Suchergebnisse

In this article, we examine key features of the new EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the light of implications of big data technologies. We will focus specifically on the original regulatory approaches introduced by the GDPR relying on risk assessment and management and on self-defense by Internet users, seeking to interpret them in view of a law-technology lag versus a law-technology driving perspective, meaning a legislative policy guided essentially by the intent to foster technological innovation and competitiveness in the Digital Single Market. Indeed, the current EU data protection reform seemingly fails to provide the appropriate caution that should be expected from a law designed to protect a fundamental human right. Notwithstanding the declared aspirations of the GDPR, the decision-making power on what and how to collect, store, and process personal data is leaning to the operators and data controllers to the disadvantage of data subjects and supervisory authorities. While technological conditions, namely the automatisation inherent to data mining and data analytics, render the effectiveness of key data protection principles harder to pursue, it is also true that the increasing suppleness of the regime is furthered by the Regulation's own regulatory choices. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

DINÂMIA, Junho de 2008. ; The legal regime applicable to Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) in the European Union is an important witness to the central position assumed by risk in European regulatory and institutional reform over the last years. At the European level, the GMO regime provides an archetypical response by the regulator to the challenges raised by scientific uncertainty, social controversy and the weakening of national frontiers. The need to act in situations where knowledge about relevant facts is insufficient or uncertain presents a test to the regulator and more generally to a legal system in which the verification or proof of the truth has traditionally been the requirement for both activating the law and for determining their possible violation. The precautionary principle provides the primary EU response to this challenge. Its inclusion in EU legislation on GMOs entails the recognition of the actual lack of conclusive evidence of harm which may be caused by the experimental use, the cultivation or industrial application of GMOs. At the same time, the extent of the public controversy surrounding this biotechnology led the EU to reconsider and possibly reinforce mechanisms for involving the civil society in the regulatory process. Yet, at the end of the day, the GMO regime structures the whole system for the assessment and management of the risk on the use of science and scientific opinions. This article seeks to examine this apparent paradox and the way in which the GMO regime attempts to resolve it. This analysis will lead us in the end to questioning whether by meeting the risk raised by the development and use of GMOs in the way it does, the EU is not generating a sort of regulatory failure. ; FCT

Abstract There is a pretty wide belief that 'soft law' together with self-regulation provide suitable regulatory tools for emerging science and technology (S&T), possibly better tools than 'hard law' to cope with the need for both flexibility and adjustment to novelty and prevailing uncertainties. Soft law and self-regulation, it is argued, may also respond more adequately to increased pressure for opening up regulation to new governance modes arising from mounting public unease with S&T in ethically and socially sensitive or controversial domains. However, doubts have also accompanied the use of soft law, as well as of self-regulation: although often designed to enhance more active participation and dialogue with the civil society, and ultimately to increase decision-making legitimacy, they are perceived as lacking transparency and accountability too. Our overview of the EU regulatory response to various emerging technologies in recent decades led us to the conclusion that the overall picture is more complex than these beliefs may suggest. Actually, soft law and self-regulation have been resorted to as regulatory tools mostly as preparatory or complementary tools to 'hard law'. ; European Union's the 7th Framework Programme for Research and Development.

DINÂMIA'CET, Agosto de 2010 ; The adoption of the Treaty of Lisbon and the granting to the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the same legal force as the Treaty lent a new impulse to the consideration of fundamental human values by the European Union (EU). The question remains, however, of how this legal discourse centred on human values is actually shaping the EU regulatory framework in specific policy domains. The aim of this paper is to critically appraise the ways that certain values rendered explicit through the Charter's rights and principles are being construed in the context of EU policy and law on biometrics, an ethically and morally sensitive security technology whose development and use are being actively promoted by the EU. We conclude that the interpretation of the pertinent Charter's rights and principles as well as their balancing owes to a great deal to the goals of EU policies, shaped largely by political and economic considerations. In respect of biometrics, research priorities, combined with those of EU security policy, then tend to prevail over ethically or morally based legal claims. ; FCT

In recent decades, a growing body of research has discussed and illustrated the so-called deliberative speak ‐ or how, despite representatives of the expert-political system agreeing with public participation in decision-making processes, in practice effective public participation barely occurs. To address this, new governing tools have recently been developed and implemented, such as participatory budgeting, particularly in societies in the Global North. We have also witnessed several profound sociopolitical and economic changes ‐ the post-political turn and localist agendas are all part and parcel of a new era of governance and political institutions that are being discussed increasingly by social scientists as questioning democracy. However, empirical analyses of if and how these changes are being appropriated ‐ reproduced and/or resisted ‐ in the everyday practices of expert-political systems and of citizens and what their consequences are for public participation have been neglected. To overcome that, this article will examine the discourses of citizens and representatives of expert-political systems about their participatory budgeting in three Portuguese municipalities. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersion

DINÂMIA, Dezembro de 2007. ; Presently, in Portugal, there is an incomplete network of "Julgados de Paz" (small claims courts). The government is committed to extending the network throughout the country. The goal of extending the network is constrained by budgetary considerations. Out of those constraints a conflict between the right to justice and efficiency emerges. In this paper an approach is advanced to help manage this value conflict between justice and efficiency in setting up criteria for the extension of the network of "Julgados de Paz". ; À présent, au Portugal, le réseau des "Julgados de Paz" (Juges de Proximité) reste incomplet. Le gouvernement veut étendre le réseau à l'ensemble du territoire national. Cet objectif est limité par des contraintes budgétaires. De là découle une tension entre le droit à la justice et la poursuite de l'efficience. Dans cet exposé nous proposons une approche qui pourrait aider à répondre au besoin de gérer le conflit entre justice et efficience dans l'élaboration de critères pour l'extension du réseau de "Julgados de Paz" au territoire du Portugal. ; FCT