Jurisdiction for Consumer Contracts: European Union: Modified Rules of Jurisdiction for Electronic Consumer Contracts

The Brussels Convention on Jurisdiction and the Recognition of Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters (the Brussels Convention) is to be replaced in 2002 by a Community Instrument: The Council Regulation (EC) No 44/2001 of 22 December 2000 on jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters (the Regulation).¹ The Regulation is an important measure approved by the European Union to simplify rules of jurisdiction and recognition of judgments for the benefit of the Internal Market. Amongst other matters, the Regulation updates existing jurisdiction rules for a consumer contracts. The rules for consumer contracts apply where a consumer and a business are domiciled in a Member State or the business has a:“branch, agency or other establishment” in a Member State. Importantly, the Regulation clarifies jurisdiction rules for consumer contracts conducted over the World Wide Web (WWW). These rules are to be welcomed, as they provide guidance on what rules of jurisdiction apply to consumer contracts over the Web, albeit that they are limited to where the parties are domiciled in Europe. This article outlines the rules of jurisdiction for consumer contracts provided by the Regulation, and where appropriate, highlights some aspects of the new rules that will possibly require further discussion and clarification by the European Court of Justice once the new rules are in force.     

涉网案件地域管辖规则修改问题刍议

互联网空间地址与现实空间地址的非对应性,使运用《民事诉讼法》中的地域管辖规定去判断涉及互联网案件的管辖法院会有一定困难。目前学者们解决该问题的思路,主要集中于针对互联网的特点,建构新的地域管辖规则。但本文认为,目前《民事诉讼法》规定的地域管辖制度具有合理性,不需要也不能够针对互联网的特点去修改法典的规定。解决地域管辖规定适用困难的方向,应当是发展包括解释地域管辖法律和认定地域管辖事实在内的司法技术。     

论环境民事诉讼的地域管辖

环境民事诉讼涉及公共利益,其审理结果不能仅满足当事人的公正性要求,还应当满足社会的公正性要求,这要求环境民事诉讼实行专属管辖。虽然按照现行《民事诉讼法》,环境民事诉讼并不属于专属管辖的案件,但实质上已在实行专属管辖。在修改《民事诉讼法》时,应当对环境民事诉讼的地域管辖作出合理规定。     

Regional Technological Differences: The Case of Southern European Union

This paper examines the spatial spillover effects and the productivity rate of patents in southern European Union. It provides a systematic analysis of the relationship between productivity of patents and the factors that generate economically useful new technological knowledge. An applied spatial econometric framework is employed since this approach is particularly useful in the study of the spatial patterns of patents productivity, at the lowest possible levels of spatial aggregation.     

论地域管辖中“犯罪地”的解释问题

刑事诉讼法的规范依赖干法解释技术而生效,因此对刑事诉讼法之中的诸多概念、术语作出合理的解释和阐释,方能构建刑事程序法治化的微观基础。站在刑事诉讼法解释学的立场上,我国《刑事诉讼法》第24条规定的"犯罪地"管辖原则,其中所谓"犯罪地"一词,应当解释为包括"犯罪结果地"、"犯罪预备地",而不应包括"被害人所在地"、"销赃地"以及"犯罪嫌疑人被抓获地"。在毒品犯罪、网络犯罪、手机短信诈骗犯罪等特殊类型案件的中,对"犯罪地"一词,可允许作适当的扩张解释。     

Constitutionalising Subsidiarity in Integrated Markets: The Case of Tobacco Regulation in the European Union

Abstract:  The article establishes three propositions. First, if a constitution establishes the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality as legal principles, questions of competencies are closely tied up with questions of regulatory policy. This means that the Treaty carves out a powerful role for the Court of Justice to assess the jurisdictional reasonableness of market intervention when reviewing whether the EU was legally competent to act. Second, general scepticism about courts being able to play such a demanding role in policing jurisdictional boundaries in federal systems are unjustified in the EU. The new procedure established in the Constitutional Treaty, which is likely to be included in any renegotiated constitutional settlement, involves national Parliaments and the Commission building a written record addressing the relevant policy issues on which the court can base its review. Additionally national courts serve as an external check on the Court of Justice, disciplining the Court of Justice to focus on taking competencies seriously or facing the prospect of national courts disapplying EU law on the grounds that it was enacted ultra vires. Third, even though there are some promising points of departure in its case law, the Court of Justice has not yet adopted a doctrinal framework that effectively operationalises the Treaty's commitment to subsidiarity and proportionality in the context of the common market.     

