The common law has traditionally regarded the question of pre-contractual liability as a matter of contract formation.2 Where the claimant is able to satisfy the rules of offer and acceptance, consideration, an intention to be bound, and certainty, contract law possesses a number of tools capable of resolving disputes arising prior to contract. For example, the courts will utilise the law of misrepresentation and mistake and, if necessary, imply terms to respond to questions such as the effect of pre-contractual representations or whether the claimant should be paid for work commenced prior to contract.3 Notably where a transaction between two commercial parties has been executed, the English courts have shown themselves particularly willing to intervene and ensure the validity of the agreement reached between the parties.4

Historically, the trend towards the harmonisation of commercial laws has been concerned either with the creation of a regime dealing with international transactions while preserving the identity of national laws or alternatively the emergence of supranational entities where the focus has been upon progressing a common market or political or economic grouping. The legal instruments that have promoted harmonisation1 have mainly revolved around a model law such as the UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration (1985) or those instruments that deal with international commercial contracts and depend for their application on incorporation into contracts. Clearly there are limits on the effectiveness of international proposals for contractual incorporation. By definition, they are not mandatory and for them to have any realistic effect there must exist a considerable degree of homogeneity in commercial practice as seen, for example, with documentary letters of credit.2 In addition, contractual mechanisms have mainly an inter-partes dimension3 and are not therefore apt to deal with third party rights including the recognition and enforcement of international security interests.

In its simplest form, a transnational insolvency involves an insolvency1 proceeding in one country, with creditors located in at least one additional country.2 In the most complex case, it involves multiple proceedings, subsidiaries, affiliated entities, assets, operations, and creditors in dozens of nations. Complex international insolvencies continue to proliferate alongside a burgeoning world-wide free market economy that entails the globalisation of commercial and financial markets.3

After the debacle in Seattle in December 1999, the Fourth Ministerial Conference of WTO members took place successfully under tight security in the capital city, Doha, of the small Arabian state of Qatar in November 2001. The Doha conference did not adopt any new treaty or protocoll to add to the network of WTO agreements already in place. It did, however, approve a ‘broad and balance ’ work programme in the form of two declarations—a main declaration and one on trade related intellectual property rights (TRIPS) and public health, plus a decision on implementation designed to alleviate the difficulties of developing countries in implementing the existing WTO agreements. In other words, the Doha conference agreed on the nature and scope of the next round of trade negttiations, named as the ‘Development Round’. Although some least-developed countries had argued that ‘no new round should be started until there has been full implementation of the agreements concluded in the last Round, and an evaluation of their effects done’, the Doha Conference decided to start a new round of trade negotiations. How development oriented is the agenda of the new round of trade negotiations? What is going to be negotiated during th e negotiations? Is it indeed going to be a ‘Development Round’ in more than name? The object of this article is to analyse the background to the Doha conference, to assess the nature of negotiations at the conference and to evaluate its outcome.

Not many decisions of the Court of Justice have stirred such an intensive academic debate in Germany1 as the Court's well-known Centros judgment,2 dealing with a Danish couple that had registered a private limited company in England and had then applied to register a branch in Denmark. The Danish authorities refused a registration for the reason that under Danish law a ‘foreign limited company’ which does not transact business in its state of incorporation has to fulfil certain requirements of Danish company law, in particular the paying-up of the minimum capital fixed at DKK 200.000. The competent Danish Court referred the question to the Court of Justice whether the Danish regulation was compatible with Article 52 (now Article 43) ECT in conjunction with Article 58 (now Article 48) ECT.

On 4 March 2002, the French legislature enacted the ‘Patients’ Rights & Quality of the Health System Act’ which introduces reforms in the relationship between the medical profession and the patient.1 As part of this wider reform, Part IV of the Act establishes a new system for the compensation of victims of medical accidents. The new legislation retains the traditional liability rules but puts in place a parallel system which aims to guarantee compensation for serious accidents, whether or not the accident is caused by negligence, without the need to resort to litigation in these cases. The new French rules are of considerable interest in view of the current debate in the United Kingdom on clinical negligence reform.

