Portuguese Constitutional Court’s decision n.º 591/2016, of 9 November 2016 or when the Constitutional Court looked to EU law legal aid matters: figuring out the treasure’s map…

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by Joana Covelo de Abreu, Junior Editor
▪

The dispute in the main proceedings

On 9th November 2016, the Portuguese Constitutional Court issued decision n.º 591/2016, concerning an incidental and concrete constitutionality control presented before this court.

In the litigation, a legal person presented before the competent national administrative authority (Instituto da Segurança Social, I.P. – Centro Distrital de Braga) a request for legal aid, which was refused without further consideration since article 7(3) of the Portuguese legislation (Lei n.º 34/2004) is clear when it states that “legal persons operating for profit and individual establishments of limited liability do not have the right to legal aid”[i].

Not accepting that decision, the legal person presented an action before the national first instance court where pleaded for the unconstitutionality of the mentioned article 7(3) of Portuguese legislation (Lei n.º 34/2004) and, simultaneously, for the infringement of article 47 of the CFREU.

The court ruled against the legal person because there was a “clear impracticability” in the litigation, understanding among others that the national legislation was not unconstitutional since article 20 of the Portuguese Constitution demands concretization approaches and, for that matter, the limitation steaming from the national legislation was not compromising the Constitution’s setting since other legal mechanisms could be used by the litigator so that it could react under financial stress.

However, the national court did not mention anything concerning EU law and the interpretation national legal rules should meet under EU general principles.

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Competition harms created by administrative legislation: a new approach to an ancient problem

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by, María Pilar Canedo Arrillaga, Professor at the University of Deusto and Jean Monnet Chair
▪

Competition law has a general aim of protecting markets against those actors that, for different reasons, break the rules of the game and obtain an extra-benefit harming competitors, consumers and society in general.

The traditional approach to competition law is to focus attention on undertakings – generally the most powerful because of different reasons – that find in the absolute freedom of laissez faire, the best opportunity to maximize their particular benefits not taking into consideration the general interest. Articles 101 and 102 of the Treaty of the Functioning of the EU have been the most relevant tool to fight these practices both by the European Commission and the national or subnational authorities.

In the former 20 years attention has been given by different international Organizations (OEDC, UNCTAD) to the role played by the State in the harms generated in the markets. Article 107, TFUE (dealing with State Aid) was since the beginning of the European Market one of the concerns of the EU institutions but a new approach is needed in this field.

The many different levels of administration (central Governments, regions, provinces, mayors) have the power to create legislation that reduces competition by creating entry barriers in markets or by generating discrimination between economic actors.

Those administrations have an incredible economic power when they enter into public procurement procedures in order to guarantee services and products to de citizens. If those administrations don’t impose the principles of efficiency in their procedures, the services received by the population will be more expensive and will have lower quality.

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Data Protection Officer according to GDPR

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by André Mendes Costa, masters student at University of Minho
 ▪

In an ever changing world of information technologies, privacy and data protection inevitably attracts considerable attention.

The Portuguese Data Protection Law and the EU Directive 95/46 will be soon replaced by a new European and National legal framework. In fact, the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) alters profoundly the paradigm of the personal data protection legal regime. The 679/2016 Regulation (GDPR) is part of a new European community legislative package which also includes a directive that lays down the procedures for dealing with personal data by the competent authorities for the purposes of prevention, research, detection and prosecution of criminal offences or the execution of criminal penalties. The Regulation came into force on 25th May and establishes a vacancy period of 2 years, providing the necessary time for the public and private sectors to equip themselves to face the new regulatory demands.

This brief analysis concentrates on the post of the data protection officer (DPO), on his/her duties and competencies and on those entities who are responsible for his/her appointment.

In the new European legislation there is an important change of paradigm in the protection of personal data namely the suppression – with a few exceptions contained in the Regulation – of the requisite of pre notification to the National Commission of Data Protection (NCDP). This change assigns to the person responsible for the processing of data the onus of legal guarantor of his/her cases, thus fully observing the Regulation. In fact, in the cases where there is no prior notification to the competent authority (NCDP), the Regulation has found other forms of guarantying that the processing of personal data is legally protected by creating the post of a data protection officer (DPO).
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Judicial review of EPPO procedural acts and decisions: a disruptive and resilient architecture?

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by Luis de Lemos Triunfante, Judge-Second National Expert at Eurojust Portuguese Desk
▪

“The creation of a European Public Prosecutor’s Office will enable us to have the missing tools: kick investigations across the Union and exchange of information in real time. The European Public Prosecutor will work together with the Deputy Prosecutors of each of the 17 participating countries and congregate national expertise by coordinating them at EU level. The objective is to create a strong, independent and effective body that develops expertise in the fight against financial crime throughout the EU. The 17 Member States concerned will now move the process forward, hoping that others will join soon. The Commission has always defended the interest of all Member States and this initiative is open to all”, Sharing sovereignty to combat financial crime – Jean-Claude Juncker.

