Latest blog articles

Albert Camus famously wrote that ‘life is the sum of all your choices.’ Private lawyers could not agree more. At the core of private law lies the idea that individuals are allowed to know better than the State.

They say that one cannot have one’s cake and eat it – a rather well-known adage which the proponents of the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union were determined to disprove. This article is only available in Dutch.

The difficult thing about the Brexit referendum and the events that followed in the United Kingdom is that the instrument of a referendum, in all its simplicty, may have undemocratic consequences... This blog is only available in Dutch. 

How should we describe last week's situation, when the Canadians headed home after the Walloons torpedoed CETA? ... This blog is only available in Dutch. 

It took quite a while before the European countries realized and recognized that the influx from asylum-seekers via the Mediterranean Sea and Turkey into the European Union is not just a matter of controlling the outside borders of the Union, but also a humanitarian and human rights issue. Some...

This year we have witnessed an extraordinary and tragic series of events. Hundreds of thousands of migrants have tried to cross the Mediterranean to reach Europe. The UN estimates that over 2,500 people have lost their lives in the process. In the last few weeks, the focus has shifted to the EU’s...

After months of media bombardment about ostensibly lazy Greeks who are unwilling to pay their taxes or their debts to the fellow countries of the Eurozone, the latter of which generously helped Greece out of its self-inflicted dire financial straits, many in Europe have breathed a collective sigh of...

In a short memo, published on 22 March, the Dutch Liberal Party (VVD) expressed its view on how to handle the increasing number of asylum claims in the Netherlands, and more broadly in the EU, as well as the continuously tragic events concerning refugees that occur at the external borders of the EU...

Prof. Dr. Jan Smits on the David Cameron’s long awaited speech on the future of Europe.