Suchergebnisse

On Tuesday, 12 December 2023, the Commission adopted its long-awaited Defence of Democracy package, which includes a Proposal for a Directive on Transparency of Interest Representation on behalf of Third Countries. Dubravka Šuica, Commissioner for Democracy and Demography seemed eager to clarify what the Directive is not. Šuica emphasised that the Directive "is not a foreign agents law". But the more a statement is repeated, the less credible it appears. Rather, the opposite appears to be true. And so, the devil is not in the name, it lies in enforcement. Despite the Commission's assertion that full harmonisation of the Directive prevents Member States from gold-plating or potentially worse activities, the Commission has limited control over how Member States apply and enforce their national laws. This is the biggest risk of the proposal.

This book engages with and advances the current debate on new governance by providing a much-needed analysis of its relationship with the courts. New modes of governance have produced a plethora of instruments and actors at various levels that present a challenge to more traditional forms of command-and-control regulation. In this respect, it is commonly maintained that new governance generally - and political experimentation more broadly - weakens the power of the courts, producing a legitimacy problem for new forms of governance and, perhaps more fundamentally, for law itself. Focusing on th

AbstractThe lobbying of other countries' political and legal elites has emerged as a security risk globally. The securitization of foreign lobbying has prompted the adoption of specialized legal regimes, that is, foreign transparency laws, to enable the scrutiny of how foreign actors lobby. This article analyzes and compares such laws in the United States, Australia and the European Union (EU) with respect to three issues: (1) the definition of a foreign actor, (2) the definition of a type of foreign lobbying and (3) the definition of a protected normative good. While the impetus to legislative reform has often rested on a concern with authoritarian governments, the foreign transparency laws capture diverse kinds of foreign influence activities and actors. They may thus catch in their nets actors or types of influence never intended to be caught in the first place. This has particularly significant implications for the EU as a polity and foreign policy actor.

AbstractThis legal comparative article analyzes the regulatory framework of lobbying services provided by law firms in the European Union and the USA. The comparison of regulation between the jurisdictions focuses on three aspects: (1) the definition of lobbying, (2) the legal advice exception, and (3) alignment with bar association rules. While the EU and the USA are largely aligned on the first two points, the differences emerge with respect to the third. The EU regulatory framework ignores lawyers' professional obligations, which, together with the bar associations' half-hearted embrace of lobbying rules, is found to be the main reason why law firms in the EU fly under the regulatory radar. With lawyers increasingly becoming involved in the lobbying and advocacy market, the EU and its Member States need to bring their rules on par with the US regulatory model that acknowledges bar association rules as lobbying regulation.

AbstractThe EU's openness towards stakeholders is central to the legitimacy of its law-making. With the rapid globalisation of EU legislative activities, openness towards actors from third countries requires analysis. With reference to the notion of 'lobbying', this article outlines a framework for identifying the role of third country actors in EU policy processes. The two arguments brought forward suggest that third country lobbying is facilitated by the openness of Union law- and policy-making, and that third country actors contribute to EU decision-making at all stages. The article concludes with a set of questions that third country lobbying raises concerning the EU's legitimate law-making authority in Europe and beyond.

New modes of governance are proliferating at all levels, most prominently in the EU. One main characteristic of new governance is adjustability and revisability in the form of soft law. The non-binding nature of soft law is said to contribute to flexibility and diversity in Member States and to secure national autonomy. However, this article argues that while soft law may not be legally binding, it nevertheless has legal effects that throw flexibility and diversity of national action into doubt. Beginning by demonstrating that soft law may have discernible effects on practices in Member States, at the same time restricting Member State choices, the article goes on to develop a categorisation of those effects and to document them in detail. These are: judicial recognition by the European courts, explicit terms of soft law instruments, which demand special types of national implementing measures, the role played by non-state actors, and hybrid forms of regulatory instruments comprising soft and hard law provisions. The analysis shows a need to add variety to existing research on EU soft law, which has traditionally focused on the role of the judiciary in giving legal effects to soft law. Instead, we should be more attentive to the other three factors when discussing soft law. Besides the more holistic approach, research should also analyse soft law in a more case-specific manner in order to fully grasp the implications of choice of soft law in a domestic legal system.

In the coronavirus pandemic that has swept the world, the Finnish Government, like many of its peers, has issued policy measures to combat the virus. Many of these measures have been implemented in law, including measures taken under the Emergency Powers Act, or by ministries and regional and local authorities exercising their legal powers. However, some governmental policy measures have been implemented using non-binding guidelines and recommendations. Using border travel recommendations as a case study, this article critically evaluates governmental soft law-making. The debacle over the use of soft law to fight the pandemic in Finland revealed fundamental misunderstandings about the processes and circumstances under which instruments conceived as soft law can be issued, as well as a lack of attention to their effects from a fundamental rights perspective.