In the Commission's White Paper on European Governance1 and the subsequent Laeken2 Declaration, the participation of civil society in the Community method of decision-making was viewed as the primary way of engaging directly with EU citizens. The White Paper accepts that participatory democracy is created from the bottom up by ‘groups of people dedicated to the disinterested search for the public interest in society’.3 This statement recognises that participation goes beyond the pre-legislative lobbying process. It suggests that the representation and protection of citizens' interests requires ex post judicial protection in circumstances where the legislative measure breaches fundamental rights or if its application infringes principles of procedural propriety. The only vehicle for such judicial protection at the Community level is paragraph 4 of Article 230 EC, which already provides recourse to individuals who are ‘directly and individually concerned’ by an act of the institutions. Direct actions under Article 230 EC are preferable to the indirect protection available in national courts when a preliminary reference can be made under Article 234 EC. This is because national courts cannot declare a Community measure as being invalid or provide a remedy against the Commission. Despite these deficiencies with domestic enforcement actions, the Court's judgments have been consistently of the view that the granting of locus standi under Article 230 EC should be narrowly construed and most significantly does not extend to judicial review actions by representative groups. This is in stark contrast to the practice within the domestic courts of Member States where proxy actions have, in recent years, been encouraged.

Several crimes recognized in international criminal law are intimately linked to the horrors of the holocaust. Persecution, extermination, and genocide are historically intertwined notions that in all minds refer to the ordeal of the Jewish people before and during the Second World War. This is particularly so with genocide. The 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the ‘Genocide Convention’) is a legal answer to the holocaust. Yet, as any legal notion, genocide goes beyond the characterisation of a specific historical tragedy. It is fated to evolve through legal interpretation, which operates pursuant to certain rules and principles that only subsidiarily rely on the drafting history.

Two conflicting forces beset any attempts to fit responsibility for environmental matters into modern constitutional structures. On the one hand the political desire for less centralised government calls for devolution of power to regional or local authorities, so that responsibilities are divided and distributed between different levels of government. On the other, the fact that no aspect of the environment can be treated as if it were a separate compartment suggests that responsibilities should be integrated in one place, an approach supported by the increasing awareness that there is a need for environmental considerations to influence all areas of policy if the goal of sustainable development is to be achieved. Fitting responses to the conditions1 of a particular locality is an important element in successful environmental policy, but so is ensuring that a coherent and holistic approach is taken, unhindered by institutional divisions.2 The purpose of this paper is to examine how two structures of devolved administration, for the Autonomous Communities in Spain and for Scotland, meet the challenge of reconciling these opposite forces, and how the constitutional structures influence the way in which potential problems are resolved.

The Barcelona Summit of March 2002 provided the catalyst for further coordination and synchronisation between the social and economic dimensions of the Lisbon Strategy framework. The definition of the ‘European Social Model’ as ‘good economic performance, a high level of social protection and education and social dialogue’ has become a working definition underpinning the direction of social policy in official publications.1 The Barcelona Presidency also led to the adoption of a streamlined set of Employment Guidelines, Recommendations to the Member States and Broad Economic Policy Guidelines on the same day, heralded as an ‘instrument for economic governance’ by the Commission.2 The reform of the European Employment Strategy (EES) concentrates upon the problems and weaknesses of the EES identified in the evaluation of the first 5 years of the Strategy.3 The Commission identified four central issues for reform, focusing upon the need to set clear objectives (which include priorities and targets), the need to simplify the policy guidelines, the need to improve governance and ensure greater consistency and complementarity with other EU processes. A new development on the eve of the Spring Council (the Brussels Summit) on 20–21 March 2003 was a ‘Social Summit’ attended by a troika of the Heads of State/Government of the past, current and future Presidencies, the Commission and the Social Partners. One outcome of this Summit was the creation of a new eight-member task force, chaired by Wim Kok.4 The aim of the European Employment Task Force is to investigate practical steps to prompt the Member States to implement the new revised EES endorsed at the Spring Summit. The Task Force will report to the Commission in time to draft the Joint Employment Report for the annual Spring Summits.

