, we (1) examine the enforcement framework of the AI Act, and we (2) draw comparative lessons from the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), an EU legislation which is based on the largely decentralised enforcement model. On this basis, we (3) discuss some of the potential implications of the decentralised enforcement of the AI Act, and consider the possible reasons behind this choice of enforcement model.

Quality Characterization of Honeys from Iraqi Kurdistan and Comparison with Central European Honeys.

The main objective of this work was to determine the significant physicochemical and bioactive parameters of honeys originating from Iraqi Kurdistan. For this purpose, honey samples (n = 16) were taken directly from Kurdish beekeepers from different places of Dohuk and Erbil Governorate in 2018 and 2022. The following parameters were analyzed: moisture content, electrical conductivity, diastase activity, hydroxymethylfurfural content, pH, free acidity, content of saccharides, total phenolic content, total flavonoid content, color, color intensity and DPPH, FRAP. Another objective of this work was to compare the properties of Kurdistan honeys with the requirements of European Union law and with the honeys of Central Europe. A total of 48 honey samples were included in the comparison. It was detected that the honeys produced in Iraqi Kurdistan met the strict quality criteria set by European law, which is important information for local beekeepers and experts in relation to honey production and an opportunity to set local limits of honey quality. Despite the different climatic and topographical conditions, the available flora, and the different species of bees, the properties of Iraqi Kurdistan honeys were similar to the properties of honeys from the Czech and Slovak Republics.

Unleashing Legal Polycentricity in Europe?

The questioning of the public and monopolistic production of European Union law is extremely little, if at all, addressed by European Union legal theory. The article proposes to divide the reasons for this absence into two classes. The first part of the article explores reasons endogenous to European Union law. The second part is devoted to reasons that are part of the evolutionary context of European Union law, stemming from facts of a historical, political, epistemological and societal nature. The article suggests to refer to the theory of constitutional polycentric order developed by the American legal theorist Randy Barnett, as well as Friedrich Hayek's theory of interstate federation proposed as early as 1939. Despite the apparent difficulties presented by the Union's contemporary organization, mechanisms specific to European Union law and European culture are capable of supporting the rehabilitation of polycentric conception of Union law and Hayekian interstate federation.

Access to environmental information in Sweden in the context of principles of good administration

Purpose This paper aims to examine how Sweden, as a member state of the European Union (EU), has implemented the EU Directive on Public Access to Environmental Information (AEI directive) in the context of the principles of good administration. Design/methodology/approach This paper adopts the EU law methodology, as this paper mainly examines the implementation of the EU AEI directive by the member states and, as an EU member state, how Sweden used procedural autonomy to implement the EU directive at the national level. The EU law methodology further guides how national laws are to be interpreted considering obligations under the EU law. This paper further applies a comparative review to determine the differences in the approaches used by the AEI directive and relevant Swedish national laws to facilitate access to environmental information. Findings Despite Sweden used a minimalist approach rather than maximal harmonization while implementing the AEI directive at the national level, the Swedish model of the accessibility and availability of environmental information is fully compliant with the principles of good administration. The Swedish approach has an enormous effect on promoting access to environmental information as an integral part of good governance and fundamental rights. Research limitations/implications It was not possible to perform a comparative review of court cases on relevant issues from different EU member states. Practical implications Access to environmental information could be a tool for environmental democracy and sustainable development. Social implications Access to environmental information could contribute to more public engagement and participation in environmental decision making and hence could make developmental projects more inclusive to meet societal objectives. Originality/value This study makes a unique contribution by evaluating access to environmental information in the context of the principles of good administration under EU law.

