(1798-1872). Dutch liberal statesman. Drafted the 1848 revision of the Dutch Constitution that established the parliamentary system.

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 development of a European public sphere by forcing the discussion on European issues in isolated national public spheres.

The Italian Supreme Court of Cassation sez. I Civile, case n. 10300/20 (registered on May 29th), puts a hold on the proliferation of copyright protection and reasons that technical writings by lawyers - when functional to the provision of typical forensic services - cannot be protected. An attorney drafted anti-counterfeiting Regulation –containing critically acclaimed and extremely innovative content – is neither a work of authorship nor is sufficiently original.

On 16 July 2020, the Court of Justice (Court) handed down its judgment on the long-anticipated Schrems II case. The saga began with Schrems I case, in which the Court ruled upon an Adequacy Decision, the EU-US Safe Harbour Decision, which aim was to facilitate the transfer of personal data to the United States, subjected to the participation of the US business in the scheme. The Court showed its teeth and declared the EU-US Safe Harbour Decision invalid.

A few weeks ago, I predicted on this blog that 16 July 2020 would be the most important day of the year, for privacy professionals, because of an expected judgment of the Grand Chamber of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). And I must say: the Court did not disappoint. 16 July has come and gone, and the international privacy community has its work cut out for the coming weeks. In his verdict, the CJEU has invalidated the EU-U.S. agreement known as the Privacy Shield, and has put severe restrictions on the use of the so-called Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs), thus making international data flows a lot more difficult.

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is arguably one of the biggest crises of modern times. The conflict between the search for a vaccine, and the artificial scarcity created by patent law, has created a catch-22 situation. How will patent law apply to a vaccine under these circumstances?

During the European Council this week all eyes are, again, on the negotiations for the future European Union (EU) budget. Analysts tended to focus mainly on two things. First, the evolution of the sums of money that will be agreed on for the future European Recovery Plan & next Multi-Annual Financial Framework. Second, the opposition of the so-called “Frugal four” and their desire for adopting a scaled down budget and attaching more conditions to EU money before being disbursed to hard-hit countries, such as Italy and Spain. However, other aspects are neglected and would require more in-depth discussion. European, national and sub-national authorities are facing other challenges in spending and implementing the more than 2 billion EUR recovery package. This article argues that issues of strategic vision (e.g. intertwining the Next Generation EU with the MFF logic of EU funds), absorption and administrative capacity need prioritising in order to manage the post-covid aid process. Not dealing with these aspects more thoroughly will affect what could be done for a medium- and long-term recovery plan. The blog ends with several brief recommendations for policy-makers, stakeholders and citizens.   

In the aftermath of the surge in COVID-19 related government support to businesses and just days after UK Brexit negotiators announced not to extend the deadline for the ongoing negotiations with the European Union, the European Commission launched its “White Paper on levelling the playing field as regards foreign subsidies” on 17 June 2020.

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 feels like a game of roulette.

Several pharmaceutical companies all around the world, including in the European Union (EU), have been racing to find a treatment for the virus. Since these may be subject to patent rights, government intervention may be needed.