Latest blog articles
-
Our pensionland is in a state of flux; especially when it comes to the regulation of cross-border pensions. On 17 January, the Lower House debated the Future Pensions Act (WTP). It is surprising that in the more than 100 hours of parliamentary debates and many hundreds of pages of parliamentary...
-
What does the term ‘MOCCA’ evoke in your mind, a kind of coffee or a specific brand? This Kat randomly asked this question to her friends currently at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition Munich. Most of them regarded ‘MOCCA’ as a kind of coffee instead of a specific brand except...
-
Nobuki Yamamoto, a Japanese contemporary artist, made an eye-catching work of ‘goldfish swimming in a phone booth’ (‘Work 1’) by December 2000 at the latest. In October 2011, a student organisation called ‘Goldfish Club’ at Kyoto University of Art and Design produced Work 2 and exhibited it for a...
-
Recently, Chanel Co., Ltd. lost a trade mark infringement case regarding its ‘Double C’ logo in China. The full text of the decision can be visited via here (Google translatable). The case has drawn wide attention and, mostly, negative comments. Does this seemingly-counterintuitive loss indeed, well...
-
My message is, however, that next to the main lines of law’s contents, law students should learn about the ways in which law affects society and its participants. In this connection, they should study selected topics from sociology, but also – and that is the main message here – the cognitive...
-
Towards electronic data exchange within the EU: removing administrative obstacles
The increasingly developed electronic data exchange within the European Union could remove the administrative hurdles to the exercise of the European freedoms of movement and cross-border mobility, such as the life... -
A little bit of provocation sharpens the mind. Let me therefore start with a provocative thesis: Most lawyers have no idea what law is.
-
Is there such a thing as ‘European private law’? In my opinion there is not, just as there is no Dutch, French, English, or Chinese private law. Let me explain. Legal rules, including rules of private law, have many characteristics.
-
Have you ever considered of enjoying your retirement elsewhere, perhaps in a sunnier European destination? (Dutch only)
-
At the start of this academic year, on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, I was asked to participate in a debate here in Maastricht on “borders”: the frontiers that surround us here in the southernmost part of the country to the east, west and south.