Challenges and paradoxes in the regulation of scientific research in the EU: a comprehensive analysis

This article analyzes the legal regulation of scientific research in European Union law, examining the challenges and paradoxes the EU faces in this area. Through a systematic analysis of normative and programmatic documents, the crucial influence of EU law on shaping international scientific research standards is revealed. The study highlights the evolution of the European Research Area and the fundamental role of the Horizon Europe program in promoting scientific excellence and innovation. The findings have significant implications for EU research policy and its international cooperation in science and technology." The author applies a complex methodology including analysis and synthesis, structural, formal-legal methods, as well as approaches of scientific deduction and induction. The author argues that EU law has a significant impact on the development of international standards for scientific activity. Despite the absence of imperative supranational competence in the field of science, the EU has facilitated the formation of subsidiary mechanisms for funding and supporting scientific activity, leading to the establishment of sustainable institutions and mechanisms within the European Research Area and EU program systems such as “Horizon Europe”, which has resulted in a substantial evolution of standards for scientific activity. The author states that this primarily concerns scientific ethics, multiculturalism and non-discrimination, the evolution of views on transnational research, and the formation of a sustainable regime for funding and evaluating scientific projects.

Polish Regulations on Platform Work de lege ferenda from the Perspective of the European Union Law

Polish Regulations on Platform Work de lege ferenda from the Perspective of the European Union Law

Gender discrimination in retirement

The article aims to discuss the issues related to the nature of entitlements to retirement benefits in connection with the regulations relating to the retirement age and to consider existing and future changes in the regulations considering gender discrimination resulting from the different retirement ages of women and men. In particular, the existing regulations regarding the retirement age in Poland and Europe are presented. Based on Polish law, the history of changes and the dynamics of reforms related to the retirement age in national law are shown. The introduced pension reforms confirmed different retirement ages, which were eventually restored to age sixty for women and age sixty-five for men. The issues of the reasons for the changes and the state of the Polish pension system, including the existence of the so-called pension gap are mentioned. A comparison of applicable regulations and principles relating to the rights of people was made. An analysis of European Union law and a review of both national and European case law has also become an essential need in consideration regarding pension gender discrimination. The article also quotes data on the retirement age in selected European countries, based on which conclusions were drawn. The analysis of legal provisions, proposed changes, case law, and legal theory became the basis for final considerations that attempt to answer the question of whether gender discrimination in pensions a common phenomenon is and whether this phenomenon occurs under the applicable legal status.

Principles of the victim’s representation in criminal proceedings

Based on the analysis of the provisions of criminal procedure legislation, provisions of international legal treaties, and European Union law, and on the basis of generalisation of theoretical positions of scholars, and also taking into account the proven experience of certain European States, it has been substantiated that the principle of victim representation is one of the fundamental principles of criminal proceedings. It has been proved that representation of victims in criminal proceedings is an indispensable guarantee of the principle of equality before law and court, access to justice and binding nature of court decisions, competitiveness of the parties and freedom to present their evidence to court and to prove their convincing nature before the court, etc. It has been determined that on the way to European integration, Ukraine may need to revise certain provisions of the institute of victim representation in criminal proceedings, in particular, to determine the grounds for mandatory free-of-charge participation of a victim’s representative, at least in some categories of cases. It has been argued that victim representation should be carried out in compliance with the general principles of criminal proceedings, as well as the principles of: voluntariness; legality; competence; initiative; cooperation and effective communication with other participants to criminal proceedings. It is suggested that these provisions should be used in further scientific research as a basis for reforming criminal procedure law in the context of introducing proven foreign practices into the victim representation activities. It has been determined that the prospects for further research should include the mechanisms for implementing international standards of victim representation, problematic aspects of victim representation in criminal proceedings, and the principles of representation of a witness, a civil plaintiff, and a civil defendant.

Globalizacja w sądownictwie. Zmiany w polskim wymiarze sprawiedliwości z perspektywy prawników w dobie zacierania się granic

The study presents a comprehensive, scientific and research-orientated analysis of the impact of globalisation on the Polish judiciary, with a specific focus on the experiences and adaptations of Polish lawyers. It delves into the integration and challenges of applying international legal norms, particularly European Union law, within the Polish legal framework. The research methodology includes qualitative interviews and a thorough review of legislative developments, providing a methodological approach to understand the phenomenon. The report identifies the adaptation of Polish legal professionals to globalisation of law as a significant scientific problem, justifying the need for a deeper exploration of this issue. It posits the main thesis that the Polish judiciary is undergoing a transformative phase, influenced significantly by international legal principles, but faces challenges in the complete assimilation of these norms. The purpose of this research is to shed light on the nuanced process of legal globalisation within a national context, focusing on the role of legal professionals in this transition. The originality of the research lies in its detailed examination of Polish lawyers’ perspectives, a relatively underexplored aspect in the existing literature. The scope of the research is both national and European Union focused, with implications for international legal studies. Its cognitive value extends beyond academic discourse, offering practical insights for legal practitioners and policymakers in Poland and similar jurisdictions undergoing legal globalisation. The findings contribute significantly to the understanding of the socio-legal dynamics at play in the context of global legal integration.

