British Balance of Competence Reviews, Part I: ‘Competences about right, so far’. EPIN Working Paper No. 35, October 2013

The first in a series for a CEPS-EPIN project entitled “The British Question and the Search for a Fresh European Narrative” this paper is pegged on an ambitious ongoing exercise by the British government to review all the competences of the European Union. The intention is that this should provide a basis for informed debate before the referendum on the UK remaining in the EU or not, which is scheduled for 2017. This paper summarises the first six reviews, each of which runs to around 80 pages, covering foreign policy, development policy, taxation, the single market, food safety, and public health. The present authors then add their own assessments of these materials. While understandably giving due place to British interests, they are of general European relevance. The substantive conclusions of this first set of reviews are that the competences of the EU are judged by respondents to be ‘about right’ on the whole, which came as a surprise to eurosceptic MPs and the tabloid media. Our own view is that the reviews are objective and impressively researched, and these populist complaints are illustrating the huge gap between the views of informed stakeholders and general public opinion, and therefore also the hazard of subjecting the ‘in or out’ choice for decision by referendum. If the referendum is to endorse the UK’s continuing membership there will have to emerge some fresh popular narratives about the EU. The paper therefore concludes with some thoughts along these lines, both for the UK and the EU as a whole

"Europeanisation", Cultural Policy and Identity: Debates, Discourses and Actions

Arts, Education & Law Group, School of Humanities, Languages and Social SciencesNo Full Tex

The EU policy pattern in enforcement of IP rights

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The Brussels Effect

This Article examines the unprecedented and deeply underestimated global power that the EU is exercising through its legal institutions and standards, and how it successfully exports that influence to the rest of the world. Without the need to use international institutions or seek other nations\u27 cooperation, the EU has a strong and growing ability to promulgate regulations that become entrenched in the legal frameworks of developed and developing markets alike, leading to a notable Europeanization of many important aspects of global commerce. The Article identifies the precise conditions for and the specific mechanism through which this externalization of EU\u27s standards unfolds. Enhanced understanding of these conditions and this mechanism helps explain why the EU is currently the only jurisdiction that can wield unilateral influence across a number of areas of law – ranging from antitrust and privacy to health and environmental regulation – and why the markets, other states, and international institutions can do little to constrain Europe\u27s global regulatory power

This Content is Unavailable in Your Geographic Region: The United States\u27 and the European Union\u27s Implementation of Anti-Circumvention Measures

Recently, people streaming movies and TV shows have begun to use virtual private networks (VPNs) to access content that streaming services restrict to certain geographic regions. Because of the ambiguity in international law and the implementation of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Copyright Treaty, domestic law fails to offer streaming services a recourse to sue foreign VPN users. The WIPO Copyright Treaty established an anti-circumvention provision that would seem to apply to using VPNs to stream from other countries. But because of the provision\u27s ambiguity, many of the WIPO Copyright Treaty member countries have adopted different standards. This problem is exemplified by the United States and the European Union (EU). The United States adopted the Digital Millennium Copyright Act from the WIPO Copyright Treaty\u27s language, but the US circuit courts have split on whether circumventing a technological measure requires a connection to an infringement of US copyright law. Similarly, the EU member countries have also split on whether their respective domestic laws require a connection to domestic infringement. This has resulted in varying regimes, harming the WIPO Copyright Treaty\u27s goal of harmonizing international copyright law. But if the United States were to adopt the Austrian implementation of this treaty provision, the United States would take steps toward fulfilling the WIPO Copyright Treaty\u27s goal of harmonization. Specifically, - the United States should adopt a statute that creates liability for circumventing a technological measure for the purposes of streaming a copyrighted work