Targeted policy and governance instruments are essential for developing a carbon dioxide removal (CDR) sector aligned with climate change mitigation scenarios. As a result, a large share of the scientific literature on CDR concentrates on these aspects. However, current CDR deployment and development are mainly driven by private organisations. While their role in CDR governance is generally acknowledged, important context regarding their perspectives, motivations and decision-making processes is lacking. This study addresses this gap by conducting seventy-nine interviews with senior representatives from organisations engaged in the early CDR market, including technology suppliers, credit purchasers, and financiers. We explore their views on key components of fair and equitable CDR systems. Our analysis reveals varying priorities across interviewed actors, including strong regulatory frameworks, market transparency, accountability, funding mechanisms and (climate) justice, emphasising historical responsibility, revenue distribution and community engagement. Additionally, we identify conflicting perspectives on the involvement of oil and gas sectors and the balance between rapid scale-up and thorough, inclusive processes. This research offers critical insights into the role of private organisations in shaping the governance of the emerging CDR sector, highlighting the complex interplay of market dynamics and ethical considerations.

The Digital Services Act (Regulation 2022/2065, “DSA”) creates a new national administrative authority to enforce the DSA across member states: the Digital Services Coordinator (“DSC”). DSCs perform a linchpin role in the DSA enforcement. DSCs have a number of tasks that interact with the content moderation process, such as certifying trusted flaggers or participating in drafting codes of conduct. They also have significant investigatory- and sanctioning powers to enforce the DSA vis-à-vis platforms, shaping content moderation processes and protecting users’ rights against platform misconduct. These interactions with content moderation affect users’ freedom of expression. This contribution scrutinises the role of the DSC in light of that freedom, describing how DSCs shape freedom of expression online through their powers in the DSA, and identifying instances where exercise of DSA powers can lead to different levels of protection for freedom of expression across Member States in the decentralised enforcement network. Finally, it proposes avenues in the DSA to anchor protection of freedom of expression in the application of the DSA by DSCs, through pursuing centralisation in cases with significant fundamental rights impact, and encouraging better usage of guideline competencies.

The training of Artificial Intelligence (AI) models relies on extensive amounts of “data,” often sourced from content protected by copyright, related and sui generis rights. The discussion of whether and how to strike a balance between licensing and exceptions under copyright law is one of global relevance. While some countries have adopted or considered adopting specific exceptions to allow text and data mining (TDM), others (most) have not introduced any new legislation. In Europe, much of the attention has so far centred on Article 4 of Directive 2019/790 (DSMD), including in the context of a potential UK reform.

The starting point of this contribution is the following four-fold observation. First, TDM may be part of AI training processes, but it is neither synonymous with AI training nor is it all that AI training entails, including in terms of acts restricted by copyright and related rights. Second, from a European (thus including both the EU and the UK) perspective, limiting the attention to Article 4 DSMD is myopic, as national case law demonstrates. Third, calls have recently been made to relax EU copyright rules to facilitate “research,” seemingly including the President of the European Commission herself, who announced forthcoming legislative proposals “to make Europe the home of innovation again.” Fourth, the UK Government’s Copyright and AI consultation has recently ended: should no reform be ultimately undertaken, the application of the existing TDM exception will depend to a large extent on how courts construe the notions of “research” and the “non-commercial” requirement thereof.

Moving from the above, this study investigates whether and to what extent unlicensed AI training activities could be undertaken by relying, not on Article 4 DSMD as transposed into national law or a hypothetical reform of the UK system of exceptions, but rather on what appear to be so far potentially overlooked defences. Reference is made specifically to research and education exceptions, notably Article 3 DSMD and Article 5(3)(a) of Directive 2001/29 (InfoSoc Directive), also read in light of Article 5 DSMD. The discussion of other jurisdictions – including the US and countries, like South Korea and Singapore, which have adopted open-ended fair use-style defences – is also undertaken. This is done to determine whether unlicensed AI training, including training seemingly done for the purpose of research or education/learning, might be considered lawful.