European Union Law perspective on the intellectual property protection of artificial intelligence systems

European Union Law perspective on the intellectual property protection of artificial intelligence systems

Screening blood donors for malaria, can we increase the number of eligible donors? An observational retrospective study

BackgroundIn non-endemic countries, malaria can be transmitted through blood donations from imported cases. To ensure standards of quality and safety of human blood, the European Union and Spanish national law, requires a deferral period, or a screening by immunological or genomic test among those donors with potential risk of malaria. Scientific societies, European Committee on Blood Transfusion, and Spanish Society of Haematology and Haemotherapy, refer only to the result of the immunological test.MethodsAn observational retrospective study was performed in potential donors with a positive immunological test for malaria done in the Regional Transfusion Center in Madrid and referred to the National Reference Unit for Tropical Diseases in Madrid between 2015–2020. At consultation a Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) for malaria was performed.ResultsDuring the study period, 121 possible donors attended for consultation at NRU-Trop. Median age: 38.5 (IQR:33–48); median time to consultation was 32 months (IQR:12.5–110). Eighty-two (67.8%) donors were migrants and thirty-nine were travellers (32.2%). ELISA values were available for 109 subjects (90.1%), 56 individual left malaria endemic area > 3 years before. All donors tested negative for Plasmodium spp PCR test (n = 121, 100%).ConclusionsNone of the subjects with a positive immunologic test deferred as blood donors had a positive genomic test. The presence of Plasmodium spp in collected blood was not detected by molecular techniques. To avoid the loss of potential blood donors, especially those with low incidence red blood cell antigens, as more precise microbiology techniques become available, updating the existing legislation becomes necessary to increase the availability of donated blood.

Is it still permissible under EU law to issue new permits for oil and gas extraction?

AbstractThis article examines whether the discretion of European Union (EU) Member States to approve new oil and gas extraction projects is restricted by EU law. It shows that greenhouse gas emissions from such projects must be considered in environmental impact assessments under the Environmental Impact Assessment and Strategic Environmental Assessment Directives. This includes emissions from the combustion of extracted oil and gas by end users (scope 3 emissions). The article also shows that Member States' discretion to approve new oil and gas extraction projects is significantly limited by their climate‐related obligations under EU law, as well as by the duty of sincere cooperation in the context of the EU's international commitments under the Paris Agreement.

Why Do So Few Preliminary Questions Come From Czechia?

Abstract Although a substantial part of the body of laws of an EU Member State is founded upon European Union law and norms, the number of preliminary questions emanating from courts in the Czech Republic appears to be disproportionately low compared to other similar EU Member States. The aim of this article is to analyse and outline possible reasons for the lack of preliminary questions coming from the Czech Republic. In her analysis, the author identifies three possible factors underpinning the issue. These factors include attitudes towards the EU and a general lack of understanding of the relevance of EU laws and norms; the role of preliminary rulings; and the perception and recognition of courts. An integral part of this analysis is a critical commentary on the shifts in how courts and tribunals are perceived within the meaning of Art. 267 TFEU. Lastly, the author offers guidance to fellow legal professionals and academics for interpreting EU norms.

Editorial

The Latin American Journal of European Studies (ISSN 2763-8685) is a publication of the Latin American Center of European Studies, currently supported by the Jean Monnet Network Policy Debate “BRIDGE Watch” project with funding from the Erasmus + Programme of the European Commission. With a focus on the editorial lines on European Union Law and Policies and International Relations of the European Union with third countries and Latin America, the seventh edition of the Journal also has a thematic dossier on “Rule of Law in Latin America and Europe” organized by Aline Beltrame de Moura of the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (Brazil). The seventh edition of the Journal is open for submissions until May 1st, 2024.