The instrumentalization of Human Rights in electoral processes as a marketing tool for the dominance of political elites

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Sérgio Salazar  (Master's Student in Human Rights at the School of Law of the University of Minho)
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States organize themselves by the political, social, and economical domination of their elites. Whether they are democratic, authoritarian, totalitarian, etc. In other words, all individuals are ruled by an elite.[1] For the effects of this article, our focus will be on political elites.

By political elites it is to be understood, individuals that, by their own merit, intellect, economic or social advantages or privilege, achieved or occupy positions of high importance on the political stage. And, due to that, hold a disproportional amount of power over the political direction of the State.[2]  

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Summaries of judgments: Euro Box Promotion | Wiener Landesregierung and Others (Revocation of an assurance of naturalisation)

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Summaries of judgments made in collaboration with the Portuguese judge and référendaire of the CJEU (Nuno Piçarra and Sophie Perez)

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Judgment of the Court (Grand Chamber) of 21 December 2021, Joined cases C‑357/19, C‑379/19, C‑547/19, C‑811/19 and C‑840/19, Euro Box Promotion e.a., EU:C:2021:1034

Reference for a preliminary ruling – Decision 2006/928/EC – Mechanism for cooperation and verification of progress in Romania to address specific benchmarks in the areas of judicial reform and the fight against corruption – Legal nature and effects – Binding on Romania – Rule of law – Judicial independence – Second subparagraph of Article 19(1) TEU – Article 47 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union – Fight against corruption – Protection of the European Union’s financial interests – Article 325(1) TFEU – ‘PFI’ Convention – Criminal proceedings – Decisions of the Curtea Constituțională (Constitutional Court, Romania) concerning the legality of the taking of certain evidence and the composition of judicial panels in cases of serious corruption – Duty on national courts to give full effect to the decisions of the Curtea Constituțională (Constitutional Court) – Disciplinary liability of judges in case of non-compliance with such decisions – Power to disapply decisions of the Curtea Constituțională (Constitutional Court) that conflict with EU law – Principle of primacy of EU law 

Facts

The disputes in the main proceedings follow on from a wide-ranging reform in the field of justice and the fight against corruption in Romania, a reform which is at the origin of the judgment of 18 May 2021, Asociaţia ‘Forumul Judecătorilor din România’ and Others (C‑83/19, C‑127/19, C‑195/19, C‑291/19, C‑355/19 and C‑397/19, EU:C:2021:393) and has been monitored at EU level since 2007 under the cooperation and verification mechanism (‘the CVM’) established by Decision 2006/928.[1]

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Did the court of last resort apply the CJEU preliminary ruling correctly? In case of EU law breach, what to do in the absence of domestic remedy? – A first appraisal of the pending case F. Hoffmann-La Roche and Others

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Cinzia Peraro  (Senior Researcher of European Union Law, University of Bergamo - Italy)
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I. Background

The Italian administrative judge of last resort (Consiglio di Stato) submitted on 21 April 2021[1] a request for a preliminary ruling in the case F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd and Others v Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato (C-261/21).

This case falls within the long-running Avastin-Lucentis affair that concerns an agreement restricting competition concluded in breach of Article 101 TFEU between certain companies operating in the pharmaceutical sector. The Italian Antitrust Authority prohibited the continuation of the contested conduct and imposed administrative fines. The companies appealed against this measure before the administrative judge, who rejected them. Within the proceedings at second instance, the Council of State referred a number of preliminary questions of interpretation to the Court of Justice. After the preliminary ruling delivered on 23 January 2018 (C-179/16), the Italian administrative judge dismissed the appeals, thus upholding the decision at first instance and, accordingly, the contested measure. However, the parties asked the Council of State to revoke its appeal judgment, alleging, inter alia, a manifest breach of the principles of law affirmed by the Court of Justice in the previous preliminary ruling and asking to make a new referral to Luxembourg. The administrative judge thus suspended the proceedings and, for a second time, referred to the Court of Justice other three questions.