DH-CII (Human Rights Centre for Interdisciplinary Research), in collaboration with CEDU (Centre of Studies in EU Law) and the Union of Magistrates of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, organised, on 18 May at the Law School of the University of Minho, an International Criminal Law Congress about “The new challenges of Judicial and police cooperation in the European Union and the implementation of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office”.

The aim of that initiative was to bring to the discussion the main issues that lie today in judicial and police cooperation, mutual recognition, harmonization and the protection of human rights in the European Union. It also intended to analyse the challenges surrounding the implementation of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO). In a special way, a critical and prospective look was taken on the Proposal for a Council Regulation establishing the EPPO under discussion, taking into account the current state of negotiations, the main aspects of substantive criminal law and substantive Criminal proceedings; the Statute and the institutional design of the EPPO (matters of institutional law) and the relations between the EPPO, Eurojust and OLAF.

One of the main issues of the EPPO is the judicial review.
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Editorial of June 2017

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by Alessandra Silveira, Editor
▪

Waiting for a federal big bang in EU? Updating the theory of federalism in times of liquid modernity

On May, 22-23, at Nova Law School, Lisbon, took place a conference on “The federal experience of the European Union: past, present and future”, organized by Professor Nuno Piçarra. Sixty years after the signing of the Treaty of Rome and twenty-five years after Maastricht, the EU may be living a true moment of “constitutional mutation” that may dramatically change its identity. Yes, it is possible to re-found the EU without revising the Treaties (as constitutional mutation is nothing new and it has been working since the beginning of the integration) and without committing “semantics imprudences” (avoiding the “blasted” nature of terms such as constitution and federation). Therefore, this is the right time to address the EU federative experience from an historic perspective and to analyse the role which such an acquis may play in the shaping of the future EU. For these reasons, the purpose of that conference was to tackle the following three questions. First, how should we evaluate the EU federative experience, sixty years after the signing of the Treaty of Rome? Second, which are the main challenges facing the EU in the light of its federative experience? Third, do these challenges and respective answers suggest that the European federative dream is over, or just undergoing a new form of development?

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Modernisation and supermodernisation of the state aid law – silent deepening of European integration?

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by Ana Filipa Afonseca, student of the Master´s degree in EU Law of UMinho

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In general, the Member States have always had a bad understanding about the importance of the prohibition of the state aid, pursuant Article 107, TFEU, in fact, in 1966 and in 1987, the Member States rejected the proposal of the Commission to assume a legal definition of aid.

Truly, in the past – not so distant – Member States escaped the application of the prohibition of the state aid in a simple way: they didn’t notify the European Commission about the aid that they had conceded to their companies.

The importance of the state aid prohibition started to become clear to the Member States when they noticed this article plays an important role on improving the growth of the internal market. And the main reason this prohibition was learned by the Member States was due to its control for a non-differentiated growth of the Member States and distortion of competition. Besides that, it ended an obscure and dubious policy practice of the destination of public funds to the eyes of the citizens… until, shall we say, the beginning of the crisis in 2008.
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The latest on the Zambrano front – the Chavez-Vilchez judgment

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by Sophie Perez Fernandes, Junior Editor
▪

Back in 2011, the ECJ delivered a pivotal decision in the Zambrano case. With reference to the Rottmann case, the ECJ held that “Article 20 TFEU precludes national measures which have the effect of depriving citizens of the Union of the genuine enjoyment of the substance of the rights conferred by virtue of their status as citizens of the Union.”

By this criterion are included within the scope of application of EU law situations which, a priori, fall within the competence of the Member States (the so-called purely internal situations). The Zambrano-criterion indeed allows EU citizens to rely on their status as EU citizens against their own Member States of nationality even when they have not exercised their rights of free movement. The immediate consequence of the Zambrano ruling was to preclude Member States (in casu, Belgium) from refusing third country national parents of minor EU citizens a right of residence in the Member State of residence and nationality of those children in so far as such decisions would result in the children having to leave the territory of the Union as a whole.

The subsequent case-law gave a rather narrow interpretation to the criterion, as can be confirmed by the judgments delivered in McCarthy, Dereci, Iida, O and S, Ymeraga, Alokpa and NA. The ECJ held the Zambrano-criterion as a specific criterion as it relates to “very specific situations” in which a right of residence may not, exceptionally, be refused to a third country national without the EU citizenship enjoyed by (minor) Member States nationals being (fundamentally) undermined. It thus follows that any right of residence conferred on third country nationals pursuant to Article 20 TFEU are rights derived from those enjoyed by the EU citizen of which they are members of the family and have, in particular, “an intrinsic connection with the freedom of movement and residence of a Union citizen”.

