This paper provides an analysis of the legal and policy foundations of the different approaches adopted by the European Union (EU) in relation to the 2015/2016 and 2022 refugee “crises”. Its main objective is to show how a risk-based biopolitical framework can bridge the gap between EU institutional narratives and the critique of Europe’s racialised governance schemes. The two “crises” have been largely shaped by a perceived need to manage risk, yet this has produced very different institutional responses, in ways that concealed their racialised dimension. Analysing how risk has been understood in the two contexts, the paper shows how their legal and policy foundations (re-)produce a racialised differential scheme. Amidst ongoing debates on reforming EU migration and asylum law, the paper also shows how the current proposals further consolidate this scheme.

This paper critically evaluates the European Commission’s proposed AI Act’s approach to risk management and risk acceptability for high-risk artificial intelligence systems that pose risks to fundamental rights and safety. The Act aims to promote “trustworthy” AI with a proportionate regulatory burden. Its provisions on risk acceptability require residual risks from high-risk systems to be reduced or eliminated “as far as possible”, having regard for the “state of the art”. This criterion, especially if interpreted narrowly, is unworkable and promotes neither proportionate regulatory burden nor trustworthiness. By contrast, the Parliament’s most recent draft amendments to the risk management provisions introduce “reasonableness” and cost–benefit analyses and are more transparent regarding the value-laden and contextual nature of risk acceptability judgments. This paper argues that the Parliament’s approach is more workable and better balances the goals of proportionality and trustworthiness. It explains what reasonableness in risk acceptability judgments would entail, drawing on principles from negligence law and European medical devices regulation. It also contends that the approach to risk acceptability judgments needs a firm foundation of civic legitimacy, including detailed guidance or involvement from regulators and meaningful input from affected stakeholders.

This paper explores the possibility of developing a framework to assess the quality of Impact Assessments (IAs) by examining the common elements found in the existent academic literature around this concept, the stocktaking exercises carried out by the European institutions and the opinions of the Regulatory Scrutiny Board. At this intersection, we find that diversity in the interpretation and application of the guidelines is not only acceptable but also necessary in tailoring IAs to the needs they represent. Our findings are relevant because a universal framework that avoids focusing solely on assessing quality not only will provide much-needed coherence in this field but will also raise awareness about the normality of variability in the application of any European Union guidelines, thus reflecting the inherent nature of the IAs.

The recent commercial release of a new generation of chatbot systems, particularly those leveraging Transformer-based large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT, has caught the world by surprise and sparked debate about their potential consequences for society. While concerns about the existential threat posed by these technologies are often discussed, it is crucial to shift our focus towards the more immediate risks associated with their deployment. Such risks are further compounded by the lack of proactive measures addressing users’ literacy and the for-profit model via which these chatbots are distributed. Drawing on research in computer science and other fields, this paper looks at the immediate risks triggered by these products and reflects on the role of law within a broader policy directed at steering generative artificial intelligence technology towards the common good. It also reviews the relevant amendments proposed by the European Parliament to the European Commission’s proposal for an AI Act.

Online gambling emerged in the 1990s in the midst of a process of market liberalisation. Here, scholars have argued that the gambling industry actively seeks state regulation to authorise and legitimate its activities. Why then, since the emergence of the online gambling industry, have trade associations continually sought to develop responsible gambling codes of conduct? In this paper, I address this puzzle by documenting and tracing the development and deployment of responsible gambling codes of conduct by trade associations from the emergence of the online gambling industry in the early 1990s and through processes of increased market liberalisation at the national level and market integration at the European Union level. I argue that online gambling trade associations deploy responsible gambling codes of conduct at particular moments of opportunity to shape their members’ external legal and regulatory environment and to reproduce and embed a particular understanding of how gambling-related risks should be regulated.

On 9 March 2023, the Court of Justice (Second Chamber) delivered a preliminary ruling about the coordination of two European Union measures against air pollution: the Industrial Emissions Directive and the Ambient Air Quality Directive. Upon assessment, the Court reinforced the mandatory nature of the air quality limit values vis-à-vis possible derogations foreseen in the Industrial Emissions Directive. In this case, both AG Kokott and the Second Chamber affirmed the primacy of the air quality standards. However, this Case Note finds that slightly different reasoning between the AG Opinion and the final Judgment reveals differing underlying approaches. Whilst the AG focuses on air quality plans and leaves more room for discretion to national authorities, the final Judgment anchors the coordination of the two Directives to strict and objective pollution limit values, further strengthening the Ambient Air Quality Directive as an effective instrument of environmental protection litigation.

The European Union (EU) increasingly develops and implements policies infused with salient and sometimes conflicting values – for instance, in migration and criminal law cooperation. However, policy implementation studies have not frequently considered how such complex value trade-offs may affect practical implementation within Member States. This article therefore quantitatively and temporally examines the practical implementation of an EU flagship criminal law measure: the simplified extradition system known as the European Arrest Warrant (EAW). Using data on EAWs decided upon by the Dutch Amsterdam District Court, we test the impact of value trade-offs by examining whether (newly introduced) safeguards for the protection of requested persons adversely affect system efficiency (measured through case turnover times). The results suggest that the design of legal tests and adjustments made to the EAW system over time through the Court of Justice of the European Union affect the balance between fundamental rights protection and efficiency in the practical implementation of the EAW.

This article explores the proposed amendments to the AI Act, which introduce the concept of “groups of persons”. The inclusion of this notion has the potential to broaden the traditional individual-centric approach in data protection. The analysis explores the context and the challenges posed by the rapid evolution of technology, with an emphasis on the role of artificial intelligence (AI) systems. It discusses both the potential benefits and challenges of recognising groups of people, including issues such as discrimination prevention, public trust and redress mechanisms. The analysis also identifies key challenges, including the lack of a clear definition for “group”, the difficulty in explaining AI architecture concerning groups and the need for well-defined redress mechanisms. The article also puts forward recommendations aimed at addressing these challenges in order to enhance the effectiveness and clarity of the proposed amendments.