Latest blog articles
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Questions surrounding how the EU budget is spent or audited have been, and will always be, of interest to EU citizens. Formally, the responsibility for the implementation of the budget rests with the Commission, but it is well known that the Member States have a crucial role to play, especially in...
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On 4 March 2021, Italy decided to block a shipment of the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine that was destined for Australia. This remarkable move, notably made in response to AstraZeneca’s delay in providing the agreed doses of vaccines by the set deadlines, is the first of its kind since the...
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On the 9th of February, the Dutch Supreme Court ruled that forcing suspects to provide access to their smartphone with a fingerprint is not a breach of the privilege against self-incrimination. The case originated from an ex officio appeal ‘in the interest of the law’ in a case of the Court of North...
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The Digital Services Act (‘DSA’) is part of the long-awaited package aimed at providing a transparency and accountability framework for online platforms and laying down additional duties for large providers with gatekeeping powers. There is surely a lot to unpack in this hefty proposal. This piece...
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The very recent ruling of the CJEU in DK (C-653/19 PPU, 28 November 2019) came to verify two quite depressing suspicions about the current status of European criminal law. First, Directive 2016/343 on the presumption of innocence remains an instrument with staggeringly limited applicability...
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National laws or ‘legal traditions’ are not the main obstacle to realising the ideal of ‘effective legal assistance’ embedded in the EU procedural rights’ Directives. The resistance to realising this ideal originates mainly from the professional cultures of relevant actors, including criminal...
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Legislative enactments and court decisions, together with social-historical events, provide the causal mechanisms that enable scholars to trace the evolution of ownership paradigms in different jurisdictions. In addition, shifts in ownership paradigms result from the circulation and flow of legal...
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Those of you who were old enough to follow news headlines in the 90’s will probably remember this quote. For those of you who don’t: it is a famous phrase used by the defence team of O.J. Simpson in an – as would later turn out: successful – attempt to convince the jury of O.J.’s innocence.
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Flashy guys who work on the Zuidas, live in luxury penthouses and tear around in the latest Teslas and Jaguars – and all at the expense of ‘the ordinary man’ who they laughingly charge exorbitant hourly rates. This image of lawyers appears to be fairly persistent. But it has very little to do with...