Without calling into question or reversing this line of jurisprudence, the ECJ seems however willing to revive the Zambrano-criterion in more recent cases, addressing some issues so far left in the open. In CS and Rendón Marín, though admitting the possibility of limiting the derived right of residence flowing from Article 20 TFEU to third country nationals (limitation based on grounds of public policy or public security), the ECJ framed the scope of such a limitation, making its application conditional on a case-by-case analysis and upon respect for fundamental rights as protected by the CFREU, namely Articles 7 and 24(2) CFREU. The ECJ further clarified the scope of the Zambrano-criterion as the ultimate link with EU law for the purposes of the protection of fundamental rights in the Chavez-Vilchez judgment delivered last week.
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Neutrality or covert discrimination? A brief review of the decisions of the Achbita and Bougnaoui cases

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by Cláudia Moreira, masters student at University of Minho
▪

The ban on wearing religious symbols, like the hijab or headscarf, the niqab and burka, is nowadays at the centre of controversies over which limits can be legitimately established for religious manifestations. In recent years, there have been many European countries which, given the strong Islamic presence in their territory, have understood that they should find legal solutions to the heated discussions about the use of women’s religious clothing. Belgium was the first European country in 2010 to ban the wearing of the burka in public spaces. It was followed by France, which, even though it had already adopted a law banning the use of religious clothing or symbols in public schools in 2004, based on the State secularity principle, only more recently extended the ban to the use the burka and niqab in public spaces.

The wide discretion that the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has been providing to Member States, in cases concerning religious symbols[i] and their usage limitation may, as well asserted Martinez-Tórron[ii], be the result of the ‘fear’ of propagating of radical ideals, which are harmful to European freedom. This fear, however, does not legitimize the adoption, under false aegis of principles, such as justice or equality of measures restricting religious manifestations.

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Editorial of May 2017

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by Pedro Madeira Froufe, Editor
▪

Europe: “Ceci c’est pas une pipe!”

Populism has manifested itself not only in the form of public (or at least published) streams of public opinion, but also through the result of (naturally) democratic and legitimate electoral acts. And such cases of populisms materialised in the exercise of representative democracy, generated in the democratic institutional functioning in the context of the rule of law, begin to not be unusual. Deep down, we have seen expressions of populism that acquire power and influence (sometimes determining), with an anti-democratic tendency, created by democracy itself.

Populism appears nowadays as especially adjusted, attractive and intellectually comfortable for a considerable part of the European and American population (in other words, for a large amount of the electorate). There are, as I see it, several reasons, mostly articulated, that cause this relative outbreak now with direct political consequences – that considerably surpass the juridical-constitutional dimension. Those causes are not exclusively attributable to dysfunctions in the dynamics of the democratic institutions.

Such reasons are rooted also in something deeper and concrete than the legal abstraction or the political activity and representation: it has to do, to a great extent, with our current way of life and cosmovision in the context of the technical societies of information and – why not say it – abundance. It should be noted that the intention is not to disregard the existence of reasons attributable to the bad juridical architecture and the bad political functioning (or even the bad performance of politicians); but they are not the only explanatory causes for populist phenomena that disturb democracy….

I won’t reflect or develop, at this occasion, the issue of the causes non-directly juridical, or institutional, of populism. They might also be sociological and cultural tendencies; they could be as well a reaction to extremisms, relativisms and the loss of collective references resulting from the erosion of gregarious institutions, social and natural. That erosion has a lot to do with the overvaluing and a revival of tendencies (neo)hedonist and (neo)utilitarianist which have been potentialized particularly well with the economic growth, modernity (especially in the post-war) and, lately, with the immediacy (created by technology and consequent globalisation). From the legal perspective, such relativism makes it difficult to understand normatively the basic principle of equality, turning it into a principle of the existential relativism: everything is equal to its opposite, blurring and even disabling normative senses, decisions and value options, as everything is equivalent.

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Tensions between European Union Law and Private International Law – impact on cross-border mobility of companies

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by Jorge Ribeiro, PhD candidate at Universidad de Vigo
▪

Introduction

This essay intends to give a brief analysis on the relationship between European Union Law and Private International Law, particularly the impact on cross-border mobility of companies in the European space[i].

The Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) explicitly recognises freedom of establishment for companies. However, nowadays, a number of obstacles still persist regarding companies’ mobility as a result of the coexistence of the incorporation and the real seat doctrine. This is also due to the way in which the European Court of Justice (ECJ) case law has dealt with the free movement of companies.

It is argued that it would be welcome if the European legislator could take action, mitigating national private international law contrary to European fundamental freedoms[ii].

Dualism of rules

To determine which company law is applicable to a particular company, there are two existing theories: the real seat theory and the incorporation theory.

The real seat theory[iii] provides that the personal law of the company is the law of the country where it has its real seat (its principal place of business). Instead, according to the incorporation theory[iv] the company and its relationships are subjected to the law of the country where it has been incorporated, i.e. registered.

The major difference between the two theories is their effect on the cross-border transfer of the company seat, both from the home and host state perspective. The real seat theory brings limitations to the cross-border transfer of the real seat by making the company subject to different national legal order each time its real seat moves to another state[v]. Likewise a company from an incorporation state that wishes to move its administrative seat to a real seat state may not be recognized as a company in this host state, without dissolution in the home state.

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