In 2001, the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights concluded consideration of a communication under Article 55 of the African Charter on Human Rights and Peoples' Rights which dealt with alleged violations of human rights of the Ogoni people in Nigeria.1 This communication is important and special, because, for the first time, the Commission was able to deal in a substantive and groundbreaking way with alleged violations of economic, social and cultural rights which formed the substance of the complaint. In addition, in dealing with the communication, the Commission took a firm and dynamic approach that may contribute to a better and more effective protection of economic, social and cultural rights in Africa. This article discusses the case before the Commission and tries to characterize the decision of the Commission as an application of recent approaches to strengthen implementation and supervision of economic, social and cultural rights.

The Procedural guarantees laid down in Article 6, European Convention on Human Rights in relation to the fairness and expedition of legal proceedings would be meaningless if the Convention did not protect the right of access to the courts which is a precondition to the enjoyment of those guarantees. As a result, the European Court of Human Rights has laid down the principle that Article 6(1) secures to everyone the right to have any claim relating to his civil rights and obligations brought before a court. The right of access to the courts is not absolute. The Strasbourg case law acknowledges that it may be subject to limitations. Contracting States enjoy a margin of appreciation in this regard. However, national courts must be satisfied that the limitations applied do not restrict or reduce the access left to the individual in such a way or to such an extent that the very essence of the right is impaired. Moreover a limitation will not be compatible with Article 6(1) if it does not pursue a legitimate aim and if there is no reasonable relationship of proportionality between the means employed and the aim sought to be achieved.

Following the last update in this Quarterly,1 the European Union (EU) has been quite active in agreeing new measures relating to cross-border policing and criminal law. First of all, the Tampere European Council meeting in October 1999 agreed a list of measures to be adopted to develop the EU's ‘Area of Freedom, Security and Justice’, particularly as regards criminal procedure. Here the European Council requested the Council to agree a work programme on mutual recognition in criminal matters within a year, and to establish an EU organisation facilitating cross-border prosecutions (Eurojust) within 2 years. Following agreement in the meantime on a Convention on Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters after 5 years’ negotiations,2 the work programme was duly adopted in November 2000, setting out a list of twenty-four measures which the Council should agree in the medium-term to facilitate cross-border investigations, prosecutions, and enforcement of judgments.3 Several Member States then began to implement this plan, tabling two versions of a proposed Decision to set up Eurojust and also making proposals for ‘Framework Decisions’ to harmonise national laws as regards enforcement of other Member States’ orders to freeze assets and evidence and enforcement of judgments imposing financial penalties.4

The Commission has spent time in 2003 celebrating the tenth anniversary of the establishment of the internal market. In this context the use of deadlines is misleading. The building of an internal market is more process than event. Many significant pieces of legislation entered into force at the end of 1992, but many pre-dated that moment and others again havebeen agreed subsequently. And the Court's interpretation of relevant provisions of the Treaty was not fossilised at the end 1992, but rather its dynamic evolution continues to exert influence over the process of market-building. The Commissionsperfectly well aware of this. It admits that the Internal Market will never be ‘completed’.1 The core mission is to promote and sustain improved economic performance, not to hit crude targets. Nonetheless dissemination of propaganda possessesbase appeal in all political systems and the Commission has taken the trouble to emphasise the gainsthat have accrued from the process of integration, while also devoting attention both to remaining gaps and strategies forplugging them. In making its case the Commission is confronted by the unavoidable absence of reliable data on what would have occurred had the internal market not been pursued in the chosen manner. Sector by sector, it is difficult to demarcateadvantages accruing from the ‘1992’ initiative from those that would have occurred in any event or which are attributable to other factors such as global trade liberalisation. Moreover, the essence of the internal market programme is that benefits will be felt not only in the short term, but also in the long term, and accordingly, in line with Chairman Mao's reported refusal to assess the importance of the French Revolution on the basis that it was too soon to tell, measurement of the impact of the internal market project cannot yet be decisive. However, in its report The Internal Market—Ten Years without Frontiers the Commission insisted on demonstrably favourable macroeconomic consequences.2 It highlighted price reductions and improved productivity. Its simulation results suggest that real Gross Domestic Product would have been 1.4 per cent lower in 2002 without the internal market programme. The level of employment would have been 0.86 per cent lower. Moreover further gains are expected of the former, though not the latter, type in future.

