欧盟合同法律适用制度的演进

欧共体于1980年通过的<合同之债的法律适用公约>(以下称<罗马公约>或<公约>),统一了各成员国的合同法律适用规则,在一定程度上减少了由当李人作法院选择的几率.但是,经过20多年的实践,<公约>本身的立法形式及一些具体条款已表现出诸多不足.本文拟根据欧盟委员会公布的<关于将1980年＜合同之债的法律适用公约＞转换为共同体立法及其现代化的绿皮书>(以下称<绿皮书>)和<合同之债的法律适用条例议案>(以下称<罗马条例I议案>)这两个重要文件,对<公约>各条款的不适应性进行分析,并介绍其解决这些问题的思路.     

The economic transformation of Eastern Europe: the case of Poland

This article identifies the main features of Poland's radical transition to capitalism-stabilization program, trade liberalization, and privatization reform. The ‘shock therapy’ adopted by Poland in 1991 is presented as the most effective approach, though not without political risk. In fact, the major threat to Poland's transition process is the emergence of well organized ‘interest groups’ putting increasing demand on the government to relax financial restrictions and re-open large-scale subsidization. These political pressures have already caused a slowdown in the privatization program, so that there is a possibility of the renewal of rapid inflation. Several methods for accelerated privatization, including the distribution of vouchers and setting up investment funds to manage portfolios of shares, are discussed in detail.     

Remedying the Inequalities of Economic Citizenship in Europe: Cohesion Policy and the Negative Right to Move

European supranational citizenship draws the boundaries of a community of citizens, sharing the status of economic actors in the single market. The specter of inequality threatens however the resulting promise of shared membership: economic citizens face profoundly different opportunities for economic involvement, depending on their nationality and residence within the Union. Free movement rights open up a narrow way out of inequality by enabling European citizens to relocate; however, they cannot alone solve the inequality problem that economic citizenship poses. In the quest for alternative remedies to this problem, this article explores the potential of European cohesion policy. It argues that cohesion policy, by addressing gaps in wealth throughout the Community, draws the traits of a negative right to move, which adds to the protection of European economic citizenship. Through the cohesion lens, the premises are laid for a renewed assessment of the project of shared economic citizenship.     

Barcelona 2002: law, ethics, and human rights. The need for harm-reduction approaches in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union

In a region where HIV is spread primarily by injection drug use, harm-reduction strategies must be the mainstay of prevention efforts. In her plenary presentation to the XIV International Conference on AIDS on 9 July 2002, Kasia Malinowska-Sempruch asserts that if the world does not turn its attention to the emerging and exploding epidemic in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, the region will suffer the same fate as Africa. The presentation explains that while their economies continue to struggle, the countries in the region have seen their public health systems crumble in the face of the twin health crises of injection drug use and HIV infection. The presentation demonstrates how current repressive laws and practices with respect to drug use serve only to fuel the epidemic. It describes harm-reduction approaches (such as needle exchanges and drug-treatment programs) and provides examples of how NGOs in the region have been attempting to implement such approaches, often with little or no support from governments. Finally, the presentation outlines other measures required to respond to the epidemic in the region, including ensuring that people infected with HIV can access care, treatment, and support services.     

The Freedom to Circulate Documents: Regulating Contracts in Europe

Abstract:  Evidence collected by the European Commission indicates that insofar as the diversity between laws of national legal systems presents an obstacle to trade in the Internal Market, the problem consists of the inability of businesses to use their standard terms of business in cross-border trade with confidence. It is suggested that the solution to this problem lies not in legal integration through harmonisation of the private law of contract, but rather through the creation of procedures for autonomous agreements under which representatives of parties to standard types of contracts can agree upon model contracts containing fair ancillary terms.     

Transferring gas-turbine technologies to the former Soviet Union: Opportunities and problems

The new nations of the Commonwealth of Independent States are notoriously energy- inefficient. States like Russia and Ukraine seek technologies from the West that will improve efficient combustion of fossil fuels. Recently, scientists in the United States and the former Soviet Union have explored the idea of transferring technologies to Russia and Ukraine to develop and mass-produce aeroderivative gas turbines, which promise to quickly replace power lost front the shut- down of unsafe nuclear reactors in Russia, Ukraine and the former Soviet republics. Production of these turbines could promote defense conversion in Russia and Ukraine and could provide opportunities for American companies to trade and invest in emerging markets. Despite these clear advantages, formidable obstacles impede the immediate development, production, and commercialization of this technology by American firms in the former Soviet republics. Constraints include competition from European firms that are developing and marketing similar technologies, unfavorable business and economic conditions in the former Soviet republics, and official Russian- US differences concerning the closure of nuclear power plants and development of oil and gas reserves.     

