This article does not envisage an overwhelming goal to present a detailed X-ray of the recently much-discussed ECJ decisions in the field of social law, namely Laval and Viking. One could find several very profound papers whose authors thoroughly explore the various issues at stake, including the trade unions strategies in the frame of the EC Law, the role of the Posted Workers Directive, a horizontal direct effect in the context of the service-providing, the negotiation of wages and the Scandinavian social model. Therefore, the goal of this piece is to put Laval into the macroflora of a wider context, inherent to the effects of the post-enlargement labour conflict and its implications for the fundamentalization of social rights in the Union.

This article examines the regulatory activity performed by the Codex Alimentarius Commission (Commission), which is the international body responsible for setting food standards and which has been the object of growing attention by lawyers. The main problem is that Codex standards, although they are not binding, strip national regulators of their discretion. This occurs because the Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phitosanitary Measures (SPS Agreement) and the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT Agreement) refer to them as relevant international standards. Furthermore, the World Trade Organization (WTO) Appellate Body has been construing its provisions in a way that makes it virtually impossible for national regulators to set higher levels of protection. From this it follows that, unless national constituencies are afforded the possibility to participate in the regulation of food safety at the outset before the Commission, when it comes down to setting national food standards national regulators are unable to fully respond to their concerns. This is all the more so if one considers that, while being undisputed that science plays a major role in the preparation of Codex standards, many issues the Commission has to address cannot be settled in strictly scientific terms. Instead, the latter enjoys a wide degree of discretion in striking a balance between fair trade and consumers' health. The political dimension surrounding the issues the Commission has to address coupled with the legal effect of Codex standards raises questions about its legitimacy. Yet any assessment of the legitimacy of the Commission is necessarily incomplete unless it takes into account the comparative performance of national regulatory authorities.

The photos of the presumed child abuser were published all around the world and resulted in the arrest of the wanted person in no time. Within only a few months, Interpol has twice issued public searches for wanted persons on its own initiative. The immediate success seemed to justify the measures. Does Interpol evolve into a veritable international criminal police? Since Interpol's competences for operational measures are still limited, it seems more appropriate to qualify Interpol as an agency with purely coordinative and providing functions and, accordingly, as an example for international administration.

Botnia S.A./Metsä-Botnia Oy's construction of the Orion pulp mill in Uruguay raised concerns regarding violations of national, regional, and international law with regard to social and environmental protection. On 18 April 2006, the Center for Human Rights and Environment (CEDHA), an Argentinean non-governmental organisation, submitted to Finland's National Contact Point (NCP) a “specific instance” regarding the possible non-compliance of Botnia S.A. (a Finnish enterprise) with the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises (OECD Guidelines for MNEs, Guidelines) when building the envisaged pulp mill in Uruguay. According to the Center for Human Rights and Environment, Botnia S.A. violated the OECD Guidelines for MNEs especially with respect to Chapter II “General Policies”, Chapter III “Disclosure”, Chapter V “Environment” and Chapter VI “Bribery”. Specific instances concerned with related issues were filed by the Center for Human Rights and Environment with the Swedish and Norwegian NCPs against Nordea, a leading financial services group of the Nordic and Baltic Sea area, for possible financing of Botnia S.A.'s pulp mill project and against the Finnish state bank Finnvera for providing export guarantees to Botnia S.A. Other fora that have in the meantime become involved in the issue are the International Court of Justice and member institutions of the World Bank Group, the International Finance Corporation and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency.

In autumn 2005 a group of Sudanese asylum seekers and refugees discontented with the unbearable conditions in the United Nations High Commissioner for Refuges (UNHCR) office in Cairo started a sit-in protest near the office. The protesters were, besides venting their anger at the suspension of Refugee Status Determination procedures for Sudanese refugees due to the ceasefire between the Sudanese government and Sudan's People Liberation Army, also making their frustrations heard regarding UNHCR's lengthy procedures, its failure to provide them with proper assistance, the high numbers of rejected applications, improper interviews and their general treatment by UNHCR's personnel as well as their difficult social and health conditions which had been aggravated by the lack of proper assistance. They were demanding that this situation be remedied and calling for transparent and fair procedures. Shortly thereafter they were joined by many more protesters so that in the following three months a group of between 1,800 and 2,500 people stayed around UNHCR's premises. However, meetings and negotiations with UNCHR eventually failed. The crisis ended in a tragedy. On December 30, 2005 the Egyptian security forces proceeded with the forcible removal of the protesters from the venue in an action in which 28 refugees were killed, more than half of which were children and women, with several protesters missing after the events. The Cairo incident illustrates what the cited report on the events has rightly called “a tragedy of failures and false expectations” regarding international humanitarian and human rights institutions.

