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- Lehrstuhl für Öffentliches Recht, insbesondere Europarecht und Völkerrecht (Univ.-Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Weiß) (6)
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This open access book presents a topical, comprehensive and differentiated analysis of Germany's public administration and reforms. It provides an overview on key elements of German public administration at the federal, Länder and local levels of government as well
as on current reform activities of the public sector. It examines the key institutional features of German public administration; the changing relationships between public administration, society and the private sector; the administrative reforms at different levels of the federal system and numerous sectors; and new challenges and modernization approaches like digi-talization, Open Government and Better Regulation. Each chapter offers a combination of descriptive information and problem-oriented analysis, presenting key topical issues in Germany which are relevant to an international readership.
The landmark judgment in the case of Bivolaru and Moldovan v. France, which concerned the execution of a European arrest warrant, provides a good illustration of the effects of the Con-vention liability of EU Member States for their implementation of EU law. These effects touch on such notions as cooperation, trust, complementarity, autonomy and responsibility. The two European courts have been cooperating towards some convergence of the standards applicable to the handling of EAWs. The Bosphorus presumption and its application in Bivo-laru and Moldovan show the amount of trust placed by the Strasbourg Court in the EU pro-tection of fundamental rights in this area. To the extent that their standards of protection coincide, the Luxembourg and Strasbourg jurisdictions are complementary. However, the two protection systems remain autonomous, notably as regards the methodology applied to fundamental rights. Ultimately, the EU Member States engage their Convention responsibility for the execution by their domestic courts of any EAWs.
On the way to the customer
(2021)
The notices of Deutsche Rentenversicherung are changing their face. In order to ensure that everybody insured as well as pensioners can better understand the decisions of Deutsche Rentenversicherung, the notices are becoming more comprehensible, clearer and more personal. The poster presentation describes the journey of an interdisciplinary team of Deutsche Rentenversicherung and the most important milestones along the way.
Article 9 (Social Aims)
(2021)
Proportionality in English Administrative Law: Resistance and Strategy in Relational Dynamics
(2021)
Proportionality is at the centre of heated debates in English administrative law. It has been adopted for matters pertaining to European law and the European Convention on Human Rights, but its use in other areas parts of English administrative law is highly contentious. While some arguments in favour or against applying proportionality in England are similar to those exchanged in relation to other legal systems (such as tensions between increased objectivity in judicial control over administrative action vs. the desirability of more limited control), other arguments are more specific to English administrative law. To understand the challenges encountered by proportionality in English administrative law, this paper adopts a contextual analysis, putting the emphasis on the relational dynamics framing the interactions between the main actors involved in the proportionality test. Paradoxically, this perspective rehabilitates the analysis of the legal techniques behind transplants such as proportionality: indeed, transplants are vehicles for legal changes in ways that go beyond the circulation of ideas across the world. Instead of being merely superficial and rhetorical, transplants engage deeply with the whole gamut of institutions and actors in a legal system, calling on them to rearticulate their implied and explicit relationships.
The article introduces a research project carried out at the German Research Institute of Public Administration and the German University of Administrative Sciences Speyer. It examines the development, content and effectiveness of the written and unwritten standards of good administration drawn up within the framework of the Council of Europe (CoE).
Since the Treaty of Lisbon, trade policy has become an explicit part of the EU's external policy and integrated into the general framework of the EU´s external policy, but must also be in conformity with internal policies. Thus, trade policy is subject to a requirement of multiple coherence. Beyond constitutional obligations, other drivers work for the inclusion of non-genuine commercial policy objectives in trade policy, such as the orientation of contemporary trade politics towards the behind the border issues of national regulation, so that trade policy became closely intertwined with domestic regulatory policy. Therefore the actors primarily responsible for legislation, i.e. parliaments, advocate for their extended participation in determining trade policy, and rightly so for reasons of transparency, control and political inclusiveness. Parliaments thus become actors of respect for and positive consideration of non-commercial policy objectives in trade policy, which applies as well to the European Parliament (EP). Hence, an institutional design of policy formulation cycles and decision-making in EU trade policy that strives for better coherence of trade concerns with NTPOs must focus on strengthening the influence of the EP and improve its participatory rights in decision-making and its control and monitoring mechanisms. Consequently, the present paper derives proposals for improving EP´s monitoring mechanisms for the benefit of non-trade policy objectives (NTPOs) in trade policy from an analysis of weaknesses in the negotiation and implementation stage of trade policy.
