EU sports law has conventionally been understood to involve the assembly of the several decisions of the Court of Justice and the Commission that apply free movement and competition law to the practices of governing bodies. The influence of these decisions has generated change in some aspects of sporting governance, in the EU, and beyond. But the EU does not set the terms according to which sport shall be organised. This article makes the case for the EU moving beyond its orthodox approach to sports law, which is rooted in the accidents of litigation, and also choosing to embrace a role as a regulator. This will diminish the autonomy that governing bodies in sport have long prized, but the article asserts the need for this in order to address the conflict of interest to which governing bodies fall prey when they perform regulatory functions while also making commercially significant choices. It is, however, unclear whether the political will needed to propel EU sports law beyond the application of internal market law to embrace also the establishment of mandatory ex ante standards can be assembled.

EU citizenship, now so central to the European Union's project, remains a highly contested concept in respect of its meaning, its scope, and its purpose. By considering the large body of legal texts and their travaux préparatoires from the 1972 Paris European Council until the adoption of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, we have explored what the original drafters had in mind in developing the concept of EU citizenship and, crucially, what they did not. The article argues that the notion of European citizenship was seen as a tool to define European identity, and thus to continue the building of the European Union as a whole. European citizenship was thus viewed through a constitutional prism from the outset. The constitutional approach to the concept of European citizenship fed into the wider constitutionalisation project under the Maastricht Treaty and, later, permeated the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union. We wish to argue that this focus on the constitutional nature of EU citizenship overlooked the more practical implications of citizenship, such as how to manage immigration flows or the infrastructure changes needed in the host state to accommodate a significant number of arrivals of EU citizens (in particular in respect of housing and social welfare benefits). It took more than 20 years after the introduction of EU citizenship for the Court of Justice to become aware of the practical, as opposed to constitutional, implications of the direction of travel it had pursued. By that time, it was too late for the United Kingdom, one of the countries which had received the largest number of EU citizens; the UK voted by a narrow margin to leave the European Union.

The article examines the legal structure and constitutional consequences of ‘Next Generation EU’ (NGEU)—the innovative recovery fund that the European Union (EU) established to address the socio-economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. The article sheds light on the complex normative constellation that was used to erect NGEU, and explains how this was satisfactorily done within the existing Treaty framework, by resorting to current legal bases. At the same time, however, the article underlines the profound constitutional consequences that NGEU has on the EU's architecture of economic governance. To this end, the article contrasts the strategy chosen to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic to that embraced to tackle the euro-crisis a decade ago, and concludes emphasising how NGEU significantly contributes to the federalisation of the EU, endowing its fiscal union with a fiscal capacity analogous to that of other federal regimes.

Long examined by the academic literature as a challenging technical-legal fiction with a strong geopolitical impact, border carbon adjustment is on its way to becoming a European reality. This Article provides an overview of the European legislative process with a comparison of the initial Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (‘CBAM’) project presented by the Commission in July 2021 with the positions formalised by the European Parliament and the Council in 2022. With a detour through the doctrine of international law and building upon the work of Professor Thomas Cottier on the concept of Common Concern of Humankind (‘CCH’) in international law, the Article examines the European CBAM, and more broadly, the recent multiplication of unilateral environmental initiatives with extraterritorial impacts, as a contextual transition from a logic of coexistence to a logic of cooperation in the field of environmental policies. It concludes on the necessity to design the European CBAM accordingly, by redistributing its direct revenues and developing open and inclusive cooperation frameworks, to accelerate this transition in the field of industrial decarbonisation.

One of the significant changes in the landscape of international law in recent decades has been the increase in the number of international courts and other forms of international dispute settlement. The EU has pushed for the inclusion of dispute settlement chapters in its trade and investment agreements, it has joined multilateral treaties that include dispute settlement mechanisms, and it has proposed the establishment of multilateral investment court. The Court of Justice of the European Union has shown a more guarded approach in recent years towards international dispute settlement. This article explores the potential ways to address these sources of conflict and allow the CJEU to coexist with other international courts.

This article defends Block Exemption Regulations (‘BERs’) as a legitimate and effective tool for the consideration of public policy within Article 101 of the TFEU enforcement. Going against popular opinion, it argues that as the expression of a clearly defined EU-wide political consensus, BERs carry several advantages over the traditional balancing tools of Article 101(1) and (3) individual exceptions, guidelines, or balancing by the exercise of enforcement discretion. BERs offer pre-determined and transparent rules, safeguarding the independent competition authorities’ political accountability and democratic legitimacy, promoting uniformity and legal certainty, reducing compliance and enforcement costs, inviting scrutiny and debate, and fostering experimentalism and flexibility.

This article discusses the techniques—‘hallmarks’—that the EU courts have developed to ensure that judicial review remains effective in competition law. These hallmarks can be grouped into three main categories. Some of them concern the interpretation of substantive law, namely the definition of legal tests and their consistent use over time. Some, the need for administrative action to rely on the best available evidence (which comprises both reliance on the expert consensus and the careful examination of the economic and legal context). A third category relates to the scrutiny exercised over the policy statements through which the European Commission chooses to constrain its discretion.