In light of the context summarized above, the study tackles two key questions: (a) whether unlicensed AI training may be classified as “research” or even “learning” in the context of “teaching,” and (b) whether commercial AI developers may take advantage of the provisions above. Ultimately, both questions are answered in the negative, finding that no exception or open-ended defence fully covers unlicensed AI training activities. As a result, a licensing approach (and culture) appears to be the way for AI training to be undertaken lawfully, including when this is done for “research” and “learning.”

To date, Article 2 TEU has mainly been construed as a negative obligation to refrain from violating the values enshrined therein. In light of the Repubblika case law, which established a duty to prevent any regression in the protection of Article 2 TEU values, this paper considers whether Article 2 TEU can be construed in such a way as to bring about a positive obligation on the part of the Member States to take preventive action to safeguard the EU’s foundational values and thus prevent (or at least mitigate the risk of) violations of those values. We first consider the doctrinal and normative bases for such an obligation. We then argue that such an obligation arises whenever Article 2 TEU values are presently under threat (or when a threat is imminent), and when such a threat is sufficiently grave or systemic. We believe that an interpretation of Article 2 TEU that requires Member States to act, at source, to prevent national actors from committing violations of EU values, contributes to enhancing constitutional resilience in the EU. Consequently, we propose a novel legal approach that could, under certain circumstances, better equip the EU to address future threats to Article 2 TEU.

This paper examines the legal implications of the explicit mentioning of automation bias (AB) in the Artificial Intelligence Act (AIA). The AIA mandates human oversight for high-risk AI systems and requires providers to enable awareness of AB, i.e., the human tendency to over-rely on AI outputs. The paper analyses the embedding of this extra-juridical concept in the AIA, the asymmetric division of responsibility between AI providers and deployers for mitigating AB, and the challenges of legally enforcing this novel awareness requirement. The analysis shows that the AIA’s focus on providers does not adequately address design and context as causes of AB, and questions whether the AIA should directly regulate the risk of AB rather than just mandating awareness. As the AIA’s approach requires a balance between legal mandates and behavioural science, the paper proposes that harmonised standards should reference the state of research on AB and human-AI interaction, holding both providers and deployers accountable. Ultimately, further empirical research on human-AI interaction will be essential for effective safeguards.

The European Union (EU) has embraced the “twin transition” – the simultaneous pursuit of digitalisation and ecological transformation – as a cornerstone of its industrial policy. EU lawmakers argue that digital technologies can advance environmental protection by enhancing environmental monitoring, optimising resource use, and enabling data-driven sustainability efforts. However, this vision tends to overlook the environmental costs of digitalisation, including rising energy and water consumption, intensive resource extraction, and the proliferation of electronic waste. This article critically examines whether EU law is adequately equipped to support a twin transition, drawing on a black-letter analysis of EU legal provisions, as well as insights from science and technology studies and critical environmental law. It posits that, while environmental law plays a significant role in the datafication of the environment and the digitalisation of society, it falls short in regulating digital technology and data in ways that advance sustainability. For the twin transition to evolve beyond a political slogan and deliver real ecological benefits, substantial legal reforms would be required. The regulation of digital technology would have to move beyond corporate self-regulation and disclosure-based models of environmental governance. Data governance should be reoriented to emphasise freedom of access and a more deliberatively restrained approach to data generation.

The COVID-19 pandemic brought the EU health mandate under unprecedented scrutiny, providing a new impetus for action. The European Commission launched the ‘European Health Union’ (EHU), bringing a number of pre-existing and newer policy initiatives under a common umbrella. This contribution looks back at the recent developments in EU health law and policy, taking the 2019–2024 parliamentary term as a boundary. It offers an overview of what the EHU currently is, and what it could become. Despite its potential, the EHU is not yet a game changer. This can only happen if changes are brought to the EU’s competence and budgetary frameworks. The contribution provides first a brief introduction to the EU’s complex health competence framework and its general policy orientations in the field. We turn next to COVID-19, offering a condensed overview of the EU’s response and of the subsequent changes brought to the legal framework applicable to health emergencies. We finish by casting a closer look at the EHU, examining the descriptive and normative aspects of this concept, and making recommendations to increase the clarity, quality and legitimacy of EU action in the field.