Public Finance
(2021)
Digital technologies often have a dual-use nature, which means they can be used for both civil and military purposes. For instance, object recognition software can be used for auto-nomous civil driving or for autonomous targeting within armed drones. Thus, their uncon-trolled proliferation may pose risks to international peace and security. Generally, export controls aim to mitigate these risks while avoiding unreasonable restrictions on global trade and development. The novelty of digital dual-use items and the dynamics of their transfer pose new challenges for the international export control system and raise critical legal questions under international law. Does international law hold export control rules that sufficiently address the broad spectrum of relevant digital dual-use items and their rapid technological advancement? Furthermore, how do these rules treat the digital transfer of such items?
The presentation aims to answer these questions by, first, carving out the relevant inter-national export control rules. Secondly, the application of these rules to the digital dual-use items and their international transfer is analyzed. Finally, to the extent that the applicability is affirmed, the presentation will examine the international export control law’s requirements to the international transfer of digital dual-use items.
For centuries, export control regulations have accompanied the development of new weapon technologies. The revelations of the ‘Pegasus Project’ have put the question of whether and how to regulate the export of the new technology ‘cyberweapons’ in the limelight: Is the current international export control law up to the challenge of sufficiently regulating the proliferation of ‘cyberweapons’ or does it need an update? To answer this question, the blog post will, first, turn to the definition and relevance of ‘cyberweapons’. Secondly, international export control law is introduced as a possible measure to mitigate the risks posed by ‘cyberweapons’ against the backdrop of regulating the use of ‘cyberweapons’ or establishing a moratorium on its trade. Third, the blog post will assess the export of ‘cyberweapons’ in general and the export of Pegasus in particular within the current international export control framework. The current framework seems to touch upon partial aspects of the trade with ‘cyberweapons’. However, it stands to fear that it is not up to the task of sufficiently curtailing the proliferation of ‘cyberweapons’ and the associated risks, as it especially leaves the underlying problem of the trade with zero-day vulnerabilities untouched.
The Covid-19 pandemic is a multi-faceted crisis that challenges not only the health systems and other policy sub-systems in the single Member States, but also the European Union’s ability to provide policy responses that address the transnational nature of pandemic control as a union-wide ‘public good’ that affects health and social policies, border control and security as well as topics related to the single market. Thus, the pandemic constitutes a veritable capacity test for the EU integration project.
This article attempts to take stock of the Union’s early reaction to the first wave of the Covid-19 outbreak. After an introduction and a short note on the scope and methodology of the analysis a theoretical framework is developed. Scrutinising the pertinent literature on crisis management, we reflect the traditional hypothesis that in times of crisis the centre becomes more relevant against the background of the EU crisis management system, and discuss the role of informality in particular during the time of crisis. Against this backdrop, empirical evidence from interviews with EU officials and documents in selected policy fields (health and emergency management, digitalisation, and economic recovery) are analysed, before a discussion and conclusion complete the study.
Education plays a key role in knowledge society, since, from a meritocratic perspective, it opens up fair opportunities for well-paid jobs, thereby increasing social mobility and well-being more generally. In order to foster their economic competitiveness, cities are therefore encouraged to engage in knowledge-based urban development by trying to provide good schools and world-class universities to attract the “creative class.” However, meritocracy is a “myth,” as access to educational opportunities is itself socially biased. With the example of Heidelberg, a so-called “knowledge pearl,” we show how knowledge-institutions, such as the university, may shape socioenvironmental contexts in ways conducive to spatially selective access to—and use of—educational opportunities. Instead of reducing social polarization, knowledge-institutions may instead (re-)produce inequalities.
Policies to promote high participation in Higher Educations (HE) systems aim to deliver social justice and economic development through widening participation of under-represented groups. Degrees of Success provides a critical test of this through examination of participa-tion and success of learners progressing to HE with a vocational background.
