Latest blog articles

  • In a reaction to an EJIL: Talk! post by Baetens et al., Arcuri et al. claim that the Dutch parliament has the right to reject CETA and also argue in favour of it doing so. The post by Arcuri et al. raises important points that merit further discussion, among legal academics and practitioners...

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    in Law
  • In a piece published on the Spectator’s website on the 3d October, Steven Barret erroneously argues that the EU cannot sue the UK.

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    in Law
  • On Friday 31 July, the Cypriot parliament voted against the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) with Canada. This latest development in the ratification process of CETA illustrates perfectly how facultative mixity continuously frustrates our collective interest in seeing the...

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    in Law
  • After an exhausting few months in the ‘COVID-19 era’—as we can call it now—after months of hard work and the stress of dealing with a pandemic, everybody is looking to take a break during the summer. But unlike in recent years when we could plan our summer vacation months in advance, this year it...

  • Sometimes cases come along in which several unusual suspects come together. JF v EUCAP Somalia (T-194/20), for which the notification was published last Monday in the Official Journal, is one of them. In this case, a British national’s contract with the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP)...

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    in Law
  • It feels sometimes as if the whole world of science is working exclusively on finding a cure for COVID-19. If you are looking at the search for an effective vaccine, it was recently published in The New York Times that more than 130 vaccine candidates are currently in the pipeline, which is still...

  • In the current phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, countries across Europe are fortunately seeing a decrease in detected infections, hospital admissions and deaths. This is the effect of lockdown policies with different elements but with the common denominator of social distancing, travel restrictions...

  • With every month, every week that passes, we’re seeing the publication of more and more medical data and studies on COVID-19. A friend of mine who is the editor of a very reputable international medical journal told me recently that they get more than 100 submissions per day that involve research on...

  • After the press conference last Tuesday, we now know that the restrictions on our lives will only be slightly lifted in an attempt to slowly and carefully return to something we once called ‘normal life’. The Netherlands is also choosing an approach that epidemiologists are calling ‘the hammer and...

  • Everyone agrees that we are living in a very special time, to say the least, in a situation that none of us has ever experienced. We are also exposed to news articles and opinions on a daily basis that discuss the way forward and the decisions to be taken. Should the (partial) lockdown of the...