The Rise of Three Rs Centres and Platforms in Europe*

Public awareness and discussion about animal experiments and replacement methods has greatly increased in recent years. The term 'the Three Rs', which stands for the Replacement, Reduction and Refinement of animal experiments, is inseparably linked in this context. A common goal within the Three Rs scientific community is to develop predictive non-animal models and to better integrate all available data from in vitro, in silico and omics technologies into regulatory decision-making processes regarding, for example, the toxicity of chemicals, drugs or food ingredients. In addition, it is a general concern to implement (human) non-animal methods in basic research. Toward these efforts, there has been an ever-increasing number of Three Rs centres and platforms established over recent years - not only to develop novel methods, but also to disseminate knowledge and help to implement the Three Rs principles in policies and education. The adoption of Directive 2010/63/EU on the protection of animals used for scientific purposes gave a strong impetus to the creation of Three Rs initiatives, in the form of centres and platforms. As the first of a series of papers, this article gives an overview of the European Three Rs centres and platforms, and their historical development. The subsequent articles, to be published over the course of ATLA's 50th Anniversary year, will summarise the current focus and tasks as well as the future and the plans of the Three Rs centres and platforms. The Three Rs centres and platforms are very important points of contact and play an immense role in their respective countries as 'on the ground' facilitators of Directive 2010/63/EU. They are also invaluable for the widespread dissemination of information and for promoting implementation of the Three Rs in general

The role of economics in ecosystem based management:The case of the EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive; first lessons learnt and way forward

The EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) sets out a plan of action relating to marine environmental policy and in particular to achieving ‘good environmental status’ (GES) in European marine waters by 2020. Article 8.1 (c) of the Directive calls for ‘an economic and social analysis of the use of those waters and of the cost of degradation of the marine environment’. The MSFD is ‘informed’ by the Ecosystem Approach to management, with GES interpreted in terms of ecosystem functioning and services provision. Implementation of the Ecosystem Approach is expected to be by adaptive management policy and practice. The initial socio-economic assessment was made by maritime EU Member States between 2011 and 2012, with future updates to be made on a regular basis. For the majority of Member States, this assessment has led to an exercise combining an analysis of maritime activities both at national and coastal zone scales, and an analysis of the non-market value of marine waters. In this paper we examine the approaches taken in more detail, outline the main challenges facing the Member States in assessing the economic value of achieving GES as outlined in the Directive and make recommendations for the theoretically sound and practically useful completion of the required follow-up economic assessments specified in the MSFD

Towards a European Area of Higher Education: Change and Convergence in European Higher Education

history; Europeanization

Fragmentation or cooperation in global resource governance? A comparative analysis of the raw materials strategies of the G20

"Developments in the metals and minerals markets are creating great challenges for industries and governments. Prices have risen sharply over the past decade, with strong fluctuations. In many metal markets supply and demand are highly concentrated, with deposits localized in a handful of countries and production in the hands of just two or three companies. Increasingly frequent state intervention and speculative tendencies produce a situation where market mechanisms often fail to function satisfactorily. These challenges cannot be tackled by national action alone. Rather, in the worst case, political measures that appear rational for a single country may generate collectively negative outcomes at the global level. However, multilateral governance initiatives for minerals and metals are virtually non-existent. Differences between the G20 states concerning interests, economic frameworks, goals, and instruments stand in the way of effective international raw materials governance. That is the starting point for this study, which sets out to explore the opportunities and challenges for greater international cooperation by systematically analyzing the raw materials situations, strategies, and instruments of the G20 states. 'Fragmentation or Cooperation in Global Resource Governance?' is a collaboration between the SWP and the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR)." (author's abstract

Data Privacy and Dignitary Privacy: Google Spain, the Right To Be Forgotten, and the Construction of the Public Sphere

The 2014 decision of the European Court of Justice in Google Spain controversially held that the fair information practices set forth in European Union (EU) Directive 95/46/EC (Directive) require that Google remove from search results links to websites that contain true information. Google Spain held that the Directive gives persons a “right to be forgotten.” At stake in Google Spain are values that involve both privacy and freedom of expression. Google Spain badly analyzes both. With regard to the latter, Google Spain fails to recognize that the circulation of texts of common interest among strangers makes possible the emergence of a “public” capable of forming the “public opinion” that is essential for democratic self-governance. As the rise of American newspapers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries demonstrates, the press underwrites the public sphere by creating a structure of communication both responsive to public curiosity and independent of the content of any particular news story. Google, even though it is not itself an author, sustains the contemporary virtual public sphere by creating an analogous structure of communication. With regard to privacy values, EU law, like the laws of many nations, recognizes two distinct forms of privacy. The first is data privacy, which is protected by the fair information practices contained in the Directive. These practices regulate the processing of personal information to ensure (among other things) that such information is used only for the specified purposes for which it has been legally gathered. Data privacy operates according to an instrumental logic, and it seeks to endow persons with “control” over their personal data. Data subjects need not demonstrate harm in order to establish violations of data privacy. The second form of privacy recognized by EU law is dignitary privacy. Article 7 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union protects the dignity of persons by regulating inappropriate communications that threaten to degrade, humiliate, or mortify them. Dignitary privacy follows a normative logic designed to prevent harm to personality caused by the violation of civility rules. There are the same privacy values as those safeguarded by the American tort of public disclosure of private facts. Throughout the world, courts protect dignitary privacy by balancing the harm that a communication may cause to personality against legitimate public interests in the communication. The instrumental logic of data privacy is inapplicable to public discourse, which is why the Directive contains derogations for journalistic activities. The communicative action characteristic of the public sphere is made up of intersubjective dialogue, which is antithetical both to the instrumental rationality of data privacy and to its aspiration to ensure individual control of personal information. Because the Google search engine underwrites the public sphere in which public discourse takes place, Google Spain should not have applied fair information practices to Google searches. But the Google Spain opinion also invokes Article 7, and in the end the decision creates doctrinal rules that are roughly approximate to those used to protect dignitary privacy. The Google Spain opinion is thus deeply confused about the kind of privacy it wishes to protect. It is impossible to ascertain whether the decision seeks to protect data privacy or dignitary privacy. Google Spain is ultimately pushed in the direction of dignitary privacy because data privacy is incompatible with public discourse, whereas dignitary privacy may be reconciled with the requirements of public discourse. Insofar as freedom of expression is valued because it fosters democratic self-government, public discourse cannot serve as an effective instrument of self-determination without a modicum of civility. Yet the Google Spain decision recognizes dignitary privacy only in a rudimentary and unsatisfactory way. If it had more clearly focused on the requirements of dignitary privacy, Google Spain would not so sharply have distinguished Google links from the underlying websites to which they refer. Google Spain would not have blithely outsourced the enforcement of the right to be forgotten to a private corporation like Google