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The picture regarding the protection of fundamental rights in Europe today increasingly looks like a patchwork, due to a lack of coordination at different levels. Developments reinforcing that picture include the emergence of different methodologies for the application of funda-mental rights, Constitution-based challenges to European law by national Supreme Courts, codifications of existing case-law and the creation of so-called « hybrid » institutions. The resulting complexity is a challenge for domestic courts, a threat to the confidence of citizens and detrimental to the fundamental rights themselves, their special role and authority being gradually eroded by a general relativism. EU-accession could have an anti-patchwork effect and represent a chance for a general coordination of fundamental rights in Europe. Beyond making the Convention binding upon the EU, it would also have a pan-European (re)structu-ring effect by confirming the Convention as the minimum benchmark providing both the bedrock and the framework for any other national or European fundamental rights as well as for the necessary judicial dialogue on the latter. Good progress has been achieved since the resumption of negotiations for EU-accession, justifying cautious optimism as to the possibility to find adequate solutions to the outstanding issues.
The article presents the judgment of the Polish Constitutional Court of 10 March 2022
(K 7/21). In this judgment, the Court questioned the constitutionality of the art. 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, one of the fundamental norms of the European system of human rights protection. The article criticises this decision and shows its negative consequences for the individual right to a fair trial.
Can parliament govern the transport transition? How the German Bundestag scrutinizes rail projects
(2022)
The paper aims to elucidate to what extent the German Parliament exerts control over rail planning. Parliament has the budgetary right, but information asymmetries vis-à-vis the railway company Deutsche Bahn and the Ministry of Transport make parliamentary control difficult.
Recently, Germany has instituted a parliamentary review process that allows the Parliament to take up concerns by the public affected by rail projects. We use the principal-agent theory to model this new institution. Parliament delegates rail planning to the Deutsche Bahn, while the Federal Railway Authority serves as a budget watchdog, and parliament uses input from public participation as a deck-stacking procedure. The paper first situates the institutional innovations—the new parliamentary oversight procedure—against the former logic of rail-way planning. Second, based on the documentation of parliamentary oversight, we analyze for which demands by the affected public the Parliament uses its power to change rail projects.
The paper showed that public participation matters. The German Parliament introduced expensive changes to rail projects. In particular, demands that had been voiced in well-institutionalized public participation (that is, when municipalities, regional associations, etc., were engaged in long-term institutionalized dialogues with the Deutsche Bahn) were more likely to be addressed. An Extra budget was then allocated to, for example, noise-regulating measures.
To sum up, the German Parliament uses information gained in public participation in com-bination with its budget rights to exert control over railway planning for conflictual projects. Thus, Parliament takes a more active role in railway planning. Whether this also leads to more acceptance for rail projects, is an open question.
Two different States licensed exports of intrusion tools and related items to a third State. That State then used it to spy on human rights defenders, lawyers, journalists, activists, opposition politicians, and dissidents. While one of the licensing States is a member of the Wassenaar Arrangement, the other is not but had declared to follow it unilaterally. The legal analysis considers the attribution of the relevant acts and omissions by the States and examines possible breaches of international export control law and international human rights law.