This volume addresses the future of political control and accountability in a European and comparative perspective. It is based on the contributions to an international conference hosted by the Montesquieu Institute (Centre of European Parliamentary History and Constitutional Development) at Maastricht in March 2008. The conference concluded a larger research project that was devoted to identifying features of domestic constitutional law that could help develop a system of effective accountab...

Direct effect, consistent interpretation and state liability are instruments developed by the CJEU for national courts to remedy conflicts between national and EU law (and may also be used in some jurisdictions to resolve national law and international law). This book will look at the `remedial capacity of these doctrines/tools from the perspective of the national court applying them. In short: what are their strengths, weaknesses, unexplored opportunities at grassroot level, and what can we ...

The book offers a comparative and interdisciplinary approach to the issue of property rights protection in Europe. This approach explores the tensions between the European and the national level. This is done by highlighting the different understanding of the constitutional role of property within different legal cultures and legal orders. The interaction and dialogue between national law and supranational human rights law in the area of property law is therefore at the centre of the work. Th...

This book addresses the conflict between climate change, other environmental concerns such as biodiversity, and international trade, focussing on the relationship between climate change mitigation and biodiversity protection in the bioenergy sector, taking into account the specific situation for imports from developing countries. The focal point is the sustainability criteria enacted by Directive 2009/28/EC (the so-called Renewable Energy Directive - RED). The document is divided into 6 parts...

The Law of Succession, which has been traditionally confined to domestic limits, is becoming a frequent topic of discussion in international forums, due to the increasing mobility of people and assets. Freedom of testation is in the centre of all initiatives tending to harmonize or at least approximate legislations in this field, even if, to date, efforts in this direction have focused on international private law. In April 2010, an international conference was held in Barcelona, where the sc...

In the Netherlands, the structure of alternative dispute resolutionin the area of financial services has changed considerably in 2007.

Existing schemes for ADR have merged into a new institution, the Financial Services Complaints Tribunal (KiFiD). This book describes the development of KiFiD within the framework of European rules for ADR and mediation, and article 6 of the European Convention (Human Rights), and compares its structure with developments in the UK, Germany and Spain regarding A...

The effectiveness of European Community law is probably the most distinguishing feature of this unique legal order in contrast with classic international law. By contrast, the effectiveness of European Economic Area law (EEA Law), the way this other even more sui generis legal system provides comparable rights for EFTA-EEA citizens, is a silent revolution brought by the EFTA Court that has not been properly researched and exposed in the field of European law.

This book addresses first the rel...

Proportionality analysis describes a particular legal technique of resolving conflicts between human or constitutional rights and public interests through a process of balancing. As a general tendency, the current vivid academic debate on proportionality pays, however, insufficient attention to the institutional context – the question of judicial review. Based on the premise that proportionality analysis is a permissible approach to resolve conflicts between rights and other interests, the ...

The transition towards sustainable sources of energy requires the law to facilitate and regulate societal and technological transformations, in all kinds of arrangements concerning energy, from production, transport, and trade to distribution and consumption. As this transition, by its nature, is a universal topic and crosses boundaries of jurisdictions, comparative law is eminently appropriate to

rethink analytically and synthetically how local, national, supra- and international law can fac...

The background to this collection of papers is formed by the changes in contemporary society. In modern-day western societies it is thought that individualism trumps collectivism. There is change from the paradigm of hierarchy to a paradigm of cooperation. This affects administrative law, which is traditionally top-down, but is slowly accepting and incorporating mechanisms of negotiation and bottom-up involvement of stakeholders and concerned individuals.

The contributors to this volume inves...