经济发展权的经济法思考

经济发展权不仅是国际法上的重要概念,也是经济法主体权利谱系中的重要范畴。对于各类经济法主体都享有的经济发展权,必须加强经济法保护。为此,应着重解决阻碍公平竞争和公平分配等影响经济发展权实现的突出现实问题,这既有助于推进经济法的理论研究和制度完善,也有助于促进"发展法学"和国际法学的发展。     

The trade in people in and from the former Soviet Union

This paper focuses on the trafficking and smuggling of human beings fromand through the former Soviet Union. It explores the reasons for the risein the illegal movement of people; the groups which facilitate it; the demographics of the people who are moved and the business side, includingthe profits, the disposition of profits and the use of corruption to facilitatethe trade. With the disintegration of state control over national territory, this mass movement of people often violates national laws and the national sovereignty of the countries of the Soviet successor states and the countrieswhere the former Soviet citizens move illegally. The paper concludes that thistrade mirrors and contributes to the overall downward development of thepost-Soviet economies. In contrast, a comparative look at the respective Chinese developments indicates that trade in human beings tends to facilitatethe growth of both the Chinese legitimate and illegitimate economies.     

Spanish socialism: On the road to Marbella

This essay analyzes the underlying social and economic forces that explain the gap between the Spanish Socialist Party's working class base and its pro-business supply-side economic policies. The essay examines the ascendancy of a new professional class linked to financial capital and European multi-national capital that challenges the industrial policies of the Franco right. From an analysis of incomes policy, economic deregulation and state allocation, the study concludes that the Socialists have displaced the traditional Right as the principal representatives of corporate capital — they have become the New Right.     

Crime Trends in Europe from 1990 to 1996: How Europe Illustrates the Limits of the American Experience

In the Council of Europe's European Sourcebook of Crime and Criminal Justice Statistics, crime and other relevant data are assembled for 36 European countries and the years 1990 to 1996. The data show that crime trends differed from those in the United States. Particularly drug and violent offences continued to increase until the end of the period under consideration (1996). Most of the theoretical explanations of crime trends currently in vogue in the United States seem of little help in understanding current European trends. Generally the most valid approaches seem to be routine-activities and situational explanations.     

Patent Protection in Europe: Integrating Europe into the Community or the Community into Europe?

Patent protection in Europe basically rests on two pillars: national grants or grants from the European Patent Organisation (EPO). The EPO grants patents by a centralised procedure with uniform conditions, but once granted the patents become national and subject to the divergent national laws of EPO–Member States. The system has been very successful, so successful, indeed, that it overshadowed the Community's many unsuccessful attempts to set up a Community patent system of its own by way of a convention between Member States. As the Commission has recently stepped in by proposing the establishment of a Community Patent system by way of regulation, a kind of 'cooperative rivalry' has arisen between the Community and the EPO about how to unify patent protection in Europe. This rivalry not only mirrors divergent views on the politico–economic functions of the patent system, but also is illustrative of different concepts of regional integration in a context of global competition for innovation.     

The use of seclusion in the Netherlands compared to countries in and outside Europe

The use of seclusion in psychiatric practice is a contentious issue in the Netherlands as well as other countries in and outside Europe. The aim of this study is to describe Dutch seclusion data and compare these with data on other countries, derived from the literature. An extensive search revealed only 11 articles containing seclusion rates of regions or whole countries either in Europe, Australia or the United States. Dutch seclusion rates were calculated from a governmental database and from a database covering twelve General Psychiatric Hospitals in the Netherlands. According to the hospitals database, on average one in four hospitalized patients experienced a seclusion episode. The mean duration according to the governmental database is a staggering 16 days. Both numbers seem much higher than comparable numbers in other countries. However, different definitions, inconsistent methods of registration, different methods of data collection and an inconsistent expression of the seclusion use in rates limit comparisons of the rates found in the reviewed studies with the data gathered in the current study. Suggestions are made to improve data collection, to enable better comparisons.