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Introduction -- An overview of the free movement of persons, services, establishment and goods -- Direct effect and state liability -- European law, litigation and the ECJ -- Introduction to competition law -- Anti-competitive agreements Article 81 of the EC treaty -- Abuse of a dominant position Article 82 -- The member state and its role in the economy Article 86 -- Mergers -- Procedural and enforcement aspects of EC competition law -- State aid -- Public procurement -- European private international law -- General and exclusive jurisdictional rules in the EU -- Special and procedural jurisdictional rules in the EU -- Recognition and enforcement of judgments in the EU -- Choice of law rules

European countries have been punishing blasphemy since time immemorial. Several members of the European Union maintain blasphemy laws in their books to this day and some States implement them. These laws are problematic even when they are not applied, since they curtail criticism of religious doctrines and encourage censorship and self-censorship. In the past, the European Court of Human Rights affirmed that blasphemy laws were compatible with human rights law, since there was not sufficient common ground in the legal and social orders of European States to conclude that the repression of blasphemy was unnecessary in a democratic society. This paper intends to demonstrate that such 'common ground' now exists, especially within the European Union. Several EU countries have scrapped blasphemy laws from their penal codes, or have ceased to implement them. What is more, the governments of all EU Member States have repeatedly declared that blasphemy laws are incompatible with universal human rights standards. The existence of such a 'common ground' between EU Members suggests that the European Court of Human Rights should revise its jurisprudence. It also indicates that EU States should abolish their blasphemy laws, if they have not done so already. In a Union based on freedom and human rights, the most appropriate way to combat a perceived offense from the exercise of freedom of expression is not censorship, but the use of freedom of expression itself.

The European Union enjoys the competence to make laws in a wealth of areas, from environmental protection to agricultural policy. This competence is the result of many years of building and promoting European-level co-operation and integration. European Law Essentials explores the legal development of the EU. It introduces the background history of the union, then moves on to look at membership, institutions, community law, supremacy, direct effect, state liability, preliminary rulings and judicial review, and finishes by looking to the future of law in the EU. End-of-chapter summaries flag up

AbstractEuropean law manifests powerful perfection-seeking internal dynamics, nudging—even compelling—legal actors to strive to make the European legal order 'the best it can be'. This chapter uses a comparative approach to show that this perfectionism is contingent (that is, not necessarily shared by all legal orders), and that it is a highly distinctive characteristic of European legalism specifically. Uncovering the hidden dynamics of this juridical perfectionism is an important step towards rethinking European law's agency and its correlate: our own ability to shape European integration through law.

International audience ; Accession to the European Union (EU) demands the adoption of a vast body of legislation. This paper analyses compliance with EU directives in eight post-communist countries during the Eastern enlargement and tries to account for the puzzling embrace of EU law in Central and Eastern Europe. Drawing on a new data set tracking the transposition of a sample of 119 directives, the paper finds effects of both political preferences and government capacity on the likelihood of timely transposition. Furthermore, important sectoral differences are uncovered, with trade-related legislation having a better chance and environmental legislation having a significantly worse chance of being incorporated into national legal systems on time. Beyond the conditionality of the accession process, the paper unveils a complex causal structure behind the ups and downs in transposition performance.