Employing an original conceptual framework that combines the ideas of Basil Bernstein and Pierre Bourdieu the authors analyse the various transitional frictions experienced by learners with VET backgrounds on their journeys into and through the HE system. The findings indi-cate that including students with vocational qualifications does lead to widening participation but that their modes of participation may not provide fair access and outcomes. In part this is due to the epistemic incompatibilities between higher and vocational education which remain unresolved despite constant VET qualification reform.
This book, therefore, extends the debate about widening participation beyond metaphors of barriers to access to consider the epistemic and pedagogical challenges of increasing student heterogeneity in high participation HE systems. The analysis and policy suggestions therefore have relevance for all seeking to support students' HE learning journeys, and policy makers concerned with how best to utilise HE systems as means of furthering social mobility and justice.
It has become a truism that the Internet gives a range of private actors, such as social media, substantial power. They are thus able to control the communication processes, hold considerable authority over shaping opinions, and become the arbiters of free speech. That is why legal scholars and policymakers are searching for legal tools that would ensure a fair balance between the conflicting rights of these two groups of private actors (platforms and their users).
The aim of this presentation would be to reconsider the relationship between individuals and online platforms, analyze how horizontal online conflicts may be resolved (giving examples of some national legislation and EU proposal concerning digital services), and answer the question if the discretion of the platforms can be limited in order to protect rights and freedoms. The theoretical framework of the analysis would be the doctrine of the State’s positive obligations, as established in the current European Court of Human Rights case law.
The main argument would be that it is necessary to strengthen the public supervision over Internet platforms, in particular the way they resolve horizontal conflicts. The possibility of limiting their discretion, in order to provide individual protection, does not mean however creating the unlimited right of access to the platform in order to express any opinion or view (freedom of forum).
Academic freedom is currently under pressure. The most obvious cases in Europe are those of Hungary and Poland, where the state interferes directly in core academic issues by chan-ging the laws. More generally, research and teaching are at risk in European democracies. Except in Hungary and Poland, this is not only due to political constraints: society itself seems to have lost its trust in science. Scientific results are declared “fake news” and students and lecturers are not allowed to discuss social, gender or integration issues (keyword: “trigger warning”). Such threats to research and teaching curb scientific autonomy directly and indirectly.
Universities in Germany and other countries have recently undergone comprehensive reforms: they are expected to contribute to social development through exchange with external actors. These exchanges are commonly termed “third mission”. In this context knowledge and technology transfer can prove to be particularly critical to academic freedom, because market logic and economically rational behaviour may lead to goals in conflict with the institutional logic of scientific communities.
Is academic freedom threatened? The book examines current challenges to academic freedom in Europe, focusing mainly on Italy and Germany.
The cases discussed demonstrate that research and teaching are under pressure in Euro-pean democracies: in Hungary and Poland due to political constraints, in other countries due to societal expectations. Considering different interrelated aspects, the four parts of the book explore many real and potential threats to universities, scientific institutions and researchers, ranging from the European dimension of freedom of the arts and sciences to comparative analysis of emerging challenges to academic freedom against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic. They highlight threats to university autonomy from the economic orientation of university governance, which emphasizes efficiency, competition, and external evaluation, and from new rules concerning trigger warnings, speech restrictions, and ethics commissions.
Detailed study of these complex threats is intended to stimulate scholarly reflection and elicit serious discussion at European and national level. The volume contributes to the search for a new role of universities and scientific institutions and is addressed to academics and political stakeholders.
The notion of civil service in Europe: establishing an analytical framework for comparative study
(2021)
Comparative study of the employment regimes of public officials in European countries requires an appropriate analytical framework, including definitions. This blog entry explores the meaning and scope of terms “civil service” and “civil servant”. It argues that a civil servant is an employee of the executive power, who has special duties and responsibilities, and should often meet specific requirements.
The hybrid EPPO structure is operating under a hybrid set of fundamental rights, thus calling into question the well-established principle of the single set of norms applicable throughout criminal proceedings. Moreover, the system is characterized by a distortion of the commonly applied logical link between liability for violations of fundamental rights and control over the actions entailing those violations. EU Member States risk being held accountable under the Convention for actions on behalf of the EPPO which they did not fully control and which were subject to a different corpus of fundamental rights. The EU, for its part, takes the risk of seeing EPPO prosecutions being invalidated by domestic courts applying a Convention protection level which may be higher than the Union level. The only way to minimize the impact of these distortions is for the EU to become a Contracting Party to the Convention, along with its own Member States. This would do away with the ambivalence of the legal framework characterizing the protection of fundamental rights under the EPPO Regulation. It would also contribute to a better implementation of the principles of the rule of law and procedural fairness, advocated by the Regulation itself. Such a move would seem all the more important in light of the fact that if the EPPO proves successful, its competence might be extended in the future to other areas.
Electoral disinformation has become one of the most challenging problems for democratic states. All of them are facing the phenomenon of - both online and offline - dissemination of false information during pre-electoral period, which is harmful for individual and collective rights. As a consequence, some European countries adopted special measures, including summary judicial proceedings in order to declare that information or materials used in elec-tioneering are false and to prohibit its further dissemination. There are already three rulings of the ECtHR concerning this expeditious judicial examination provided in the Polish law. In December 2018 France passed complex regulation against manipulation of information that include similar mechanisms. This article, basing on the ECtHR’s case law and some national experiences, attempts to define the minimal European standard for measures targeted at electoral disinformation, especially judicial summary proceeding. It contains the analysis of the notion of electoral disinformation, defines the state’s positive obligations in this sphere, and indicates mayor challenges for the legal framework. The principal argument is that summary judicial proceedings – if adequately designed – cannot be questioned from the Convention standpoint and provide a partial solution to the problem of electoral dis-information.
The history of German public procurement law is a history of attempts by the German legislator to implement the EU public procurement directives on judicial protection, namely Directive 89/665/EEC of 21 December 1989, as minimally as possible. Paradoxically, the history of German procurement law is also the history of an increased spreading of the model of judicial review in ‘competitive award procedures’ underlying Directive 89/665/EEC
to other administrative procedures.
Here, one can discern mutual fertilization of the discussions on the minimal standards for judicial protection foreseen in Directive 89/665/EEC, as well as a parallel discussion on mini-mal standards (directly derived from the German constitution) for judicial review in competi-tive award procedures concerning the recruitment of public officials.
On this basis, one may discern trends in German case law, administrative practice, and scho-larship towards developing judicial review systems in competitive award procedures for pub-lic procurement beyond the thresholds set by the EU directives. This is relevant for privati-zations, gambling licences, and procedures to grant the right to use public spaces, to name only a few. However, these trends encounter difficulties because the German General Administrative Court Procedure Act and other relevant legislation are not tailored to com-petitive award procedures. This article will analyse these different trends and suggest explanations for them.
This article asks how and why United Nations organizations reform their administrative structure and processes over time. It explores whether we can observe a convergence towards a coherent administrative model in the United Nations system. Like in most nation states, reform discussions according to models like New Public Management or post-New Public Management have permeated international public administrations. Against this background, the question of administrative convergence discussed for national administra-tive systems also arises for United Nations international public administrations. On the one hand, similar challenges, common reform ‘fashions’ and an increasing exchange within the United Nations system make convergence likely. Yet, on the other hand, distinct tasks, administrative styles and path dependencies might support divergent reform trajectories. This question of convergence is addressed by measuring the frequency, direction and rationales for reforms, using a sample of four international public administrations from the United Nations’ specialized agencies (the Food and Agriculture Organization, International Labour Organization, International Monetary Fund and World Bank). We find that conver-gence depends on the area of reform (human resources or organizational matters are more harmonized than others) and time (some international public administrations are faster or earlier than others).
Covid-19 Response in Germany
(2021)
James Midgley, Inequality, Social Protection and Social Justice. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2020
(2021)
This book review informs about an original contribution written by James Midgley with a global research agenda on social protection and egalitarian policies in light of social justice, connecting different disciplines and perspectives in a multidimensional approach. The reviewed Book manages to reflect on inequality, social protection and social justice in a transparent and rigorous manner, reviewing the relevant literature in different disciplines, predominantly using literature from economics.
