URL: Latest posts
Committee of the Regions 2009 Ageing Report
The 2009 Ageing Report of the Committee of the Regions provides some interesting proposals for managing the ageing of populations in the European Union. The topic is very important given the fact that 9 out of the 10 countries with … Continue r...
Criteria for Good Environmental Status of Sea Waters
The European Commission has adopted a decision outlining the criteria necessary to achieve good environmental status for Europe’s seas. The decision on the criteria for Good Environmental Status of marine waters focuses on different aspects of...
German Constitutional Court Avoids Direct Collision
The German Constitutional Court (GCC) in Karlsruhe is well known for its particular posture on questions relating to the European Union law. Now it has made a step sideways, saying that it has only limited jurisdiction in cases of ultra … Conti...
Expelling the Roma: Is It Legal?
The recent police operation in France leading to the expulsion of thousands of Roma citizens of Romania and Bulgaria has been a hot topic in the news for some time. Now Euractiv reports that Italy has also plans to expel … Continue reading U...
Serbia Risks Accession over Kosovo?
There’s an interesting article at waz.euobserver.com contemplating on the problem with the independence of Kosovo from Serbia. The article claims that the Serbian obstinacy in denying the obvious can jeopardize its own accession to the European Uni...
Do We Need an EU Disaster Response Force?
UPDATE (16.08.2010): French President Nicolas Sarkozy has officially proposed to the European Commission to “build a real EU reaction force … that draws on the resources of the member states”. The French junior minister for EU affairs, Pier...
Ad Hoc Comitology?
With the Treaty of Lisbon we have for the first time a formal hierarchy of EU legal acts. In this hierarchy the implementing act of the Commission are sub-divided into delegated (art. 290 TFEU) and implementing (art. 291 TFEU) acts. … Continue...
On the Conflict between the Bulgarian Government and the Bulgarian Judiciary
A lot can and should be said on the problems of the Bulgarian judiciary system. But the recent attacks by the Bulgarian government against the Bulgarian courts in particular may prove to be really harmful. The courts have a very … Continue read...
Summary of the Council Decision on the Organization of the European External Action Service
The Council Decision establishing the organisation and functioning of the European External Action Service (EEAS) has been published in the Official Journal. The decision was adopted after some negotiations with the European Parliament, which, althou...
Bulgarian Blog Version Now Functional
The Bulgarian version of the European Union Law blog was suspended by WordPress for a little over 24h. Now the blog functions normally. I apologize for any inconvenience. I still haven’t understood what was the reason for its suspension.
Bulgarian Blog Version Suspended // Българската версия на блога е спряна
The Bulgarian version of European Union Law blog has been suspended by WordPress yesterday. I still do not know why this was done. I will get back to you when I receive any information from the WordPress support team. Българската … C...
No EU Priority Status for the “South Stream” Gas Pipeline Project
Dnevnik reports that the spokeswoman of Gunter Öttinger , European energy commissioner, has said that the Russian “South Stream” gas pipeline project cannot get a priority status as a TEN-E project. The reason is that “South Stream” does not...
Strengthening of Eurostat Powers to Check National Accounts
We all know the background story – Greece had certain problems with its statistical data record, so to speak. Now the Council has adopted an amendment of the regulation on statistical data that is used by the Commission in the … Continue read...
“Afghanistan is not Sweden”???
I’ve been following with slight misapprehension the nervous reactions of some US bloggers and commentators on the Wikileaks scandal that involved the publication of thousands of US military confidential documents on the Internet. One particular pos...
The EU Sanctions on Iran – the Legal Background
We all know that the EU has imposed stricter sanctions on Iran than provided for in the United Nations Security Council resolution 1929 (2010). It is interesting, though, to consider the legal background of this measure. The new sanctions are …...
Start of Accession Negotiations with Iceland
This is always an important event. Today the European Union and its Member States will officially start negotiations for the accession of Iceland to the EU. The process will probably be smooth given the membership of Iceland in the European Economic...
The Bulgarian Problem of the European Union
The European Union has a big problem with Bulgaria, and may not know it. Here is why. The purpose of the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) is to investigate the ways in which young people are prepared to undertake their roles...
The Political Salience of the Burqa Ban
Henning Meyer from the Social Europe Journal turned my attention to this report of the Pew Global Attitudes Project measuring the public approval of the ban of face-covering veils (burqas). What I did was to compare the data for the approval rate wit...
Commission Proposes Miranda-Like Procedure for Arrest
The European Commission has proposed a directive to set common minimum standards for the right to information in criminal proceedings throughout the European Union. According to the proposal Member States must ensure that any person who is suspected...
35 Years Old Phosphates Cartel Busted
The Commission has busted a market-sharing and price-fixing cartel covering most of the EU that lasted from March 1969 until February 2004. The cartel involved the major producers of animal feed phosphates. The hybrid procedure for cartels was used f...
