Rights Of European Citizens Research Articles

Cybersecurity, privacy, and health data protection in the digital strategy of the European Union

Contemporary societies increasingly rely on the opportunities created by technologies that make possible the production, collection, processing, and reuse of huge datasets to obtain inferences that can be used in the most disparate fields. Among these, healthcare stands out in importance since in medical practice a considerable series of personal information is exchanged and shared. The protection needs of the individual sphere in the healthcare sector acquire a specific scope with reference to the use of information and communication technologies, which allow patients and healthcare professionals to communicate, or the latter among them, in view of the achievement of a series of goals that pertain to the diagnosis, prevention, monitoring, rehabilitation and treatment of an increasingly large number of diseases. In such a context, this works aims at proving a synthetic overview on the whole architecture adopted by the European Union in the field of cybersecurity, privacy, and health data protection, which appears fundamental for guaranteeing the fundamental rights of European citizens but also to deal with the challenges posed by the digital transition of contemporary societies.

The Path towards the European University in the Current EU Legal Framework: the Unita – Universitas Montium Experience

The development of university cooperation at the European level is closely related both to the needs of the single market and to those of an economic and social cohesion functional to a more effective protection of the rights of European citizens. The recent launch of EU university alliances is part of this framework, although the absence of legal instruments explicitly conceived for institutionalised cooperation could undermine the success of the action of alliances. The EU competence in higher education is limited to the support, coordination, and supplement of member state actions (art. 6TFEU). The absence of a harmonising competence circumscribes the possibilities of EU intervention and especially prevents the provision of EU degrees which could replace national diplomas. However, the allocation of funding allows policies capable of effectively influencing the systems of member states (see for instance the EU experience in common agricultural policies sector). In this context, the limits of the existing tools could be almost partially overpassed by the adoption of new regulations or directives, to allow an institutionalised cooperation between universities. The existing solutions offered by the EU legal system are not fully satisfactory, nonetheless, some of them could be useful: among these, the European Economic Interest Grouping (EEIG) is especially interesting.

Social services - an essential component of the european social model

Social services play an essential role within the European society. In the realized study, there have been identified the most important characteristics and standards of the social services established through the European Union legislation, which states undertake to transpose within the national social policies in order to develop and improve the national social service systems. The study has allowed us to make them an important tool for achieving the basic objectives of the European Union such as: social, economic and territorial cohesion, employment and social inclusion. Moreover, social services have a primary role in European Society, promoting and ensuring the increase of the capacity of vulnerable people to participate actively in the life of society and guaranteeing respect for the fundamental rights of European citizens proclaimed by community law.

Legal regulation of the minimum income systems within the European Union

The basic aim of the European institutions in the social field is to standardize the rights of European citizens to social assistance, but the forms, amounts and conditions for the granting of social benefits are based on the particular reality of each Member State. This article contains a thorough analysis of the European legal instruments that guarantee the right of citizens in financial difficulty to a minimum income. This addresses the key elements on which to assess the level of effectiveness and efficiency of the minimum income schemes provided by Member States. And finally, we identified the components of a decent minimum income: financial support, access to the labor market and access to quality social services . In this context, the author notes that in recent years, the European institutions have paid particular attention to issues related to ensuring a minimum subsistence income for all persons in a situation of financial vulnerability. Based on the research carried out, the author concludes that the European institutions attach particular importance to the minimum income schemes provided by the Member States. Therefore, in order to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of the fight against poverty and social exclusion, several legislative measures have been adopted in recent years aimed at modernizing income schemes to ensure a dignified life for those in need in accordance with European principles and values.

Эволюция подхода Европейского cоюза к борьбе с дезинформацией

The article assesses the political and legal framework, the process of evolution and the current state of the structures of the European Union responsible for countering disinformation. The EU’s approach involves the use of a wide range of means – from informing the public to removing online content using artificial intelligence technologies. Different means are used both directly by the EU institutions and by their partners. The growing influence of non-state actors, in particular, business companies that have valuable big data amounts and analysis tools that are less accessible to EU institutions, forced the latter to look for ways to control the online space. The military dimension of strategic communication (and, within its framework, the struggle against disinformation) is manifested in the intensification of EU – NATO cooperation, and (in legal framework) in the inclusion of wars in the list of emergencies in the Digital Services Act. The author reveals that the mechanism of countering disinformation in the EU is actively used for political purposes. Not only the struggle against disinformation, but also strategic communication itself in the EU was initially subordinated to the tasks of limiting the influence of economic rivals and political opponents. Both the previously created tools and the decisions of 2020–2021 that introduce common rules for regulating online content for the EU, in a situation of further deterioration of relations between the EU and Russia, can be used not only to protect the objective rights of European citizens, but also to discredit our country within the framework of psychological warfare.

BREXIT AND EUROPEAN CITIZENSHIP: WELCOME BACK TO INTERNATIONAL LAW

The emergence of European citizenship in 1992 was considered an important step forward in the “constitutionalization” of the Community legal order. As it was formulated, European citizenship was little more than a compilation of the rights contained in the founding Treaties and secondary law. But the CJEU, supported by a prointegrationist academic doctrine, turned it into the “fundamental status of the nationals of the Member States”. It is not surprising then that many scholars considered Brexit, which involved the loss of European citizenship for millions of UK nationals, a disappointment. Some of them looked at international law trying to find some limits to the most serious effects of Brexit on the rights of European citizens. The aim of this article is precisely to analyse in detail those doctrinal discourses that resort to international law as a possible constraint on state sovereignty. At the end we will see that these proposals are based not only on a methodological misperception of what international law is and what it is for, but also on a serious distortion of the real meaning of European citizenship.

Max Schrems' European Court of Justice odyssey

How one privacy activist took on Facebook, the European Commission, and the United States to protect the rights of European citizens, and prevailed.

Janus-faced mobilities: motivations for migration among European youth in times of crisis

ABSTRACTOne of the main rights of European citizens is freedom of movement, enabling them to live, work and study in the EU member states. However, it is only minority of Europeans who aspires to use their European passports and cross the national borders. In this paper we focus precisely on those who declare the wish to move to another EU member state. We point to Janus-faced character of mobility aspirations, distinguishing between feeling free to move versus feeling forced to move. We argue that this distinction sheds light on a new social division. Based on the Eurobarometer data (85.1OVR) we illustrate how the two groups, ‘free to move’ and ‘forced to move’, are equipped with different resources. In particular, feeling forced to move correlates with financial deprivation on an individual level and residence in a poorer, smaller country with higher levels of youth unemployment. In addition, our results suggest that aspirations for European mobility are linked with the sense of youth marginalization in their nation states.

Public services as fundamental rights of European citizens in times of crises

USŁUGI UŻYTECZNOŚCI PUBLICZNEJ JAKO PRAWA PODSTAWOWE OBYWATELI UNII EUROPEJSKIEJ W DOBIE KRYZYSUAutorka analizuje problem z zakresu prawa Unii Europejskiej, który dotyczy przestrzegania praw podstawowych przysługujących obywatelom Unii Europejskiej w związku ze świadczeniem usług użyteczności publicznej. Obecnie, w dobie kryzysu, instytucje unijne są szczególnie zobowiązane, by w większym stopniu skupić swoją uwagę na prawach podstawowych oraz roli i znaczeniu systemu usług użyteczności dla ich poszanowania. Co więcej, usługi publiczne powinny być postrzegane jako jeden z fi larów, na których opiera się integracja europejska, wzmacniając legitymizację władzy w UE, podobnie jak ma to miejsce w państwach członkowskich, zgodnie z teorią, że rządzący są tylko pracownikami usług publicznych.

European Citizenship and the Right to Reside: ‘No One on the Outside has a Right to be Inside?’

AbstractThis paper deals with the question: Who ought not to be excluded from the enjoyment of European citizenship rights? Recently, the Court of Justice has ruled that, in exceptional situations, the ‘genuine enjoyment of the substance of rights attaching to European citizenship’ can be invoked in order to also extend legal protection to specific categories of third country nationals. I will argue that the ‘genuine enjoyment’ formula is not only setting an innovative jurisdictional test concerning European citizenship rights, but that it is also highlighting how the traditional account of citizenship (from status to rights) can be conceptually reversed. This happens in threshold cases, where the tenability of the schema of distribution of rights, agreed within a political community, depends on the possibility to readjust the boundaries of political membership.

European Citizenship Rights and European Fiscal Politics After the Crisis

The economic effects of the financial crisis in the eurozone have been much studied, but the impact of political and institutional changes made amidst crisis conditions have been less studied. This article examines the changes in the EU since 2008 through the lens of T.H. Marshall’s concept of citizenship, gauging the effects of different changes in the EU polity on the citizenship rights of individuals. The key changes are in fiscal governance, which includes a new treaty as well as substantial legislation changing the balance of powers within and competencies of the EU institutions, the European Central Bank’s role and the Troika arrangements for countries in crisis. We find that while the EU’s contribution to civil citizenship in Europe is relatively intact, the development of its fiscal governance is bringing serious negative consequences for political and social citizenship in all member states. The EU is adopting policies that entrust more power to less democratically accountable institutions with the objective of fiscal rigour rather than social citizenship.

Did the Financial Crisis Change European Citizenship Law? An Analysis of Citizenship Rights Adjudication Before and After the Financial Crisis

AbstractThis article analyses the impact of the 2007–2008 global financial crisis on the adjudication of EU citizenship rights, combining long‐term quantitative empirical legal study with qualitative socio‐legal analysis. We find that, first, the Court of Justice of the EU continues to interpret the provisions of the treaty and secondary legislation broadly and reaches largely pro‐individual outcomes in its citizenship case‐law. Second, it has been more explicit in drawing the line between core citizenship rights of European citizens, such as the primary rights to move and reside freely, and the rights that are tied to these core citizenship rights, including social security and social advantages on the one hand, and the rights of Third Country Nationals, which they derive from their relationship with EU citizens on the other hand. On this basis, we conclude that the economic crisis has had limited impact on EU citizenship law and remained confined to the edges of the notion of EU citizenship.

New European citizens The Erasmus generation between awareness and scepticism

A recurring criticism of the European Union is that it focuses mainly on political and economic factors while neglecting the development of a common European culture and sense of European citizenship. However we can find signs of cultural transformation in the way that Europeans use their borders as a physical, social and symbolic space. Usually nowadays, the term ―frontier‖ is replaced by ―boundary‖ as an elastic and extendible meeting space. The aim of this paper is to analyse the relationship between the concepts of boundaries, mobility and integration and the notions of European identity and citizenship. To understand the meaning these concepts have for people who live in the trans-national European dimension, opinions of Italian and foreign students who took part in the Erasmus exchange programme were gathered. The in-depth interviews were focused on the meanings, the expectations and the real experiences that the concept of European citizenship presents for Erasmus students and also whether European citizenship really exists for them. The opinions of the respondents helped highlight the symbolic potential for European citizenship rights to serve as a vehicle of new integration strategies. The way Erasmus students reinterpret the concept of European citizenship and how its symbolic potential could help the European integration process was also analysed.

Quest for the Holy Grail—Is a Unified Approach to the Market Freedoms and European Citizenship Justified?

AbstractThe case law of the CJEU on the economic free movement of people has departed from the traditional requirement that a nexus must be established between individual free movement and cross‐border economic activity, which has led to an extension of its scope. It is submitted that concerns with the protection of fundamental rights of European citizens are driving this process, and that the CJEU has sought to protect these fundamental rights through the market freedoms in two ways: by arguing that market freedoms are fundamental right themselves, and/or that European Citizenship has changed their normative underpinnings and status. This Article criticises both lines of argument, and defends a third: that the protection of these fundamental rights must be achieved at European level, if at all, through a conception of European Citizenship able to stand on its own.

Fundamental Rights: The Missing Pieces of European Citizenship?

All nationals of a Member State are Union citizens, and so, in principle, these citizens fall within the scope of European Union (EU) lawratione personae.However, the protection of European citizenship status (ECS) is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for enjoying European citizenship rights (ECRs). In order to bring a case within its jurisdiction, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) should also ascertain what the link is between ECRs and the scope of EU law (ratione materiae). Recently, the CJEU ruled that securing the “genuine enjoyment of the substance of the rights attaching to the status of European Union citizenship” is a sufficient condition to bring a case within the scope of EU law. This new formula challenges the traditional cross-border test: by referring to “genuine enjoyment,” it entails rethinking the CJEU's current practice of depicting the conditions under which a citizenship case should be consideredratione personaeandratione materiaewithin the scope of EU law. Importantly, the interpretative crux of this new formula concerns whether the Court has really opted for an innovative test of its jurisdiction, which may detach the protection of ECRs from the current exercise of fundamental freedoms. This paper critically maps out how the CJEU has gradually strengthened both the protection of the ECS and the protection of rights attaching to such status. It argues that the Court has recognized that thede factoexercise of fundamental freedoms is not the only way to establish a link between a EU citizenship case and the scope of EU law. On the contrary, the Court ruled that Art. 20 TFEU (on Union citizenship and European citizenship rights) can be invoked by Union citizens, even if they have never exercised their free movement rights, in order to challenge national measures, which “deprive citizens of the Union of the genuine enjoyment of the substance of the rights conferred by virtue of their status as citizens of the Union.” This interpretative move raises the question whether the new test concerning the substance of the rights attaching to the status of European citizens enhances the protection of fundamental freedoms, by also safeguarding the potential exercising of these freedoms in the future, or whether it calls for including the actual protection of fundamental rights (such as the right to respect family life) in the so-called “substance” of European citizenship rights. This paper argues that the Court's present approach indicates that the former is the case, casting doubts on the central position of fundamental rights with regards to European citizenship.

