This Article analyzes the potential impact of the European Commission’s proposed “European Green Deal” on labor rights, in particular the rights of workers in lower-income EU Member States. It focuses on environmental measures, already part of the EU’s existing environmental policies and further contemplated in the Green Deal, which prohibit or tax certain polluting production processes. Such measures, insofar as they apply uniformly to traded-good industries, are likely to make firms in lower-income EU Member States less competitive and harm their workers’ rights to work and to fair wages. Thus, even though these environmental measures are worth pursuing for the benefits they procure, the distribution of their costs is likely to run afoul of egalitarian norms. This Article puts forward an institutionalist approach to trade theory which recognizes that competitiveness is legally constructed. It argues on the basis of that theory that lower-income countries should be allowed to adopt ambitious industrial policies and subsidize their firms to insulate workers from the disruptions caused by added environmental regulatory costs. More broadly, this Article presents an agenda to pursue radical environmental transformation while remedying, or at least not worsening, inequalities between workers and citizens in the EU.

In times of digital pervasion of everyday life, the EU has strengthened a normative idea of European fundamental rights, especially by referring to a strong notion of privacy protection. A normative corridor is evolving with the “right to privacy” at its heart, a right that will be instrumental in shaping the European legal architecture’s future structure. In this Article we argue that the constitutional protection of privacy rights is not only of individual relevance but also of major democratic significance: it protects the integrity of the communication structures that underpin democratic self-determination. The debate on privacy protection, however, often lacks a democratic understanding of privacy and misses its public value. Following an interactionist understanding of privacy and a discourse-theoretical model of democracy, our argument puts forward a conceptual link between privacy and the idea of communicative freedom. From this perspective, the substantiation of a European fundamental right to privacy can be seen as a possible contribution to promoting European democracy in general.

National sovereignty has been the key consideration for basing judicial cooperation in the European Union on mutual recognition. More than one decade after the creation of the Area of Freedom Security and Justice (AFSJ), this contribution assesses whether mutual recognition-based EU legislation in civil and criminal law indeed respects national sovereignty. To this end, it studies the Framework decision on the European Arrest Warrant (EAW), the EU’s flagship instrument in the AFSJ. We distinguish two elements of national sovereignty: (a) the protection of the State and its basic structures (its statehood); (b) the State’s values, principles and fundamental rights (its statehood principles), and assess the EAW from a dynamic perspective: from its initial inception, in which mutual trust primarily implied little interferences with the laws and practices of issuing states, to the current state of affairs which is marked by what could be called a ‘mutual trust supported by harmonization’- approach. Especially in the judge-driven harmonization of the EAW and the dialogue between judicial authorities we witness important (and oftentimes overlooked) elements that impact national sovereignty. At the end, the findings of the article are put in the context of the current rule of law crisis in the EU.

There is an increasing involvement of lawyers and law firms in public affairs through activities that are aimed at influencing legislative and regulatory developments. Law firms offer services which can be regarded as lobbying, and yet, to the detriment of transparent policy-making, they are reluctant to register in the European Union Transparency Register (EUTR) and provide information about their activities. As growing attention is paid to the need to regulate lobbying at the EU and Member State levels, the question arises as to whether and to what extent such regulatory framework should also cover certain services provided by law firms, that is, legal lobbying. This Article charts the phenomenon of legal lobbying and its regulation in the EU context. It shows how the EUTR attempts to distinguish between legal services and lobbying by defining two lawyer roles: a legal expert, and an advocate. These roles allow the possibility to pinpoint two unresolved issues associated with legal lobbying: the scope of professional secrecy, and the meaning of the legal advice exception. An important conclusion is that regulatory clarification is necessary to resolve ambiguities and broadly address the implications that legal lobbying raises in terms of transparent and legitimate law-making processes.

Members of Parliament have traditionally enjoyed different kinds of immunities; nowadays, these are openly criticized on several grounds. The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has recently given a judgment on the inviolability of European Parliament’s members, which might be regarded as a milestone in its scarce case law on the matter: Oriol Junqueras Vies, Judgment of the Grand Chamber of December 19, 2019. This Article intends to summarize and comment on this decision, a preliminary reference requested by the Spanish Supreme Court in a notorious criminal procedure, connected with the suspended referendum on Catalonia’s independence. The CJEU reinforces the inviolability of Members of European Parliament (MEPs), thus strengthening the powers of this institution. However, the judgment perhaps fails to fully capture European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) case law and was rendered at a time when the controversy on Mr. Junqueras had arguably become outdated.

The Article deals with the protection of consumer borrowers and lending investors in peer-to-peer lending within the legal framework provided by EU credit laws. This is the legal framework for EU Member States in the area of loans to consumers. In particular, the article analyses the business model of taking lending decisions on financial technologies (“Fintech”) and big data vis-à-vis the legal obligation of the creditworthiness assessment by lenders. At the same time, it extends the applicability of such a business model to the credit-risk analysis undertaken in the interest of lenders. Ultimately, it questions to what extent EU law caters for peer-to-peer lending, and and to what extent consumers and lenders can find protection. It hints that peer-to-peer lending presents risks for both consumers and lenders, falling short of legal obligations and established practices for their protection.

In this Article, we argue that the uncertainty of UK national motor vehicle insurance law—when viewed with respect to its European Union (EU) parent, the Motor Vehicle Insurance Directive (MVID)—was never satisfactorily addressed, primarily when using the remedy available through the non-contractual liability of the State. The EU enforcement mechanisms were equally haphazard in their effectiveness and success in affording rights to third-party victims. Given the link between the MVID and the free movement of persons and goods, on which the harmonization of insurance protection was based, we present the first Article establishing an argument that those offending aspects of UK national law should have been disapplied. The UK has concluded its agreement to withdraw its membership of the EU—and thus no longer to be bound by EU law and the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice. Yet until the transitional period ends, the UK remained aligned to EU law and those defects present in national law should have been remedied. Therefore, the remedy issued from the Factortame line of case authorities may have proven to be the most effective way to grant access to rights which were denied to third-party victims in the UK. Here we present a justification for its application.