The New Political Economy of EU State Aid Policy

Despite its importance and singularity, the EU’s state aid policy has attracted less scholarly attention than other elements of EU competition policy. Introducing the themes addressed by the special issue, this article briefly reviews the development of EU policy and highlights why the control of state aid matters. The Commission’s response to the current economic crisis notably in banking and the car industry is a key concern, but the interests of the special issue go far beyond. They include: the role of the European Commission in the development of EU policy, the politics of state aid, and a clash between models of capitalism. The special issue also examines the impact of EU policy. It investigates how EU state aid decisions affect not only industrial policy at the national level (and therefore at the EU level), but the welfare state and territorial relations within federal member states, the external implications of EU action and the strategies pursued by the Commission to limit any potential disadvantage to European firms, and the conflict between the EU’s expanding legal order and national

The external action paradox of the Lisbon treaty: reconciling integration with delimitation

Ever since its creation the CFSP constituted a deliberately separate category of EU cooperation. The Lisbon Treaty largely undoes this and takes a significant leap towards integrating the CFSP and former Community elements in a streamlined external action system. It abolishes the pillar structure, accords a single legal personality to the Union and puts in place a common external action framework governed by a single set of principles and objectives. Yet, at the same time the CFSP remains overtly separate from the other external competences and is still governed by specific rules and procedures. This concurrent emphasis on integration and delimitation places the Union for a genuine paradox that may put the accountability of the Lisbon Treaty’s institutional novelties significantly to the test and force the EU judiciary as well as policy-makers to look for creative ways of adjudicating on and conducting external policy

Security cooperation, counterterrorism, and EU–North Africa cross-border security relations, a legal perspective

The EU is clearly in the process of developing an external dimension to the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ). This paper focuses on ex. Police and Judicial Cooperation in Criminal Matters (PJCCM) provisions. These developments pose specific legal basis issues for the EU, given its complex EU–member state legal relationship, and the inter-institutional balance, all reflected in the treaty framework post-Lisbon. New Court of Justice rulings are now emerging which will assist in this issue. