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Institute
- Lehrstuhl für Öffentliches Recht, insbesondere Europarecht und Völkerrecht (Univ.-Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Weiß) (10)
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- Lehrstuhl für Öffentliches Recht, insbesondere deutsches und europäisches Verwaltungsrecht (Univ.-Prof. Dr. Ulrich Stelkens) (1)
- Lehrstuhl für öffentliches Recht, insbesondere allgemeines und besonderes Verwaltungsrecht (Univ.-Prof. Dr. Jan Ziekow) (1)
PURPOSE: The management of cross-border natural resources has been the focus of re-search in different disciplines. Nonetheless, beyond theoretical insights, empirical evidence of successful cross-border management or governance of natural resources is still limited, even in the European Union (EU), where a range of instruments are provided to foster cross-border cooperation between its Member States. This is where our paper departs, providing evidence from an example of cross-border cooperation between two Member States of the EU, Austria, and Slovenia, adding to the analytical framework to identify the drivers of successful cross-border cooperation.
METHODOLOGY: Drawing from the example of the European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation (EGTC) Geopark Karawanken we evaluate the success factors and limits for transboundary cooperation encompassing different forms of cooperation. Furthermore, based on empirical evidence of workshops with local, regional, and national stakeholders, we investigate the potential of the EGTC organizational framework to provide for the successful cross-border management of water resources within the Geopark area.
The TCA (EU-UK Trade and Copperation Agreement) establishes a very comprehensive institutional framework with Partnership Council and diverse Committees having partly substantial decision-making powers for the development of the TCA. These considerable public functions prompt legitimacy concerns as to their democratic control, which this article explores in detail. It will be shown that the exercise of public powers by TCA treaty bodies meets with a sobering legal situation regarding democratic control mechanisms over treaty body decision-making at different levels. Thus, from a constitutional perspective, the legal and legitimate transfer of powers requires additional safeguards as to their democratic legitimacy. Solutions for better control of treaty body decisions by parliaments must be developed at several levels simultaneously.
The Union legislator has recently amended the Aarhus Regulation with the aim of bringing it more in line with the requirements the Aarhus Convention lays down. EU State aid decisions, however, remain excluded from its scope. This exclusion raises questions that form the object of this contribution. The article argues that the arguments presented to justify the continued exclusion of State aid review are not convincing. By not complying with the re-commendations of the ACCC, the EU is in clear violation of international law. Therefore, the article deliberates over the necessary changes and possible exemptions for a sound im-plementation of the Aarhus Convention against the procedural specificities of State aid review, considering also the Commission´s recently presented options, which contain a number of problematic aspects.
‘Killer Flying Robots Are Here. What Do We Do Now?’, ‘A Military Drone With A Mind Of Its Own Was Used In Combat, U.N. Says’ and ‘Possible First Use of AI-Armed Drones Triggers Alarm Bells’ – these are just some headlines to a report issued by the UN Panel of Experts on Libya. What caught the international attention was the panel’s description of the following scene in Libya’s civil war: ‘[Forces] were […] hunted down and remotely engaged by the un-manned combat aerial vehicles or the lethal autonomous weapons systems such as the STM Kargu-2 […]. The lethal autonomous weapons systems were programmed to attack targets without requiring data connectivity between the operator and the munition: in effect, a true “fire, forget and find” capability.’
However, the disruptive potential of AI is not limited to out-of-control killer drones or the military context in general – nor does it only have a negative potential. AI and its global trade promote international development and technological innovation, thereby improving lives. Therefore, the efforts to build a legal and policy framework to harness AI’s benefits and thwart its dangers is in full swing. States, the European Union, international organizations, NGOs, and scholars alike come up with ways of achieving that end. The approaches to the issue are manifold. However, most focus either on instating rules on the development of AI, for instance, how to ensure AI is built ethically or on its use, ie, banning its use in lethal auto-nomous weapon systems (LAWS). Whereas all these efforts are important, a further layer of protection has not gained much traction: regulating AI’s global trade so that responsible actors can use it to benefit humankind while preventing it from ending up in the hands of irresponsible actors.
The legal instrument to achieve this end is international export control law. It aims to mitiga-te the risks to international peace and security associated with the proliferation of sensitive items to irresponsible actors while avoiding unreasonable restrictions on global trade, eco-nomic development, and technological innovation. However, the international export control law is not yet suited to fulfill its promise regarding AI. The dual use nature of AI poses signifi-cant risks to international peace and security. Nevertheless, only in limited circumstances applies international export control law to the transfer of AI applications and technology, leaving a gap in the international export control framework. Until this gap is closed, inter-national human rights due diligence might provide fallback protection to address the issue
of mitigating the risks associated with the proliferation of dual use AI.
This article takes the proliferation of EU soft law instruments in the management of the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity to analyse their effects and challenges to democracy and rule of law in the EU posed by the use of EU soft law in the implementation of EU law. A proposal will be made for a general legal framework on the adoption of administrative EU soft law in order to address them. Enhancing the legitimacy of EU governance requires a general legal framework that introduces minimum procedural, transparency and participa-tory safeguards and foresees looser rules for urgent soft measures. The article thus makes an original contribution by reconsidering the debate about EU soft law in the context of COVID-19 soft law with a view to its salience for domestic implementation of EU law and by developing core elements of a general legal framework.
On Track or Off The Rails?
(2022)
The call for a transport transition has reached political and mainstream attention in Germany during the first decades of the 21st century. A shift from car-based individual transport to rail-based modes of transportation (operated by electricity) is seen as an important building block of a more sustainable transport system and as such also integrated in official sustain-ability strategies. Among other measures, this demands a new focus in transport infrastruc-ture planning. Planning being a task primarily fulfilled by executive and administrative actors, ministerial bureaucracies assume a crucial role in this transition process. Their propensity (or not) to produce outputs that mirror a transition orientation sets the course for or against a modal shift. The preparation of the currently valid Federal Transport Infrastructure Plan (Bundesverkehrswegeplan, BVWP) allows a comparative view into decision-making processes on transport projects for different transport modes.
The BVWP is a national transport strategy outlining which transport infrastructure is sup-posed to be built throughout the next fifteen years. It has no legal character and is the first step within a wider planning framework. Projects newly included in this master plan are usually still in a very early pre-planning stage. Nevertheless, inclusion in the BVWP is an important first step to secure potential federal funding for road, railway and waterway projects.
Even though the BVWP is a national transport strategy, the first steps of its preparation are taken on the sub-national level, as the German Länder prominently propose road projects and take part in proposing other infrastructure projects as well. This presents an opportunity to compare the processes in and outputs of sub-national ministerial bureaucracies when proposing infrastructure projects for different transport modes. Such an analysis provides insights into some determinants of transition-friendly decision-making and improves the understanding of how process characteristics shape ministerial outputs.
This study finds its theoretical framework in actor-centred institutionalism and draws to-gether politics- as well as bureaucracy-centred perspectives in a delegation argument. I follow the argument that ministerial outputs are first and foremost shaped by ministers' programmatic positions. However, I challenge the view that the balance between ministerial and bureaucratic influence would be determined by the salience of the topic at hand in such a way that politicians would take care of their positions being duly executed when the re-spective topic is salient, and bureaucrats being more influential with non-salient topics. Instead, I argue that salient topics require more complex decision-making processes, i. e. processes that involve a greater variety of actors - rather than simply pushing through po-litical preferences - in order to ensure broadly accepted solutions that are in fact imple-mentable. Outputs of complex processes, in turn, are harder to predict.
Building on document analysis and expert interviews with members of the sub-national ministerial bureaucracies, this thesis analyses how decision-making processes within bu-reaucracies shape policy outputs in transport infrastructure planning. Sub-national decision-making processes on which projects to propose for the BVWP 2030 serve as cases. These decision-making processes might either favour the car-dominated status-quo or a shift to-wards more rail-centred mobility, thereby hindering or furthering an overall move towards a systemic change in mobility and transport, referred to as transport transition - without this necessarily being the intention of the actors themselves.
The analysis involves two steps. In a first analytical step, a content analysis serves to struc-ture the material and condense it into categories. I start with some theory-led concepts and then inductively develop sub-categories that capture the procedural steps pointed out in the material. In a second step, Qualitative Comparative Analysis will be employed to distinguish combinations of programmatic, procedural as well as capacity-related characteristics, that are sufficient for arriving at a less car-centred output.
The results address pathways towards a transition-oriented output as well as determinants for the set-up of complex intra-ministerial decision-making processes. They support the view that programmatic positions of ministers can indeed shape ministerial outcomes in the direc-tion of a transport transition. Independently of programmatic positions, decision-making processes that are complex in the above-mentioned sense might also work positively to that end. However, none of these conditions is sufficient on its own. They both only work in con-junction with a transition-friendly behaviour of the respective sub-national ministries towards expectations on higher levels within the multi-level framework. At times, this means that Länder might deliberately act against federal expectations even where the implementation of their decision depends on the federal level. Administrative capacity in sub-national ministries and the salience of the topic for the respective minister shape how ministries design their decision-making processes. Where capacity allows it, complex processes are set up when the topic is perceived as salient. The relevance of capacity in this context points to the impor-tance of a well-resourced bureaucracy for legitimacy-related purposes like setting up and carrying through public participation schemes.
The contribution investigates the impact of COVID-19 on long overdue reforms of German healthcare. The pandemic revealed some major shortcomings in patient care and elicited calls for new legislative solutions, more effective use of resources and a reduction of hospital expenditure.
The proposals discussed here clash with the “stability” which is a major feature of the German legal system.
Dark patterns steer users into taking decisions they would not have made otherwise. They are widespread in ‘cookie banners’ where they nudge or otherwise lead users into ‘consen-ting’ to intensive and controversial processing of personal data, such as online tracking and behavioural targeting. The prevalence of dark patterns in the privacy context is not only due to an enforcement deficit. It is also due to a lack of legal provisions that effectively implement the principles of privacy by design and by default. The legislator should address privacy dark patterns by ensuring meaningful choice of data subjects.
Europeanisation situates local governments in a constantly changing environment, bringing challenges, opportunities, and constraints. These circumstances raise the question, how
local authorities adapt to the process of European integration, face its challenges, and use
its diverse opportunity structures. The article explores four dimensions, through which Europeanisation hits the ground of local government: downloading, uploading, dissemi-nation, and horizontal networking. It examines the distribution of different types of Europe-related activities at the local level using data from a survey sent to all 396 independent cities, towns, and municipalities in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Our empirical analysis provides an overview of the most and least frequent Europe-related activities within the different types of local authorities. The findings of our multivariate analysis shows that next to the direct affectedness by Europeanisation, the municipalities’ capacities in terms of financial and institutional resources have a major influence on their efforts towards Europe.