Convergence in the Dutch Health Insurance: Possibilities and Obstacles in a European Perspective

Convergence in Dutch Health Insurance presents possibilities and obstacles considered from a European perspective. The idea is to converge the two existing systems of social and private health insurance. Private health insurers will be obliged to offer a minimum level of health insurance cover based on community rating. In this article consequences of the EC Treaty are in focus. Extensive convergence can be legally allowed in the interests of the common good. The European Court of Justice plays a decisive role in deciding whether convergence is approved according to the rules of the EC Treaty.     

Institutional change in the European Parliament: balancing legislative ethics and parliamentary independence

Research on legislative ethics has shown how scandals often trigger ethics reform; yet, the content of the reform often differs from that of the scandal. Why is this the case? And if scandals don't explain legislative ethics reform outcomes, then what does? If not this kind of external shock, then what factor(s) shape legislative reform outcomes? These questions provide the point of departure for a case study of the European Parliament's 2011 ethics reform. Drawing from the legislative ethics literature and from recent theories of institutional change, the article examines the impact of the scandal that initiated the reform, the interests and strategies of reform agents who wanted a quick reform process that would not undermine the EP's independence; and the institutional order in which those actors were embedded. It argues that an institutional logics perspective offers a convincing and comprehensive account of EP ethics reform, and suggests a new analytical framework that might be used by researchers in future research on legislative ethics.     

Piperazine-like compounds: a new group of designer drugs-of-abuse on the European market

1-Aryl-piperazine compounds are, depending on their substituents, selective for certain serotonin receptors and together with their easy availability and their so-called legal status, this group of psychoactive compounds are potential designer drugs-of-abuse. Internet in that respect is an important source of information and distribution facilities. Because this development may have consequences for the interpretation of future clinical and forensic toxicological case studies, some analytical aspects of 1-benzyl-piperazine (BZP), 1-[4-methoxyphenyl]-piperazine (pMeOPP) and 1-[3-trifluoromethylphenyl]-piperazine (TFMPP) were studied. BZP was not detected by the AxSYM FPIA technology designed to determine amphetamine-like compounds, but had showed some cross reactivity with EMIT d.a.u.. The cross reactivities at 300 and 12,000ng/ml (RS)-amphetamine equivalents were 0.4 and 1.3%, respectively. Although BZP was not identified directly by the REMEDi HS Drug Profiling System, it can be detected by this HPLC/UV scanning system. Using GC/NPD without derivatisation, BZP, pMeOPP and TFMPP can be analysed for and applying GC/MS without or with acetylation or trifluoroacetylation, these compounds can be identified unambiguously. The usefulness of GC/NPD and GC/MS in this respect was demonstrated by the quantitative and qualitative analysis of the content of a capsule with the synthetic stimulant A2, which proved to contain 86.4mg of BZP.     

On the unification of legal rules in the European Union

Unification of legal rules in Europe is not a new phenomenon. However, nowadays, Europe is still an area with many different jurisdictions. This paper studies the process of unification of legal rules in the European Union within a non-cooperative game-theoretical framework. This paper contributes to the understanding of the process by concentrating on the role of the European Commission. In the law-and-economics literature, it is argued that national legal rules will converge more or less spontaneously through the works of legislators and judges. But legal convergence in the European Union is not inevitable: preferences toward legal rules differ across nation-states; substituting a legal system for another one is costly; a coordination problem may arise. We first study the interactions of two nation-states who choose non-cooperatively their legal rules. We shall argue that the action of the Commission is, at first sight, likely to eliminate the coordination problem (under certain conditions). Two factors are at work. First, the Commission has a certain expertise which enables it to propose new and perhaps more efficient rules (so that the choice of unification does not reduce to select a particular nation-state legal system). Second, the Commission may use a system of fines that induces nation-states to abide by its rules (once these rules are adopted by nation-states). Next, we refine our first model: the process of legal unification is viewed as a game where nation-states choose the game that they will play. They choose if they will try to reach an agreement without resorting to the actions of the Commission, or if they will play the game implicitely proposed by the Commission. This captures more precisely the action of the Commission, its ‘right of initiative’’, the publication of proposals in ‘green’’ or ‘white papers’’. In this second model, a coordination problem may arise. JEL Classification C72 · K00     

Individual market health insurance reform: portability from group to individual coverage; federal rules for access in the individual market; state alternative mechanism to federal rules; correction--HCFA. Interim final rule; correction

This document corrects an interim rule and a previous correction to the interim rule published in the Federal Register of April 8, 1997 that implement the health insurance portability, availability, and renewability provisions of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 in the individual health insurance market.     

Decision rules,membership and political centralization in the European Union

The decision to enter the European Union is based on a comparison of the costs of staying out and going it alone, and the costs membership. The latter depend on the degree of preference heterogeneity between prospective members and the Union as well as the decision rules employed for “constitutional” decisions. The same calculus guides the decision, by member states, to shift policies up to the Union level, only now the decision rules refer to centrally assigned policies. Preference heterogeneity makes more inclusive rules optimal in either case while at the same time reducing the attractiveness of membership or the centralization of policies to the EU level, respectively. The analysis complements and extends both traditional fiscal federalism literature as well as the more recent political economics literature on federalism.

