Distinguishing between use and abuse of EU free movement law : evaluating use of the 'Europe-route' for family reunification to overcome reverse discrimination

Equality is a fundamental principle of EU law but protection of the Member States’ competence to regulate their own nationals’ legal position, anchored in the division of competences, may cause inequality among citizens. Reverse discrimination occurs when EU citizens who reside in their own Member State and are in a purely internal situation are subject to the law of this Member State, while EU citizens who fall within the scope of EU law through the use of free movement rights benefit from more lenient EU rules. Both equality among EU Member States and the division of competences are important principles of EU constitutionalism. Proposed remedies should, therefore, fit within the constitutional system of the EU. In its case-law, the Court makes EU citizenship rights more accessible and empowers EU citizens to change the legal regime that applies to them by moving across a border. This case-law opens up a possibility to circumvent national immigration law. This Article inquires whether the use of EU law for this purpose should be considered to be abuse of law. In addition, it discusses the role of the European Convention on Human Rights in the protection of families, when EU law does not apply. The first part of the Article discusses the constitutional background in which reverse discrimination and family reunification are situated. The second part studies the concept of abuse of law in the context of EU citizenship and the question when family reunification on the basis of EU law can be classified as such, as well as the implications thereof

Future Trends in Nutrient Export to the Coastal Waters of South America: Implications for Occurrence of Eutrophication

We analyze future trends in nutrient export to the coastal waters of South America, with a special focus on the causes of nutrient export and their potential effects. Nutrient Export from Watersheds (NEWS) model results for South America are presented, including trends in human activities and the associated river export of nutrients for the period 1970–2050. For 25 areas in coastal waters of South America where eutrophication or hypoxia has been observed, we investigate how these relate to NEWS model output. For selected watersheds we discuss the causes of increased nutrient loadings of rivers and future trends as projected by the NEWS model

Nutrients Export by Rivers to the Coastal Waters of Africa: Past and Future trends

We analyze past and future trends in nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and carbon (C) export by rivers to the coastal waters of Africa as calculated by the Global Nutrient Export to WaterShed (NEWS) models for the period 1970–2050. Between 1970 and 2000 the total nutrient export by African rivers increased by 10–80%. For future years (2000–2050) we calculate an increase in the total loads of dissolved forms of N and P, but decreasing trends for dissolved organic C and particulate forms of N and P. There are large regions that deviate from these pan-African trends. We explore the regional patterns and the underlying processes, in particular for the Nile, Zaire, Niger, and Zambezi. In the future, anthropogenic sources may, in large parts of Africa, become larger contributors to riverine nutrient loads than natural source

Trapped electrons in the quantum degenerate regime

A full strength Coulomb interaction between trapped electrons can be felt only in absence of a neutralizing background. In order to study quantum degenerate electrons without such a background, an external trap is needed to compensate for the strong electronic repulsion. As a basic model for such a system, we study a trapped electron pair in a harmonic trap with an explicit inclusion of its Coulomb interaction. We find the eigenenergy of the ground state, confirming earlier work in the context of harmonium. We extend this to a complete set of properly scaled energies for any value of the trapping strength, including the excited states. The problem is solved either numerically or by making harmonic approximations to the potential. As function of the trapping strength a crossover can be made from the strongly to the weakly-coupled regime, and we show that in both regimes perturbative methods based on a pair-wise electron description would be effective for a many-particle trapped electron system, which resembles a Wigner crystal in the ground state of the strongly coupled limit.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure

God's kingdom in the law's republic: Religious Freedom In South African Constitutional Jurisprudence

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