According to Article 267 TFEU, a ‘court or tribunal of a Member State’ can make a preliminary reference to the Court of Justice. The Court applies a single, homogeneous definition of a ‘court or tribunal’. This has allowed it to admit references from those specialised, independent, administrative bodies that in several Member States have been established instead of administrative courts to decide claims under public law, including EU law. Whether such a ‘dispute settling’ body is entitled to submit a preliminary reference normally depends upon whether it commands sufficient ‘independence’ vis-à-vis both the parties to the dispute and the public administration as such. The Court has tightened these requirements appreciably in connection with the threats against the independence of the judiciary in some Member States, and the consequent more prominent roles that Articles 19 TEU and 47 of the Charter have come to play. Whereas safeguarding the rule of law is of utmost importance, these provisions pursue objectives within the Union's legal order which are materially different from those pursued by Article 267. In this article, it is therefore argued that the Court should apply different constructions of the independence criterion with respect to these provisions.

This article analyses the financial regulation of Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (‘SPACs’) in the European Union and SPAC reform in the UK against the main legal system where the SPAC originates: the US. I argue that the US and financial regulators in Europe have opposing views on SPACs, evidenced by the adoption of two different regulatory approaches. As opposed to a SPAC regulation by business or function and by enforcement in the US, the European Union and the UK are implementing a SPAC regulation by objectives, where general principles of company and financial law inform the SPAC legal discipline. This enormously enriches the SPAC current debate, and sheds new light on the subject.

The aim of this Article is to show that the enforcement of Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union (‘TEU’) values vis-à-vis Member States could benefit from the application of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (‘CFR’) also in instances where the current interpretation of Article 51(1) CFR prevents this. This would be the case if the CFR were also applicable to purely domestic cases, eg—but not only—with regard to fundamental rights-relevant violations related to the values enshrined in Article 2 TEU. In this case, the European Court of Justice, which has already partly taken this path recently, could prevent the violation of core EU values. The most important historical challenge to those values in Europe today is the systematic dismantling of the rule of law and democracy in certain Member States. It is the very purpose of fundamental rights to provide answers to such dangers. When one speaks of the rule of law and democracy, one necessarily also means fundamental rights. This Article thus advocates an EU which perceives itself as a complete fundamental rights union. While the traditional interpretation of Article 51(1) CFR had a balanced division of competence between the EU and its Member States in mind, the disregard of Article 2 TEU values triggers a clausula rebus sic stantibus: the neat federal balance can only be upheld if both ends stick to the original promise made. It demonstrates two ways of completing the European fundamental rights union: treaty revision, on the one hand, and reinterpretation of Article 51 CFR, on the other hand. Both ways have in common that only a complete fundamental rights union can establish a system of fundamental rights protection that is uniform and thus equality-preserving in cases where national fundamental rights fail to provide sufficient protection.

Artificial Intelligence (‘AI’) technologies present great opportunities for the investment management industry (as well as broader financial services). However, there are presently no regulations specifically aiming at AI in investment management. Does this mean that AI is currently unregulated? If not, which hard and soft law rules apply?

Investments are a heavily regulated industry (MIFID II, UCITS IV and V, SM&CR, GDPR etc). Most regulations are intentionally technology-neutral. These regulations are legally binding (hard law). Recent years saw the emergence of regulatory and industry publications (soft laws) focusing specifically on AI. In this Article we analyse both hard law and soft law instruments.

The contributions of this work are: first, a review of key regulations applicable to AI in investment management (and oftentimes by extension to banking as well) from multiple jurisdictions; second, a framework and an analysis of key regulatory themes for AI.

The discussion of the need to establish a ‘right to the internet’, ongoing now for over thirty years, has not brought about a clear resolution. Despite the growing importance of online services to both the economy and social life, there is no consensus on the limits of such a right, nor on the need to define it at all—not to mention controversy over its inclusion in the catalogue of fundamental rights.

However, the discussion about the right to internet access in the context of the EU legal system now seems obsolete. This is so, because—not through the direct modernisation of the Charter of Fundamental Rights but as part of new telecommunications legislation—a new subjective right, called the right to open internet, has emerged.

The aim of this Article is to clarify the content of this right and its relationship to the principle of network neutrality. Against this background, recent judgments of the Court of Justice will be examined and discussed. Although closely related to the telecommunications market, these judgments may serve as a starting point for further discussion on the meaning of the right to open internet in the EU legal system, including its relation to the protection of human rights.

The aim of this paper is to examine transparency principles under English and German Law, EU acquis and PEICL and to answer the question whether current legal regulation reflects high standards of transparency requirements and offer adequate consumer protection. The author is particularly interested in investigating are there any typical, common or shared characteristics in the regulation of transparency requirements across these jurisdictions. The focus of this paper is on consumer insurance contracts only. The main argument is that through transparency we can build consumer's trust in insurance market and offer adequate consumer protection.