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"The European Union is today a major player in many policy areas, going from classic economic fields as competition policy, agriculture and fisheries policy to new emergent fields as environmental policy, arterial intelligence policy, security and foreign policy and criminal justice policy. These policies comes with an increasing level of EU regulation, having also a substantive impact on the harmonization of national policies and regulations. This expansion of EU competence naturally also places new demands on their enforcement, especially when it comes to investigations with the aim of imposing punitive administrative and/or criminal sanctions. In this expanded version of his valedictory lecture Prof. Vervaele is assessing 1) to what extent the EU and its Member States have a policy on punitive enforcement in the internal market and in the Area of Freedom Security and Justice and 2) how this policy translates into the harmonization of substantive administrative and criminal law and procedural law at the national level and into the elaboration of administrative and judicial cooperation instruments and the setting up of European enforcement agencies. The assessment includes to what extent this policy takes account of the human rights obligations. Vervaele concludes with a plea for a European model for punitive law enforcement with an increased alignment between the administrative enforcement tools in the internal market and the criminal enforcement tools in the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice. In this model the national enforcement authorities are build in under a network cooperation scheme."--

Which rights and obligations arise from the EU principle prohibiting unjust enrichment? This is the first publication to thoroughly examine the consequences this principle has - or may have - for private law relationships. An illuminating analysis, bearing both academic and practical importance. As the interplay between EU law and national private law intensifies, the question arises how the EU principle prohibiting unjust enrichment plays into various legal relationships involving one or more individuals. Unjust enrichment in European Union law takes a pioneering step in addressing this pressing issue. The author puts forward a compelling analysis, taking into account the functions of unjust enrichment in a number of national law systems and the functions of general principles of EU law, as well as case law of the Court of Justice of the EU. For analytic purposes, links are identified between EU causes of action based on undue payment, unjust enrichment and unlawful act, respectively. This is followed by a discussion whether or not such actions should be founded on violation of an EU provision having direct (horizontal) effect. Insight into the possible consequences of the EU principle prohibiting unjust enrichment has both academic and practical importance. The reader gains a deeper understanding of how the Court of Justice may further develop EU law on the basis of private-law principles. The study illuminates which rights individuals may derive from such legal principles and - if they can do so - under which circumstances