Severe fiscal pressure experienced by some German municipalities has led to a shift in the way municipalities are controlled by the responsible state governments. Instead of purely relying on a system of approving budgets and borrowing, some states have established debt relief programmes which combine grants and sanctions, or even sent austerity commis-sioners who take over responsibilities of councils and mayors. Whether these are deemed proportionate and legitimate interventions into the constitutionally guaranteed administra-tive autonomy of the local level depends heavily on their success in limiting local government debt. Based on an innovative synthetic control approach, this paper undertakes an empirical assessment of a recent debt relief programme in North Rhine-Westphalia and the deploy-ment of an austerity commissioner, revealing that both instruments to some degree positive-ly impacted upon local government debt, as compared to non-intervention. Nevertheless, it finds the effect is limited in substantial terms.
Electoral Disinformation and Summary Judicial Proceedings: Is the Polish Experience Relevant?
(2021)
In Poland special summary (24-hour) judicial proceedings against electoral disinformation were introduced in 1998. Although it has been successfully used to declare that information disseminated during an electoral campaign is false, it has not attracted much attention and
is generally absent from the current legal scholarship and international reports on electoral disinformation.
Against this backdrop, the post aims to critically analyze the Polish regulatory model con-cerning summary judicial proceedings. The implications of these mechanisms become even more complex when we consider that in mid-2019 the European Court of Human Rights found Poland for the third time in breach of the right to freedom of expression (Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights) for having convicted the applicant in these extraordinary 24 -hour judicial proceedings.
The lecture explains how some of the well-established institutions of constitutional law are being questioned. It explains also how the experience of the XX-century atrocities and the emergence of the authoritarian regimes in Europe impacted on the State Theory, Political Science and Constitutionalism.
The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020 and its consequences constitute a veritable capacity test for the European Union, challenging not only the single Member States, but also the European Union’s ability to provide policy responses that address pandemic control as a union-wide “public good” in different dimensions related to inter alia public health, but also the freedom of movement or the single market.
Against this backdrop, this article attempts to take stock of the Union’s early reactions to the first wave of the Covid-19 outbreak. After a brief introduction, we reflect on crisis manage-ment theories, power distribution in the EU, and the EU’s institutionalised crisis reaction capacity. Subsequently, crisis reaction in selected policy areas in the European Union is analysed, before we finish with a concluding section. We find some evidence for the pace-making function of the Franco-German tandem in the form of informal, decentralised action, as well as for a relative weak performance of institutionalised crisis management mecha-nisms on the EU level, but instead a centralisation towards the centre in the form of the European Commission.
The present contribution analyses the Opinion 1/17 of the CJEU on CETA, which, in a surprisingly uncritical view of conceivable conflicts between the competences of the CETA Investment Tribunal on the one hand and those of the CJEU on the other hand, did not raise any objections. In first reactions, this opinion was welcomed as an extension of the EU's room for manoeuvre in investment protection. The investment court system under CETA, however, is only compatible with EU law to a certain extent, which the Court made clear in the text of the opinion, and the restrictions are likely to confine the leeway for EU external contractual relations. Due to their fundamental importance, these restrictions, derived by the CJEU from the autonomy of the Union legal order form the core subject of this contribution. In what follows, the new emphasis in the CETA opinion on the external autonomy of Union law will be analyzed first (II). Subsequently, the considerations of the CJEU on the delimitation of its competences from those of the CETA Tribunal will be critically examined. The rather superficial analysis of the CJEU in the CETA opinion is in contrast to its approach in earlier decisions as it misjudges problems and therefore only superficially leads to a clear delimitation of competences (III.). An exploration of the last part of the CJEU's autonomy analysis will follow, in which the CJEU tries to respond to the criticism of regulatory chill (IV). Here, by referring to the unhindered operation of the EU institutions in accordance with their constitutional framework, the CJEU identifies the new restrictions for investment protection mechanisms just mentioned, which takes back the previous comprehensive affirmation of jurisdiction of the CETA Tribunal in one point and which raises many questions about its concrete significance, consequence, and scope of application.