Even when a forum has completed the task of identifying, in any given case, the lex causae, there remains a possibility of further choice of law complexities as regards delimitation of the applicable law. The extent of leeway which a Scottish or English forum enjoys when purporting to apply the lex causae, in the question of whether that court should refer to,1 and apply, the whole corpus of the lex causae,2 is ultimately a matter for the forum's discretion, the exercise whereof admittedly few opportunities are afforded.

In July 2001, 40 years after the entry into force of the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Parties (ATCPs) decided to establish a Permanent Secretariat to the Treaty. This latest development within what has been described as ‘an evolving international institutional structure’ will undoubtedly serve to strengthen the Treaty, as well as provide support for the wider Antarctic system, in particular, the 1991 Environmental Protocol. Its impact within the wider environmental institutional context will depend to an extent upon the grant of legal personality to the secretariat, and the definition of its functions, rights and privileges. Described as an historic and landmark decision, the establishment of a permanent secretariat has the potential indirectly to provide an additional line of defence in the fight to preserve and protect the Antarctic environment. The purpose of this article is to consider the future impact of, and issues relating to, this significant institutional development.

On 11 September 2001, four aircraft on internal flights within the United States were seized by passengers who crashed two of them into the World Trade Centre in New York and another into the Pentagon, Washington DC, the other falling into open land in Pennsylvania. The men who seized the planes were all non-US nationals. The total loss of life was over 3,000, including a number of UK citizens. The economic consequences were hardly calculable. Responsibility for the attacks was attributed to the Al Qaeda movement, a group regarded by the United States as being responsible for previous attacks against US targets, including the bombing of American embassies in East Africa in 1998 and on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000. Although Al Qaeda was thought to have members in many states, the principal base for its operations was in Afghanistan.1

On declining to make an order for provisional measures in the case concerning the Arrest Warrant of 11 April 2000, the International Court of Justice nevertheless indicated that it was desirable that the Court should deal with the issues raised by the case ‘as soon as possible’, and that it was appropriate therefore to seek to determine the application ‘with all expedition’.1 In the event, questions of admissibility and the merits were taken together and the Parties agreed to file a single set of written pleadings each, enabling the Court to hold oral hearings in October 2001 and to render a final judgment on 14 February 20022 (ie, only about 16 months after the original application by the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)). Despite the speed with which the Court dealt with the case, its judgment has come in for considerable comment and criticism from a number of quarters3 as much for what is not said, as for what is in fact contained in the rather spare terms of the judgment. It will be suggested here that the ratio decidendi of the case is in fact rather confined, and that caution should be adopted in seeking to draw wider implications from what was said or left unsaid.

Since the last review in 2000, there have been dynamic developments in European Community agricultural law. This might appear surprising in that the Berlin Special European Council of March 1999 (‘Berlin Summit’) had seen agreement on major reforms to the common organisations of the market, including consolidation of existing legislation, and the drawing up of financial perspectives for the period 2000–2006. Accordingly, a degree of stability might have been expected. However, not long after agreement was reached at the Berlin Summit, Commissioner Fischler could emphasise that: ‘Reforming farm policy is an ongoing process.’1

Whilst the political aspects of Cyprus's membership to the European Union have become the main focus of academic analysis over the years, its trade relations with the Member States have raised issues just as interesting from a legal point of view. This has been illustrated quite recently by the Anastasiou II judgment delivered by the European Court of Justice in 2000. The article aims at highlighting some of these issues. It is structured in three parts: the first part outlines the provisions of the EC–Cyprus Association Agreement governing trade between the parties; the second part analyses the Court's first ruling on imports of certain produce from the northern part of Cyprus;1 the third part examines the recent judgment of the Court on imports of produce which, whilst originating in the northern part of Cyprus, are being accompanied by phytosanitary certificates issued by the Turkish authorities.