The power of legislative hot air: Informal rules and the enlargement debate in the European parliament

Integration theorists disagree over the extent to which the European Parliament can substantially influence policy‐making processes in the absence of formal agenda‐setting power. This article discusses the impact the European Parliament had on the current enlargement negotiations. Although the legislature does not yet possess the means to alter the stance of the European Council, it has tried to reverse the status quo through the use of its informal bargaining power. We argue based on a principal‐agent framework of analysis that the effectiveness of this strategy is largely a consequence of the ability to speak with one voice. The article evaluates various mechanisms to help the European Parliament build a unified position. It refutes socialisation and specialisation theories, showing that party group pressure towards a unified position overrode national concerns and constituted a necessary precondition in the development of an integrationist attitude. A statistical analysis of the pre‐bargaining positions inside the Foreign Affairs and Security Committee largely confirms the insights from qualitative interviews with participants and observers.     

Confidential service contract promotes competition in the European shipping market

In November 2002, the European Commission granted an individual exemption for the revised trans-atlantic conference agreement (TACA) after it held that provisions in the agreement regarding service contracts and multi-carrier service contracts to be outside the scope of the block exemption. The elimination of conference’s role of enforcing tariff rates should improve slot utilization by promoting efficient pricing. This paper develops a backhaul pricing model to investigate the effect of confidential service contracts on the structure of liner market. In view of the increasing gap between head haul and backhaul freight rates in the European Union after year 2002, a linear joint pricing equation is numerically applied to the homebound and outbound freight rate indices at ports of Antwerp/Hamburg. This study finds that these freight rate indices moved in the opposite directions as it was predicted by the Smith’s condition of joint product, and the European liner market has become competitive after November 2002.     

The European market of 1993: Test for a regional model of supranational criminal justice or of interregional cooperation in criminal law

This is a revised version of a paper presented at an international workshop on Principles and Procedures for a New Transnational Criminal Law. organized jointly by the Society for the Reform of Criminal Law and the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law, Freiburg, Germany, May 21–25, 1991.     

The legal landscape for advanced therapies: material and institutional implementation of European Union rules in France and the United Kingdom

In 2007, the European Union adopted a lex specialis, Regulation (EC) No. 1394/2007 on advanced therapy medicinal products (ATMPs), a new legal category of medical product in regenerative medicine. The regulation applies to ATMPs prepared industrially or manufactured by a method involving an industrial process. It also provides a hospital exemption, which means that medicinal products not regulated by EU law do not benefit from a harmonized regime across the European Union but have to respect national laws. This article describes the recent EU laws, and contrasts two national regimes, asking how France and the United Kingdom regulate ATMPs which do and do not fall under the scope of Regulation (EC) No. 1394/2007. What are the different legal categories and their enforceable regimes, and how does the evolution of these highly complex regimes interact with the material world of regenerative medicine and the regulatory bodies and socioeconomic actors participating in it?     

Making the rules and breaking the rules: the political origins of corporate corruption in the new economy

Recent scandals at companies like Enron and WorldCom have pointed to the systemic origins of many corporate frauds. This paper advances the argument that behind those scandals were strategic political actions that changed the regulatory and legal environment in which those firms operated and created criminogenic institutional frameworks that facilitated acts of corporate corruption. Three case studies involving (1) the California energy crisis of the late 1990's, (2) the regulation of energy derivatives, and (3) accounting treatments of stock options, are presented to illustrate how markets and the rules that govern them are the products of political processes and how they can create motivations and opportunities for corporate fraud. The implications these case studies have for the study of corporate crime and corruption are discussed.     

A look from the inside: balancing custody and treatment in a juvenile maximum-security facility

This article is based on an ethnographic study of a cottage for violent offenders in one state's maximum-security training school. Staff members working in the cottage were the institution's front line in its attempts to hold the youth accountable for their crimes while also trying to resocialize and rehabilitate young men who were growing up with few conforming role models. As such, cottage staff members were put in the difficult position of juggling their roles as corrections officers, counselors, and surrogate parents. To effectively do their job, they had to find ways to balance the rhetoric of rehabilitation with the punitive reality of daily life in the institution. This article details the juvenile justice career paths of the staff members in the cottage and provides a sociological analysis of the roles, responsibilities, and interactions of the staff members with each other and with the young men in their care.     

Voting rules in insolvency law: a simple-game theoretic approach

A chief characteristic of modern insolvency law in Canada, Germany, the UK, and the US is the provision for ‘workouts’ or ‘schemes of arrangement’ by which insolvent companies can attempt to rehabilitate the business. If reorganization is chosen, the debtor has to devise a plan of action which will be voted upon by claimants. The voting rules, however, differ in each jurisdiction to a greater or lesser extent and as yet have not been analyzed in any rigorous manner. This paper provides an approach based upon the theory of simple games to analyze the rules in terms of the ease which each of these regimes can pass (or hinder) plans and how these rules distribute value among claimants. We pay particular attention to the role of classification and the effect of coalition formation.     

Cocaine: a European Union perspective in the global context

Excerpts

Cocaine: a European Union perspective in the global context