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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.
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.
It has long been a commonplace that the European Union forms a community of law and that the principle of “integration through law” is one of its central characteristics. In view of the growing scope and complexity of Union law, which requires ever new adaptations from the Member States, research on the implementation of Union law, which also works empiri-cally, is gaining considerable importance. An international research project conducted at the German Research Institute for Public Administration was dedicated to the implementation and adaptation strategies of selected EU Member States. It investigated the transposition of organisational and procedural requirements for national administrations as laid down in EU directives related to environmental and energy policy. The investigation focused on various modalities of transposition: minimum transposition (“copy out”), the enactment of provisions that create obligations going beyond the requirements of the Directive (“gold-plating”) and the extension of the rules or principles of the Directive to other fields of law (“spill-over”), either by including a subject area not provided for in the Directive in the scope of application of the transposition provisions (spill-over in the narrow sense) or by fundamentally reforming a legal area on the occasion of the Directive (spill-over in the broad sense). The comparative analysis revealed a low degree of strategic use of transposition modalities. However, there is a growing awareness among Member States that they belong not only to a law community, but also to an implementation community. This is not least due to the mechanisms and procedures of intertwining Union and national action.
Seit seiner Einführung im Jahre 1970 erweist sich in Italien das abrogative Referendum als starker Reformmotor. Insbesondere nach der Schmiergeldaffäre (Tangentopoli) in den 1990er Jahren wurde in großem Ausmaß auf dieses direktdemokratische Instrument u.a. hinsichtlich des Parlamentswahlrechts zurückgegriffen. Anschließend sank nach einer Phase der intensiven Nutzung mit zunehmender Häufigkeit und Zahl von Abstimmungsvorlagen die Beteiligung, was die meisten Volksabstimmungen zum Scheitern verurteilte.
Parallel zu dieser Entwicklung hat der Verfassungsgerichtshof in ständiger Rechtsprechung eine proaktive Rolle eingenommen und ungeschriebene Regeln für die Zulässigkeit von Referenden festgelegt. Insbesondere beim abrogativen Referendum über Wahlgesetze hat sich der italienische Verfassungsgerichtshof (Corte Costituzionale) – zuletzt Anfang 2020 – entschieden gegen die Nutzung dieses direktdemokratischen Instruments zur Manipulierung von Wahlgesetzen ausgesprochen.