The Role of Local and Regional Authorities in Applying the EU Legislation Regarding the Election Rights of European Citizens

In the context of present difficulties faced by the European Union and the majority of its member states, related to overcoming the negative effects of economic crisis, doubled by a sovereign debt crisis, maintaining the European citizen's attachment to the European project can be a rather difficult aim to achieve. The lower involvement in the democratic life, expressed through a weak presence in elections, is a worrying sign in this respect. Aware of this stake, promoting the EU citizenship and the citizen's rights, especially the EU citizens’ right to elect and to be elected at local elections and for the European Parliament, becomes a priority of the EU institutions.

Judicial Cooperation In Europe: Is Exequatur Still Necessary?

The paper deals with the proposal of the European Commission concerning the abolition of the exequatur proceedings in the subject-matter of EU Regulation n. 44/2001. The author thinks that such abolition is a goal which may be really achieved, above all after the entering in force of the treaty of Lisbon. Most of the existing grounds of refusal of the exequatur may be deleted, without any true danger for the fair protection of the rights of European citizens and fi rms. More over, requiring more harmonisation between the national procedural law seems to be, at present, an impossible request. So, it should be accepted the idea to abolish exequatur even in the actual condition of the national laws. Yet, some grounds for the control of the enforcement of the foreign judgments still deserve to be examined by the judge of the Member State of the enforcement, just to grant a residual, basic protection to the defendant. In the author’s opinion, the proposal of the Commission is very remarkable, since it abolishes exequatur and deletes the ground of public policy, but the suggested remedies are not adequate, since they are at the same time useless and too cautious.

Court of Justice of the European Union European Citizenship Rights in Internal Situations: An Ambiguous Revolution? Decision of 8 March 2011, Case C-34/09 Gerardo Ruiz Zambrano v Office national de l'emploi (ONEM)

Court of Justice of the European Union European Citizenship Rights in Internal Situations: An Ambiguous Revolution? Decision of 8 March 2011, Case C-34/09 <i>Gerardo Ruiz Zambrano</i> v <i>Office national de l'emploi (ONEM)</i>

Economic estimative, juridical and urbanistic evaluations in the preservation and change of rural landscape

The European Convention on the landscape, signed in Florence on the 20th of October 2000 and recently converted into law marks a moment of profound change in the conception of the landscape in European politics. Indeed, the Convention was founded at the initiative of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe, established after the second war with the aim of safeguarding the fundamental rights of European citizens. In relation to this the Convention introduces the main purpose of the action planning the conservation of the landscape as a local resource. Therefore the right of people to identify with their own landscape, recognizing to the landscapes a dual economic and social role, is accentuated. Indeed on the one hand the landscape plays an important activity of public interest, at cultural, ecological, environmental and social scale, on the other hand it is recognized that it constitutes a resource in favor of economic activity and, if maintained, operated and planned properly, can contribute to job creation. In this report, after having highlighted the multifunctional nature of the landscape, which includes an integrated multidisciplinary approach to the problems associated with it, we will propose an overview of the main methods for the identification of the landscape and especially to evaluate it.

Free Movement and Participation in the Parliamentary Elections in the Member State of Nationality: An Ignored Link?

Making use of the European citizenship rights should not deprive EU citizens of the possibility of political participation at the Member State level. According to Article 19(1) EC, EU citizens may vote in municipal elections in their host Member State, not in the national elections. Consequently, EU citizens who benefited from the Article 18 EC right (or similar lex specialis rights) and moved to another Member State, effectively lose their right to participate in politics at the crucial Member State level if their Member State of nationality disallows expatriate voting, which is the case ( de iure or de facto) in a number of Member States. This article assesses the legality of this situation in the light of Community Law. Building on the assumption that the Member States will be unwilling to change the Treaties to allow for full political participation of EU citizens at the national level in their Member States of residence, other possibilities to solve the outstanding problem are sought and analysed.