The case discusses the “Test-Achats” judgment of the ECJ in the overall context of the EU-non-discrimination principle in relations traditionally governed by private law and party autonomy. This principle has come from employment law and has been extended to consumption matters, at least with regard to such incriminated characteristics as gender, ethnic origin, and nationality. Even if the consequences of the ECJ judgment on the insurance market, including protection of insured persons themselves, by imposing “unisex”-tariffs from 21.12.2012 on may be viewed critically, the Court only draws the legal consequences of a prior decision of the EU legislator which cannot be delayed for an indefinite time span by the Member States (author's headnote).

Council Decision 2008/633/JHA on access for consultation of the Visa Information System for the purposes of prevention, detection and investigation of terrorist offences and other serious criminal offences must be read as a development of the Schengen acquis and not merely as a measure as to police cooperation, preventing the United Kingdom and Ireland from participating in adopting the measure (author's headnote).

The Book Reviews section will introduce you to the latest and most interesting books on a wide range of topics pertaining to the law and policy of risk regulation. EJRR Book Reviews will strive to be present in every edition and will accept reviews from all disciplines. For further information on the submission of reviews please contact the Book Reviews Editor at david.hornsby@wits.ac.za.

Despite the initial delay in Spain in the adoption and development of a better regulation policy compared to other OECD countries, in the last few years significant advances have taken place, as pointed out in the 2010 OECD report “Better Regulation in Europe. Spain”.

In this context, the initiatives promoted by the Autonomous Communities – Spanish subnational levels of government – are also very important, since they have wide powers for the development of their own public regulatory reform policies. In fact, the first Spanish experience of the introduction of regulatory impact assessment in the legal rulemaking process took place in Catalonia, which has been a pioneer in the integration of administrative simplification policies – applied since the early 90s – in addition to its administrative burden reduction strategy.