In the name of identity. EUMA Paper Vol. 7, No. 8, June 2010

[From the Introduction]. In order to establish an accurate perception of the complex European identity, one must first examine the legal element that constitutes a European citizen: citizenship. European citizenship developed in stages during the entire process of European integration. At the Copenhagen summit in 1973, a paper on European identity was issued and at the Paris summit in 1974, the question of a ‘citizens’ Europe’ arose officially. The heads of state and government agreed on the establishment of special rights, in order to bring political and civil rights acknowledged by the European Community (EC) closer to rights traditionally acknowledge to the national citizens.6 In 1984, at the European Council of Fontainebleau, an ad hoc Committee was set up to address issues relating to a ‘people’s Europe’. The Adonnino Committee published two reports concerning the enlargement of economic rights, and the establishment of new rights to bring Europe closer to the citizens; the Committee put forward proposals on rights of citizens, culture, youth, exchange, health, social security, free movement of people, town twinning, and symbols of EC identity:7 The European passport, the European flag, the European anthem, which are elements of citizenship traditionally linked to nation-states, were adopted in order to increase the awareness of the EC as a new political actor, and foster the feeling of belonging to the Community.8 Moreover, exchange programs for students and professors were created to favor an open-minded European culture through mobility.9 In 1986, the Single European Act (Article 8A) clearly referred to the right of free circulation of people by granting Europeans substantial rights of movement. While the aforementioned initiatives paved the road for European citizenship, the formal meaning of said citizenship was explicitly composed in the Treaty of Maastricht (1992): in addition to granting political rights, it also constitutionalized existing rights that were part of the acquis communautaire, and establishing new rights for European citizens.1

The cartography of computational search spaces

This talk will present our recent findings and visual (static and animated) maps characterising combinatorial and computer program search spaces. We seek to lay the foundations for a new perspective to understand problem structure and improve heuristic search algorithms: search space cartography.   Heuristic methods operate by searching a large space of candidate solutions. The search space can be regarded as a spatial structure where each point (candidate solution) has a height (objective or fitness value) forming a fitness landscape surface. The performance of search algorithms crucially depends on the fitness landscape structure, and the study of landscapes offers an alternative to problem understanding where realistic formulations and algorithms can be analysed.   Most fitness landscapes analysis techniques study the local structure of search spaces. Our recently proposed model, Local Optima Networks, helps to study instead their global structure. This graph-based model provides fundamental new insight into the structural organisation and the connectivity pattern of a search space with given move operators.  Most importantly, it allows us to visualise realistic search spaces in ways not previously possible and brings a whole new set of network metrics for characterising them. Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

The Carbon Tax Vacuum and the Debate about Climate Change Impacts: Emission Taxation of Commodity Crop Production in Food System Regulation

The scientific consensus on climate change is far ahead of U.S. policy on point. In fact, the U.S. has a legal vacuum of carbon taxation while climate change continues to impact the codependence of agriculture and the environment. As this Article shows, carbon taxes follow the polluter-pays model, levying taxes on the highest greenhouse gas (“GHG”) emissions—and contributions to climate change. But this is not only unsustainable; it would also undermine agricultural production and, thus, food security. This Article describes how the law can regulate climate change contributions and promote adaptation and mitigation supported through carbon taxes in the agricultural sector, twenty percent of GHG contributions will be left untouched, jeopardizing the future of U.S. food production at the environment’s expense. This Article reveals new avenues of climate change adaptation and mitigation through carbon taxation of genetically modified (“GMO”) commodity crops to bring the carbon tax to a previously overlooked contributor to climate change: intensive agriculture. However, adapting to and mitigating the effects of climate change, such as extreme weather events, droughts, and floods, can only be accomplished through concerted efforts of various industries, governments, and the public like cap-and-trade or carbon tax schemes imposing blanket limits on GHG emissions

Pesticide and mycotoxin contamination of organic products and strategies for prevention

Consumers generally expect organic food to be produced ecologically and in a way in which they can trust. They further expect it to be healthy, and not or less contaminated with pesticides and/or mycotoxins

A Window of Opportunity for GMO Regulation: Achieving Food Integrity Through Cap-and-Trade Models from Climate Policy for GMO Regulation

GMOs are the links of our centralized food system, largely dependent on international trade. GMOs are inherently unsustainable because they reduce biodiversity, harm the environment, and empower positive feedback loops between monocultures, industrial agriculture, and biodiversity depletion, thereby jeopardizing food safety, security, and sovereignty. Conglomerates of multi-national companies, in short BigAg, shape multi-lateral food trade and flood international markets with their small array and enormous volumes of crops, while controlling large aspects of agriculture and food production world-wide. Zooming in on the trans-Atlantic dispute about GE crops, this paper uses comparative law to explore how a cap-and-trade model borrowed from climate change policy might help to decentralize the current food system, thereby potentially restoring locally-oriented agriculture and food integrity. GMOs are under-regulated in the US and international trade frameworks enable the centralization of trans-Atlantic food systems, dominated by the US. This is possible because of the free trade/biotechnology policy in the US and the agricultural exceptionalism, which are, in theory, obstacles to food integrity. By comparison, the precautionary and protectionist approaches in the EU facilitate some food integrity, albeit not enough as a result of US trade pressures. The pressures could be partially lifted if there were a cap on those crops that enable the centralization of the system, namely GE crops patented and produced by US-American BigAg conglomerates. Essentially, when GE corn, soy, wheat, rice were capped in permissible trade volumes, other non-GE crops may enter the market, thereby diversifying and decentralizing food systems, encouraging local agriculture, and opening pathways where more sustainable practices could be instituted. In an effort to contextualize the herein proposed cap-and-trade upstream model regulation of GMOs borrowed from climate change policy, this paper explains the distinctions between GE and conventionally bred crops, between agriculture and food law, between the US free trade and the EU protectionism approaches (including the bedrocks of each legal framework) to trading GE crops, as well as the inherent dangers of the widespread use of GMOs in the trans-Atlantic food system. A likely conclusion of this paper will be that a cap-and-trade model, as proposed, may take decades to be passed into law, if ever, but it also highlights that the links between preserving food integrity, mitigating climate change, and maintaining open food trade are ripe for progressive and pro-active review