This article explores Turkey’s exclusion from enlargement scenarios in European political discourse in the new geopolitical era, which imposes important external pressures on European integration. It utilises the concept of “Geopolitical Othering,” which concerns the discursive constructions of the European identity through boundary-drawing practices that portray the Other as a threat to European security and stability. By doing so, the article aims to complement recent studies on Turkey’s growing role as a third country rather than an enlargement candidate, while clarifying another facet of the complexities in EU–Turkey relations, which extend beyond the persistent normative obstacles to Turkish accession. The article illustrates its theoretical arguments with two case studies on EU–Turkey relations, focusing on the 2016 EU–Turkey Statement on irregular migration and the 2018–2020 Eastern Mediterranean Crisis. It demonstrates how Turkey’s specific foreign policy choices over the past decade, including certain cooperative arrangements with the EU, paired with its geopolitical rivalries with the Union, have caused the EU to associate Turkey with certain existential threats. This perception, in turn, has contributed to Turkey’s discursive dissociation from the EU enlargement process, especially during the last Commission term, which coincided with the intensification of a geopoliticised identity discourse within the EU.

Harmonised standards are the cornerstone of efficient EU AI Act compliance. This paper presents one of the first systematic analyses of European technical and soon to be harmonised standardisation for organisations providing AI systems. Based on in-depth qualitative interviews with twenty-three leading European organisations developing AI applications across different sectors, such as Mistral and Helsing, and providing transparency regarding the status quo of draft standards, it examines how companies, especially start-ups and SMEs, are dealing with the contemplated standardisation under the EU AI Act and sectoral standardisation. Industry sectors covered include mobility, finance, manufacturing, healthcare, as well as defense and legal tech. Key challenges identified comprise an insufficient effective implementation period of likely less than 6 months compared to at least 12 months actually required for around thirty (partially referenced) technical standards, an imbalance of participation and influence in standardisation committees, double regulation and technical implementation hurdles as well as significant annual costs for harmonised standards compliance. Technical standards are currently reshaping global AI competition and will have a massive influence on the AI landscape as market entry barriers, particularly on start-ups. Hence, the paper offers policy recommendations based on the revealed challenges for AI providers.

After an introduction to the notions of cybersecurity and cybersecurity-related risks, this preface introduces four collected contributions on challenges and perspectives of EU cybersecurity policies in cyber-physical ecosystem.

Our special issue examines the regulation and practice of constitutional risk management in the V(isegrád)-4 countries (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia). Unfortunately, the treatment of the COVID-19 pandemic made this enterprise relevant, as all four countries had to face a similar health emergency. This article presents the most important experiences and trends in the constitutional crisis management of the four countries, identifying the challenges that the constitutional emergency regulatory regimes have encountered so far. Our paper argues that despite the basically similar constitutional frameworks, these countries typically handled the crisis in a different way, and in the process many constitutional problems arose for which there was no clear or uniform solution. Since the purpose of the international comparative research that is the basis of our special issue was to examine the emergency constitution of these four countries in general (since it will have to be applied to possible later, other types of emergencies), in the last chapter of the article we examine the possibilities of a proposition that represents a novelty in the constitutional discourse on emergency situations: this is an option for the convergence of emergency constitutions.

