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Forward The present work of Professor Anja Bothe is a very important aid to the study of European Union Law. Aimed at the general public, it serves differently several sectors or sub-publics. Those who are now beginning their study of this discipline will easily understand its internal organization and know how to articulate the various substantive, institutional, and procedural issues. They will be able to apprehend the juseuropean tree of knowledge, visualizing its trunk and its branches. This will facilitate the deepening of their studies and allow them to move further to more demanding levels. For those who never studied European Union Law systematically but, namely because of professional reasons, have access to many sources of information about the European Union, this book provides a quick and effective way of structuring the information they collect, knowing where and how they should arrange it conceptually and schematically. In this way, they will avoid forgetting, misunderstanding or ignoring basic and structural questions. For those who are already very familiar with European Union law, this work allows a recapitulation of the subject, allowing through the visualization of the most important aspects recall those secondary aspects that directly relate to them. For these and other reasons, this work can therefore be very useful in academic and professional contexts where it is useful or necessary to move from point A to point B by quickly convening knowledge of the central aspects of European Union Law. Jónatas E. M. Machado Professor of Law of the European Union Faculty of Law of the University of Coimbra and Autonomous University of Lisbon (UAL) ; A basic understanding of the structure and operation of the European Union is essential, not only for all branches of law, but also for management, public relations, marketing, communication, sociology and the economy. Moreover, citizens may find this book very relevant and useful in capturing the fundamental notions underlying the EU, which may cause great impacts on everybody´s daily life. The author, Anja Bothe, concluded her Ph.D. at the Law Faculty of Hamburg. She teaches several branches of law, some of them in English, at the School of Management Sciences, Health, IT & Engineering Atlântica of Barcarena, and at the University Autonoma of Lisbon, where she is also integrated in the Investigation Center of the Law Department called Ratio Legis.

Today, we are witnessing an extraordinary fast changing world with multiple disruptive technologies. The growing power of artigicial intelligence, machine learning, cloud computing, big data and the so called IoT (Internet of the Things) have brought the need to adapt for many individuals and organizations, which is resulting in radical new forms of business modeling, policies, societal systems and society itself, as well. This book focuses, not exclusively but mainly, on a set of real cases across several European regions where innovation modeling is needed urgently. By documenting the analysis on the new creative ideas and on the concrete bottlenecks to implement innovations capable of satisfying market needs and its challenges we attempt to distil the wisdom from the ongoing reality. ; The analysis presented here focuses on the latest German legislation changes introduced in order to make the planning and building of infrastructure projects more harmonious and more effective. From a due-process perspective, International and European Environmental law played a pioneer role. by leading the German legislators to introduce an earlier public participation in its extremely complex system of spatial and sectorial planning. At first it mainly addressed sustainability. Then, after a few major infrastructure projects were confronted with massive resistance by the population affected, a rethinking about the citizens´ involvement at an early stage became necessary, aiming at streamlining and speeding up legally binding decisions on the more controversial infrastructure projects. As a result, the Administrative Procedure Code was expanded to incorporate the "Law for broadening the public participation and for the standardization of the procedures for determining sectorial plans". In order to debate, in an interdisciplinary way, the role that the law is able to play in communication procedures, this article discusses the essential factors impacting the different types of plans and planning. It then questions the strategies leading to acceptance of certain projects and the trade-offs between speed of implementation and the respect for public participation rights.

Large size infrastructure projects, such as airport, rail and road extensions, are particularly likely to encounter frequent citizens´ protests. The experience with the enhancements of the Stuttgart train station is an especially relevant example, since it has motivated the economic stakeholders, as well as the German federal and regional legislators and administrations, to rethink the project. In this case, which has become known as "Stuttgart 21", massive resistance only materialized after the planning approval procedure. As a consequence, the "Law for broadening the public participation and for the standardization of the procedures for determining sectorial plans" was introduced in the German legislature in 2012. Among other elements in this law, public participation is now required prior to the formal opening of the procedure for planning and approval of sectorial plans, as described in Article 25, paragraph 3, of the Administrative Procedure Code. In 2013, the Association of German Engineers developed standards governing the communication and public participation in planning and building infrastructure projects. These standards are directed at project sponsors, general and specialist design contractors, project managers, executing companies and their officials. In the same year, regional governments produced binding administrative provisions to intensify public participation in the planning and licensing procedures of large infrastructure projects. These standards and administrative provisions establish several mandatory steps and procedures within the regional planning and approval processes: these mandatory steps include scoping the previous and present participation of the public and their interaction, both at formal and informal levels, conducting an official investigation to show just cause for the project, establishing internet access to the project allowing for on‐line search of the detailed plans by the public, a requirement to request and enable public participation periodically as the planning process develops, and a need to re‐ evaluate these new rules as appropriate. Similar rules have been introduced since the 1980's by the European Union to advance and implement environmental protection. The main objective of these mandatory steps is a more efficient harmonization of the different interests involved in spatial planning. In order to establish a more solid foundation for a critical analysis of several of the elements in these rules, this paper discusses the essential factors impacting these types of plans, the skills required in their preparation, the strategies leading to acceptance of those plans, and the possible dynamics affecting their implementation. Nevertheless, these legal, administrative and private rules have come under some criticism, as listed below: ‐ several basic aspects of these rules are not sufficiently focused on the associated extra‐legal problems that they raise; ‐ some elements are voluntary rather than mandatory, while others are not precisely defined so as not to scare away potential investors; 19 ‐ while aiming at achieving more efficiency, several new obligations limit, qualitatively as well as quantitatively, the holding of successive stages of public participation, partly due to a clause that excludes the discussion of public rights which have not been presented during prior public participation; ‐ concerning environmental protection interests, the obligations of evaluation and participation focus only on the processes themselves, but do not aim at avoiding any resulting environmental harm.