MAY be… MAY be not!

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by Pedro Madeira Froufe, Editor

We are a short time away from the European Parliament Election. We are also just over two months until the date of the formal implementation of Brexit. If all were going as desirable and planned, the United Kingdom would cease to be a member of the European Union at eleven o’clock of 29th March – if all were going as intended, as it was thought, after the no vote (to stay in the EU) in the referendum. But it is not! In fact, we don’t even know how the European elections will be disputed: with or without British candidates; how many MEPs to elect.

The political standoff in which the UK and the EU are immersed is the result of a classical democratic practise in its original context and dynamics. A national border-limited state, closed in itself and its people (its nationals), follows the idea that it holds a non-influenced sovereignty. Such un-limitedness would mean that nothing beyond its borders matter. Absolutely nothing could interfere with its presence as under this traditional and sovereign-ist political cosmovision nothing exists unless it is subject to the autonomous exercise of such sovereignty. However, the autonomous political decision of ‘disintegrating’ is, as many others, no longer a strictly encircled affair to be kept inside a territorial frame of political national frontiers. Today world’s dynamics is not national nor even inter-national. It is transnational, if not a-national. And rigorously speaking a decision made in an internal referendum never produces effects confined in such frontiers. The political decision made after the referendum is not a British decision and regards only British citizens – it is now clear in practical terms given the standoff we are all immersed in.
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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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Comment on “La nueva relación entre el Estado y la sociedad”, by José Esteve Pardo

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by Agustín Ruiz Robledo, Professor at Universidad de Granada

Review on the book “La nueva relación entre el Estado y la sociedad”, by José Esteve Pardo, Ed. Martial Pons, Madrid, 2013.

The economic crisis has been studied almost from the moment it broke in front of European’s faces in 2008, a time in which many of us thought that the crisis was a purely American matter. Without intending to be very precise, we could say that this broad collective reflection has produced a specialization among economists, who analyse the causes, and lawyers, who focus on the consequences that the crisis is having on our system. However, José Esteve Pardo, Professor of Administrative Law at the University of Barcelona, has broken this pattern to try an approach to the background of the crisis, a crisis that he considers to be of all European states and not just one in particular. In his thesis, as he advances in the title, he considers that the balance between society and State which was gained in the Occidental world after World War II has been broken. This telluric movement, or “fault” as the author calls it, derives in economic problems, terrible unemployment figures, rampant corruption, etc.

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Summary of Brasserie du Pêcheur & Factortame – C-46/93 and C-48/93

 

by José Ricardo Sousa, student of the Master's degree in EU Law of UMinho

Keywords: liability of the state; legislator; claims; repair; individual’s rights

Court: CJEU | DateMarch 5th 1996 | Cases: C46/93 and C-48/93 | Applicants: Brasserie du Pêcheur vs Federal Republic of Germany

Summary: This judgment contains two similar cases connected to the same matter: liability of the State.

In the first case, the French company Brasserie du Pêcheur was obliged to cease their exportations from Germany due to German authorithies’ allegations that the beer did not fulfill purity requirement. European Comission interfered in this case and stated that this provisions were contrary to article 30 of EEC Treaty and brought an infringement proceedings against German Federal Republic. On 12th March 1987, the court confirmed EC’s arguments and consequently condemned the German act. Therefore, Brasserie du Pêcheur moves another action to reclaim their losses. The Court had doubts related to the limits of liability of the State and internal law and so they decided to send a question to the CJEU.

In the second case, Factortame intented an action in High Court of Justice with the purpose to challenge the compatibility of Part II of the Merchant Shipping Act with article 52 of the EEC Treaty. This law predicted a new register for British fishing boats and it pretended to obligate vessel’s registration, including those already registered, according to some conditions relating to nationality. The boats that couldn’t be registered were forbidden to fish. In another previous judgement, CJEU considered that this law was contrary to Communitary law, but it was not contrary that all the boats in UK suffered more controled by the authorities. On 4th August 1989, European Comission brought infringement proceedings against UK to suspend nationality requests because they were contrary to articles 7, 52 and 221 of the EEC Treaty. Afterwards, the Court decided to call the intervenients to show the amount of claims, however the Court had doubts in what refers to include a claim for inconstitutional behaviour and send a question to CJEU.

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