Global discussions around the risks, benefits and governance of solar radiation modification (SRM) in the climate change response portfolio are accelerating, but the topic remains nascent in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). In 2023, a US start-up (Make Sunsets) performed a small-scale, non-research deployment of SRM in Baja California, Mexico, without prior permission or community engagement. Their actions prompted Mexico to announce its intention to ban SRM experimentation, underscoring the need for governance to prevent irresponsible practices that could discredit legitimate research. We perform an empirical and ethical analysis of the landscape of academic discussions and media coverage on SRM in the LAC region, focusing on the Make Sunset case. Our analysis leads us to three conclusions: first, a lack of regulations in LAC that fosters mistrust, fuels perceptions of neo-colonialism and restricts potentially valuable and responsible research; second, we argue that the theatrical Make Sunsets case is not ethically justified in light of the diversity of risks associated with it; third, we offer foundational, participatory recommendations to promote effective, transparent and sustainable governance of SRM, including LAC in global conversations.

Solar radiation modification (SRM) presents important challenges to risk regulation and governance, arising from the array of multiple risks that SRM may influence. SRM would not simply reverse climate change, but could pose further ancillary impacts, depending on the method of SRM, such as stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI), marine cloud brightening (MCB), or a space-based planetary sunshade system (PSS). We identify multiple risks that SRM may influence, both biophysical and sociopolitical, to be compared to the multiple risks that may be affected by greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation and climate adaptation. This multi-risk framework helps analysts and decision makers identify, evaluate, and compare multiple risks holistically; helps identify affected groups to overcome problems of disregard and omitted voice; helps compare policy options and map the array of risks to corresponding (or missing) governance mechanisms; and seeks risk-superior policies that would reduce multiple risks in concert. We then examine governance frameworks: uncoordinated, coordinated and comprehensive. We suggest two key mechanisms that can help build up from uncoordinated toward more coordinated or even comprehensive approaches, and that can gain support from SRM advocates, observers and critics alike: a series of international assessments of SRM, and a transparent international monitoring system for SRM.

Research into solar radiation modification (SRM) offers tentative hope of averting some of the risks of otherwise unavoidable climate change. Yet such technologies come with novel risks. Risk–risk, or risk trade-off analysis has been proposed as a governance tool to evaluate the desirability of development of such potential climate interventions, but most references to such analysis appear primarily as rhetorical efforts to argue for continued SRM research. A detailed review of the leading methodological proposal reveals serious practical and ethical shortcomings arising in both the framing and current methodologies of risk-risk analysis. Methodological inconsistencies and asymmetries are identified, and related to underlying political and ideological presumptions rooted in modernist technocratic social imaginaries. The shortcomings mean ethical questions are not resolved, interaction effects between possible responses are downplayed and other potential exceptional responses ignored. Rather than identifying possible risk-superior pathways, in this case risk-tradeoff analysis – embedded in a technocratic risk management repertoire – seems likely to encourage excessive reliance on SRM. While methodological improvements could be made to risk–risk analysis approaches, effective future governance urgently needs a novel, genuinely precautionary, risk management repertoire that would help humanity live with uncertainty, support meaningful action to avoid worst-case outcomes, and reflect an ethics of care.

One of the goals of this paper is to define the most important concepts for the comparative study of the constitutional risk management of the V4 countries. For this purpose, first, it considers the theoretical difficulties of conceptualising emergencies, especially focussing on what kind of response can be given to the widespread view that considers emergencies as a kind of legal “black hole” due to their unpredictability. Then a general definition of “emergency” is discussed which is broad and flexible enough to serve as a basis not only for a comparative study but also for the constitutional discourse of emergencies. Constitutional crisis management as a core concept for such an undertaking is also canvassed. After defining the basic concepts essential for evaluation and comparison, the article outlines the general types of emergency regulatory regimes. The development of effective regulatory systems for emergencies also has to face certain problems that every constitutional polity must solve. Finally, the paper summarises assessment criteria necessary for the evaluation and a comparison of the emergency constitutions of different countries.