The Committee on Trade in Financial Services (hereinafter, Committee or CTFS) is a committee subsidiary to the Council for Trade in Services (CTS), which itself reports to the General Council of the WTO. Shortly after the WTO Agreement entered into force, the CTS established the Committee in its Decision on Institutional Arrangements for the General Agreement on Trade in Services (Institutional Decision). The Committee acts primarily as a forum for dissemination of regulatory information specific to the often opaque financial services sector. This permits a meeting of national finance ministers and experts, as opposed to (mere) trade negotiators and representatives, who may not be in a position to understand the unique nature of national financial regulation. Fundamentally, a state's finance sector underlies all other sectors of international trade, since any transaction for goods or services requires compensation, usually monetary, thereby making the financial sector function as a sort of central nervous system for global trade. The financial services sector, therefore, is peculiar among WTO trade sectors. Indeed, the regulatory constellation for financial services within WTO law is unique: it includes two annexes to the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and two Protocols to GATS, negotiations extended well beyond the Uruguay Round and the Marrakesh Agreement's entry into force, and there is a sui generis set of heightened commitments called the Understanding on Commitments in Financial Services. The Committee also acts as a monitoring body, overseeing both the implementation of legal commitments under the relevant Protocols and the specific progress of China under the Protocol on the Accession of the People's Republic of China.

The Convention for the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage (World Heritage Convention), which entered into force on 17 December 1975, established a complex governance regime at the international level. The rationale behind the establishment of this regime was the international communities' realization that the world contained natural and cultural sites which were so unique and outstanding that they should by no means become embroiled in the onslaught of human material progress. It was argued that these sites must be protected and conserved for posterity since they, irrespective of the territory in which they were located, belonged to all peoples and, thus, formed part of the common heritage of mankind. Although the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) regime for the protection of World Heritage is seemingly afforded with weak instruments, such as the inscription of properties on the World Heritage List or on the List of World Heritage in Danger, its activities increasingly play a role, not least in national administrative procedures. The cases of Yellowstone National Park in the United States, Cologne Cathedral and Dresden Elbe Valley in Germany, and Kakadu National Park in Australia are only a few examples in this regard.

This article suggests a tentative model for the legal conceptualization of the great variety of instruments by which international institutions exercise public authority, brought to light by the thematic studies of this project. If one were to display this variety of instruments on a scale that ranges from binding international law to non-legal instruments, hardly any thinkable step on this scale would remain empty. Situated at the top end of the scale one would find binding instruments such as international treaties, periodic treaty amendments, decisions on individual cases with binding effect or decisions having the potential to become binding by way of domestic recognition. While these instruments clearly have external legal effects, other instruments seem to be purely internal rules of procedure, although they have in fact considerable repercussions for national administrations. Next come various types of soft, i.e. non-binding legal instruments. Some of these instruments operate in the shadow of binding instruments. Others are kept in purely soft form, like product standards or codes of conduct, but also decisions concerning individuals. In the lower part of the scale one would find instruments containing non-binding rules that are foremost aimed at facilitating consultation, or soft private law instruments. At the bottom end one would discover non-legal instruments that are devoid of any deontic elements, but nevertheless have a high legal or political impact on the affected policy area. Examples of this class of instruments include factual assessment reports, indicators, reports on implementation and compliance, and databases.

The term principle is ubiquitous in the thematic studies and the cross-cutting studies of this research project on the exercise of public authority by international institutions. Apparently its legal analysis and normative framing is difficult to achieve without principles. This is no specificity of this undertaking: Legal research on the public authority of international institutions regularly deals with the issue of principles. General principles for all international institutions are of specific interest as they might tie the various institutions into one legal universe. Yet, precisely their variety, even heterogeneity raises the question if such principles can be anything but “stars which give little light because they are so high.” This quotation from Francis Bacon's “On the Advancement of Learning” precedes Edward Carr's classical study on the problems of a sweeping, principled and idealistic approach to international phenomena.