Abolishing Exequatur in the European Union: The European Enforcement Order

Netherlands International Law Review -     

The future VAT system in the European Union

Varia

The future VAT system in the European Union     

The Territorial Jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court — A Jurisdictional Rule of Reason for the ICC?

Netherlands International Law Review - The territorial scope of the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court was an issue which was hotly debated prior to the adoption of the Rome Statute....     

The Telecommunications Law of the European Union

Abstract: This article is intended to give an overview of the law as it stands on telecommunications at the Community level. Over the past ten years the telecommunications law and policy of the European Community have developed rapidly along the twin axes of liberalisation (deregulation) and harmonisation (reregulation). The innovative use of Article 90 EEC has been central to liberalisation, while most harmonisation legislation has been based on open network provision (ONP) passed under Article 100a. The article concludes that, now the national monopolies have been largely dismantled, new issues will arise in the competitive market.     

The Trade Union Movement and the European Union: Judgment Day

Abstract: The trade union movement faces a challenge to the legality of transnational collective action as violating economic freedoms in the EC Treaty. How are disparities in wages and working conditions among the Member States to be accommodated? Are national social models protected? Does the internal market allow for trade union collective action? How does EU law affect the balance of economic power in a transnational economy? What is the role of courts in resolving economic conflicts? This article analyses the responses to these questions as referred to the European Court of Justice by the English Court of Appeal and offers some conclusions. The purpose is to highlight the different positions adopted by the old Member States and the new accession Member States as regards the underlying substantive issues, and the options available to the Court of Justice in answering the questions posed.     

A Political Economy Perspective of Judicial Review in the European Union: Judicial Appointments Rule, Accessibility and Jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice

The paper examines the benefits the sovereign member states of the EU expect to derive by granting the European Court of Justice the power to review the collective policy making decisions of the EU legislative bodies. Using the methodology of constitutional political economy it investigates the one-country one-judge rule of judicial appointments in the ECJ, the restrictions imposed on litigants to access the ECJ and the limits on the jurisdiction of the ECJ to review EU legislation. It also analyses how the presence of judicial review affects the size of the policy measures taken by the policy makers.     

The end of organised crime in the European Union

So much has been written—and vigorously contested—about ‘organised crime’ (OC) that the impending fall of this familiar icon may come as a shock, both to its detractors and to those who take it for granted. Yet that moment may be upon us, for reasons that this paper will explore, as the European Union shifts the vocabulary within which policies on police cooperation are articulated. A pivot of this change is the EU Council Decision on Europol, first debated by the Council in late 2006 and anticipated as applying from 2010 onwards. This will shift the scope of Europol’s work from ‘organised crime’ (attributing qualities to criminality) to ‘serious crime’ (concern with impacts and harms falling on individual and collective victims); will transfer financing of Europol to the Community budget; and so will initiate parliamentary scrutiny. These issues in security governance are explored from ‘northern’, ‘southern’ and ‘eastern’ European perspectives and in the contexts of ongoing enlargement and democratisation of the EU.

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The Governance of the European Union: The Potential for Multi-Level Control

In its White Paper on the Governance of the European Union the European Commission has adopted a narrow concept of governance which focuses almost exclusively on public institutions exercising legislative and executive power (in other words institutions of government ). The article suggests that a theory of multi-level control in the EU would attend to greater variety both in the available governance institutions and the techniques of control. The deployment of an analysis grounded in theories of control suggests that the European Commission is substantially holding to a long-held preference for instruments of government premised on the exercise of hierarchical power. This reform path sits uneasily with revived concerns to render the governance of the EU more democratic. Equally it inhibits the generation of more efficient governance arrangements which place greater dependence on communities, competition, and design as alternative bases of control to hierarchy. Control theory suggests that the assertion of different reform agendas and institutional structures by other actors can check the more wayward (and arguably illegitimate) tendencies within the Commission plan, whilst drawing in alternative bases of control which, when combined, may yield technically superior governance solutions.     

The European Union and Penal Law

Technically-speaking, penal law remains outside the competence of the European Communities and Union. However, mirroring other legal developments within Europe, a combination of higher Community 'principles' such as proportionality, non-discrimination, free competition and loyal co-operation, together with secondary Community law, has on the one hand, led to an unforeseen process of the harmonisation of national penal systems; with national norms either being set aside by Community law, or given extended scope in the pursuance of EC/EU goals. On the other hand, certain European interests – most notably, the need to safeguard the European Union budget – have proven strong enough to prompt the evolution of a nascent penal law of the EU; the most noteworthy development here being the drawing up of an independent European 'corpus juris' covering penal policy and procedure in the area of EU budget protection.