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Editorial of April 2022

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By Alessandra Silveira (Editor)
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Rule of law and the direct effect of the second subparagraph of Article 19(1) TEU (on the case M. F., C-508/19)


Never since the beginning of European integration, was the mission of impartial and independent courts been as important as nowadays, taking into account the war currently being waged. Therefore, it is important to consider that “It is when the cannons roar that we especially need the laws…Every struggle of the state – against terrorism or any other enemy – is conducted according to rules and law”, as stated the Advocate General Poiares Maduro in his Opinion in the case Kadi, quoting Aharon Barak, the former President on the Supreme Court of Israel (C‑402/05 P, ECLI:EU:C:2008:11, recital 45).

Last week the CJUE added a piece to the puzzle of a Union based on the rule of law. And do it from the judicial independence in which the effective judicial protection of individuals’ rights under EU law is rooted. More precisely: on 22 March 2022, in the case M. F. (C-508/19, ECLI:EU:C:2022:201), the CJEU has claimed that the second subparagraph of Article 19(1) TEU (according to which “Member States shall provide remedies sufficient to ensure effective legal protection in the fields covered by Union law”) must be regarded as having direct effect.

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The other side of War: disinformation

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Ricardo de Macedo Menna Barreto (Guest Professor at the University of Minho Law School)
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Last Tuesday, March 8, 2022, during a debate at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, Josep Borrell, EU diplomacy chief, warned that the Russian government will systematically lie about Ukraine’s military situation. At his intervention, Borrell defended that: “(…)accompany Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine, spreading false information among their own population about why this invasion has taken place and what is the situation in Ukraine(…) it not just bombing houses, infrastructure, the bodies of the people; they are bombing their minds, they are bombing their spirits”.[1] The EU diplomacy chief underlines a problem that, in his opinion, is getting worse as our lifetime goes by: the daily battle in the informational field. A battle whose main characteristic is the manipulation of information, a particular form of abuse of power, that is, of social domain. According to Teun van Dijk, manipulation is a form of illegitimate influence, achieved through discourse, in which manipulators make the manipulated believe in (or even do) things that are of special interest to the manipulator (and usually against the interests of the manipulated). In this sense, we can consider discursive manipulation as a complex social phenomenon, involving interaction and abuse of power (domination) between certain groups and social actors. It is also a complex phenomenon, taking into account that it presents itself in two ways: a) as a cognitive phenomenon, since it implies manipulation of the participants’ minds; b) as a discursive-semiotic phenomenon, since it can be expressed in the form of text, conversation or visual messages.[2]   

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Note from MEP José Manuel Fernandes regarding European Parliament resolution of 10 March 2022 on the rule of law and the consequences of the ECJ ruling

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José Manuel Fernandes (Member of the European Parliament)
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The principle of the rule of law is not just one among other basic principles of our democracy. It is more than that: it is a sine qua non condition for the recognition of all other fundamental rights. There is no effective freedom of speech, of association, of conscience, among others, in a community that is not governed by law. Where there is no “rule of law”, there is arbitrariness and lack of security. In such conditions, there is no freedom.

When the “rule of law” is abandoned, explicitly or implicitly, we embark on a path that leads from civility to barbarism, from equality before the law, to the rule of the strongest; from the liberal democratic system built and perfected over the last decades, to alternative, authoritarian regimes that restrict freedoms. Whoever foregoes the “rule of law” necessarily foregoes the fundamental principles on which the Portuguese constitutional order and the European Union Treaties are founded (see art. 2 TEU). Therefore, respect for the rule of law is not an option but an obligation in order to be eligible to be a member of the European Union.

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Once again about the priority of the EU law in Romania: “Amédée ou comment s’en débarrasser”

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Dragoș Călin [Judge at the Bucharest Court of Appeal, Co-President of the Romanian Judges' Forum Association, Director of the Judges' Forum Review (Revista Forumul Judecătorilor)].
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1. Introduction

In “Amédée, or How to Get Rid of It (Amédée ou comment s’en débarrasser)”, written by Eugène Ionesco (“Théâtre, Volume I”, Paris, Gallimard, 1954), Amédée and his wife Madeleine discuss how to deal with a continually growing corpse in the other room. That corpse is causing mushrooms to sprout all over the apartment and is apparently arousing suspicion among the neighbours. The audience is given no clear reason why the corpse is there.

Like Amédée and Madeleine, in the “priority of the EU law in Romania” saga, we are simply in a play in which nothing changes, but everything transforms.

Under pressure from the Constitutional Court’s decisions, ordinary judges refuse to apply CJEU judgments, and the example is provided by the High Court of Cassation and Justice and Craiova Court of Appeal.

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European e-Justice in the Digital Decade – building a Digital citizenship (some remarks on the importance of European e-Justice to Digital citizenship effectiveness)

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Joana Covelo de Abreu (Editor and Jean Monnet Module eUjust Coordinator), Alessandra Silveira and Pedro Madeira Froufe (Editors and Key Staff Members of the Jean Monnet Module eUjust)
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The European Union established that, until 2030, it will pursue a Digital Decade as one of its primal public interests. In fact, COVID-19 fastened digitalization path in the European Union since it made digital environment as imperative in our daily lives as offline engagement. However, if it showcased major digital opportunities, it also exposed vulnerabilities of the digital space and enhanced a new phenomenon: the one relating to digital poverty, focusing on those that, by lacking infrastructural and/or educational background, are left outside the digital world. This is one of the visible faces of a larger problem of this decade: the one related to the digital divide which, besides emerging on infrastructural level – not only between well-connected urban areas and rural and remote territories, but also between those that can fully benefit from an enriched, accessible and secure digital space with a full range of services and those who cannot –, it also appears, nowadays, with i) a commercial repercussion, between those businesses with online expression and those that have not reached that point; and ii) a literacy lack, between those that grasp, at least, basic digital skills from those that do not possess them.

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Editorial of March 2022

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By Pedro Madeira Froufe (Editor)
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Europe and war

They do not know that dreams are a constant of life

As concrete and defined as any other thing (…)

They neither know nor dream that dreams command life![1]

(António Gedeão)

The history of European integration is made up of moments of war, manifestations of collective irrationality, and the permanent reaction to and overcoming of such instances. In fact, Europe itself, “the daughter of mythology and war”, was gradually built as a stage for violent and disastrous wars and, simultaneously, for virtuous and great conquests.[2]

The success of this 71-year-long integration can be illustrated by the fact that we are dramatically surprised by Russia’s war against Ukraine! European integration was born out of the debris of World War II, trying to permanently bury it. Its great merit was, after all, and as Jean Monnet said, to try to unite Men, more than to unite States.[3] Thus, we have been living in the illusion that the supreme inhumanity and irrationality of war would be definitively overcome. At least, on the European continent (not only in the European Union) and among sovereign states.

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European Union Taxonomy: what is it and how will it work?

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Nataly Machado (Master’s student in EU Law at UMinho).
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Taxonomy: where does this word come from? “The term is derived from the Greek taxis (“arrangement”) and nomos (“law”). Taxonomy is, therefore, the methodology and principles of systematic botany and zoology and sets up arrangements of the kinds of plants and animals in hierarchies of superior and subordinate groups”[1] In accordance to Maria da Gória F.P.D. Garcia:“it is the verification by scientists emerging from the community and from various quarters, sometimes against each other, that warns of the need to base political decisions on scientific knowledge if the very continuity of life in society is to be preserved.”[2] (free translation)

Let us make a brief Taxonomy’s history background. The first records of biological classification, which gave rise to taxonomy, the area of biology responsible for identifying, naming and classifying living beings, take us back to the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BC). However, it was in the 18th century that the botanist Carolus Linnaeus developed the binomial nomenclature system, written in Latin, which is still used today. A well-known example that identifies us as a species: Homo sapiens.

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