There is no general body of procedural law for decision-making in international organizations. At the same time, many of the more than 230 existing international organizations (IOs) exercise public power through legislative and regulatory activities involving a myriad of decisions taken within these institutions every day. These decisions shape societal perceptions of a wide range of pressing humanitarian-, ecological, technical- and scientific issues and direct actions taken in these fields. From a rule of law perspective any exercise of public power outside a limiting framework of public law is reason for concern. According to the domestic rule of law traditions, public law is supposed to prescribe the form in which public power is exercised. It regulates the process of decision-making by establishing binding procedures, including procedural rights of participants and affected individuals. In case of unlawful exercise of power by public officials affected persons and entities have legal recourse to an independent court or tribunal. If formalized procedural constraints for the exercise of public authority are important at the national level they are all the more so at the international level since conflicts over substantive legal standards and disagreement over community values are usually more acute.

One of the most striking features of international institutional law that emerges from the several cases studies collected in this issue is that enforcement authority is now vested in international institutions alongside the more familiar types of public authority almost as a matter of course. Enforcement of international law by international institutions needs to be distinguished from other closely related concepts of public authority that are in turn the subject of closer studies collected in this issues. As discussed by von Bogdandy, Dann and Goldmann, international institutions often dispose of an implementation authority which in turn is subject to a branch of international institutional law. The responsibilities and indeed the authority of international institutions do not stop at the mere implementation of their legal base. However, enforcement involves a categorically different exercise of public authority. It concerns the interaction with another subject of law. Insofar as enforcement essentially empowers an international institution to confront States it deeply interferes with the sovereign's conduct, and its very existence may seem counterintuitive.

The current contribution focuses on the oversight over international institutions, which is used as a synonym for the accountability of such entities. It departs from the principle that all entities exercising public authority have to account for the exercise thereof. The growing power of international institutions in areas that were formerly regulated domestically, along with the growing impact of their conduct on (the rights of) States and non-State actors alike, has thus far not been matched by a shift in accountability relationships beyond those applicable within the confines of the territorial State. Understandably therefore the calls for the accountability of international institutions have increased in recent years, as it is seen as essential for ensuring their credibility and for securing control over public power.

The administration of the traditional nation-state used to operate as a rather closed system to the outside world. Today, cooperation between the public authorities of different States and between States and international bodies is a common phenomenon. Yet the characteristics and mechanics of such cooperation can hardly be understood using the concepts domestic public law or public international law currently on offer. Conventional concepts, such as federalism, confederalism or State-centered “realism” hardly fathom the complexity of interactions or reflect the changed role of the State, while more recent concepts, such as multi-level systems or networks, seem to encompass only parts of the phenomena at hand. Given this void, we propose to explore the notion of “composite administration” (Verbundverwaltung) and argue that it offers a concept which can combine more coherently the seemingly diverging legal elements of cooperation and hierarchy that distinguish administrative action in what often is called a multi-level administrative system. Even though the concept of composite administration was originally designed and further developed with respect to the largely federal European administrative space, we suggest testing the concept in the wider context of international cooperation. We believe that it offers valuable insights and raises critical questions, even though we do not intend to insinuate any proto-federal prospects of the institutions discussed in this paper.

It is possible to speak of international administration only if an international entity is truly exercising functions equivalent to States. While such cases are rare, as Joseph Weiler emphasized in a different context, they do exist. One such case is the International Seabed Authority, which exercises legislative as well as executive functions concerning the international seabed (Area) and its resources. Furthermore, the legal regime on the international seabed comprises a fully elaborated system for the settlement of disputes available to public and private actors involved in the exploration and exploitation of mineral resources in the Area. The functions assigned to IMO and some fisheries organizations have not quite reached this level. Nevertheless one can observe that these organizations, too, prescribe binding rules, at least de facto. However, they lack the jurisdiction to enforce such rules directly; in that respect they are relying on the enforcement of States to enforce such rules acting under different capacities such as flag States or port States. One may consider these legal regimes as belonging to a multilevel system (Mehrebenensystem) where the prescriptive and executive functions are being vested in different entities.

One does not approach a challenge with a backward view. Rather, we take on challenges by looking forward. In scholarship, taking a forward view is known as research. Law schools define themselves by their research. Scholarly work is what garners prestige from without and solidarity from within. Without a doubt, teaching itself also ranks highly, but excellent teaching begins with proper research. The connection between research and teaching is indispensable. Teaching flourishes where students are gradually introduced to the processes of research, giving them a feeling for the excitement of scholarly work. This forms the nexus between the older and younger generations of academics, continually opening and reopening their perspectives to innovation and the undiscovered. Semper apertus reads the seal of the University of Heidelberg from 1386.