Once again cases concerned with the threshold questions of private international law, such as characterisation and jurisdiction, have dominated the scene.

Readers of last October's I.C.L.Q. will recall that this case started life in the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea when Australia and New Zealand were granted provisional measures against Japanese high seas tuna fishing in the Pacific.1 That Tribunal had held that the provisions of the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (“1982 UNCLOS”) invoked by Australia and New Zealand appeared to afford a basis on which the jurisdiction of an arbitral tribunal might be founded; that the fact that the 1993 Convention on Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna applied between the parties did not preclude recourse to the compulsory dispute settlement procedures in Part XV of the 1982 UNCLOS; and that an arbitral tribunal would prima facie have jurisdiction over the merits of the dispute.2 Notwithstanding this necessarily provisional view, when the parties then proceeded to arbitration, Japan maintained its initial preliminary objections, and the award handed down in August 2000 thus deals only with the jurisdiction of the arbitrators.3 The facts and background to the case are set out in the earlier case-note and need not be repeated here.

1. Questions of Interpretation and Application of the 1971 Montreal Convention arising from the Aerial Incident at Lockerbie (Libyan Arab Jamahiriya v. United Kingdom).

The Commission resigned on 16th March 1999 shortly after the publication of the First Report of the Committee of Independent Experts.1 The Committee had been created by common agreement between the European Parliament and the Commission in order to address the persistent allegations of fraud, mismanagement and nepotism levelled at the Commission.2 The First Report investigated allegations of fraud against individual commissioners and the Commission as a whole.3 Although most of the allegations of fraud against individual commissioners were discarded as unfounded, the Committee held the Commission responsible for a series of mismanagement, administrative irregularities and a general failure to oversee the work it had contracted out.4 The conclusions of the report were damning and it became clear that resignation of the whole Commission was the only way forward. The events came at an all-time low for the Commission and will have lasting effects on the institution and its legitimacy.

A disturbing feature of the conflict in the former Yugoslavia was the extent to which civilians were the target of military attacks by all three of the armed forces of the main ethnic communities. It was the military attacks by the armed forces of one of these ethnic communities—the Bosnian Croats (HZHB)—against Bosnian Muslim civilians and associated events in the Lasva Valley region of Central Bosnia from May 1992 to January 1994 that led to the indictment and eventual conviction of General Tihomir Blaskic.

At the Nice Summit in December 2000, Europe's political leaders adopted the much-discussed EU Charter on Fundamental Rights in the form of a legally non-binding political declaration. It is the second such instrument in relation to human rights protection.1 The Presidency Conclusions to both the 1999 Cologne and Tampere Summits ordered the preparation of a draft Charter which was to be solemnly proclaimed by the European Parliament, the Commission and Council at the Nice Summit.2 It was only after that fact that “It will … have to be considered whether and, if so, how the Charter should be integrated into the treaties.”3

The period under review (Autumn 1999–Spring 2001) saw a number of important cases decided by the Court of Justice involving breaches of Article 81(1). Pre-eminent are three judgments involving cartels and one involving distribution contracts.

This Journal's previous piece on current developments in EC intellectual property noted that this area of law is dominated by the drive towards harmonisation.1 This drive continues, and its success has been such that it can now begin to be seen in an overarching context of globalisation. The idea of a unified global system for the protection of intellectual property now seems at least conceivable, even if not immediately achievable. It is even possible to state that some stages have been achieved on the journey, most notably the TRIPs Agreement. Since adherence to this is a requirement of World Trade Organization (WTO) membership, the arguments in its favour have suddenly become “persuasive”. It represents a tremendous achievement in terms of the protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights throughout the world. The World Intellectual Property Organisation's contribution here and elsewhere has been immense.