The paper outlines Czech constitutional law and the development of emergency law. Initially, the legislature did not expect emergencies to occur, perhaps due to the idealistic optimism associated with the general atmosphere of the collapse of the Eastern Bloc in 1989 and the “End of History” thesis. As a result, emergencies were not regulated by Czech law in the 1990s. This changed after the great floods at the end of the 1990s, when “history returned,” and the need for some special rules for emergencies became clear. The first decades of this century showed that Czech emergency law worked well for short-term natural disasters. The game-changer came in 2020, with the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic and the need for a long-term state of emergency. It soon became clear that the rules that worked for floods and other disasters did not work for long-term global pandemics. In other words, the legal system was not prepared for a situation in which emergencies were the rule rather than the exception. Legislators were unable to prepare a long-term legislative response to fill this gap. The memory of COVID-19 is fading fast, and there are no plans to reform the relevant legislation. Accordingly, any new pandemic or similar event will lead to the same problems that the Czech legal system had to deal with from 2020 to 2022.

The concept of identifiability remains a foundational yet contentious criterion in European Union (EU) data protection law. Similarly, anonymisation has sparked intense debate.

This paper examines recent developments that have shaped the EU’s approaches to identifiability and anonymisation, including trends in the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) case law, national supervisory authority (SA) assessments of anonymisation processes, and the recent European Data Protection Board (EDPB) Opinion 28/2024 addressing the anonymity of artificial intelligence models and EDPB Guidelines 01/2025 on pseudonymisation.

The paper explores how the balance between over-inclusiveness and under-inclusiveness is being calibrated, suggesting the emergence of a functional definition of personal data in CJEU case law. It underscores the importance of the burden of proof in evaluating anonymisation processes, as confirmed by national SA assessments. Finally, it highlights how to ensure consistency between the GDPR and data sharing mandates stemming from the new generation of EU data regulations.

Technology neutrality is a guiding principle of the European Union’s technology regulation, stating that legislation should not favour or discriminate against any particular technology, but rather focus on the effects or functions of technologies broadly. This article examines the principle as a way to future-proof regulation by allowing legislation to adapt to the changes in technology over time. Effects of technology neutrality have not been sufficiently analysed in the novel context of regulation of artificial intelligence, which arguably poses more significant societal risks than telecommunications, where the principle first evolved. To address this gap in research, this article analyses whether the technology neutral nature of the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act) renders it more future-proof. It identifies three main factors that affect future-proofness of the AI Act in light of technology neutrality: definition of AI, the risk-based approach and its enforcement mechanisms. The findings indicate that the AI Act’s deviations from technology neutrality, including specific provisions for general-purpose AI models significantly improved its scope and future-proofness. Thus, technology neutrality and future-proof regulation should not be treated synonymously, and strict adherence to neutrality may even obscure the political choices and democratic agency essential for AI regulation.

This article explores whether Russia’s war against Ukraine represents a geopolitical turning point for the European Union’s enlargement policy. By applying the concepts of historical institutionalism and turning points, the study examines a potential shift in EU priorities from normative to geopolitical considerations. Through a bibliometric analysis of academic literature and a quantitative analysis of progress reports from 2013 to 2023, the findings reveal that while the EU has increasingly incorporated geopolitical factors into its enlargement strategy, these changes do not yet constitute a definitive turning point.

This article contributes to understanding how inexperience and lack of commitment to evidence-based decision making may undermine an otherwise broadly functional framework for constitutional risk management. As part of a focus on the “Visegrád Four” countries, it also helps understand regional dynamics since the COVID-19 pandemic as the most visible emergency after 1989. The article starts with a brief elucidation of the political contexts that have shaped Slovakia’s constitutional risk management, focusing on the developments from 2020 through early 2025. An analysis of mechanisms of emergency risk management in the constitutional framework follows, that helps identify key state authorities attempting to make decisions under serious time pressures. The implementation of the constitutional framework during the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates the creation of new avenues for restricting rights and bolstering executive competence, with the formally powerful constitutional review mechanisms struggling to challenge these decisions. Ultimately, political context emerges as key: Slovakia entered the COVID-19 pandemic with a governing coalition enjoying constitutional majority and an aura of reform and hope. The emergency mismanagement not only facilitated the breakup of this coalition and early elections, but also a rise in emergency conspiracies openly hostile to institutions and actors committed to evidence-based decision making.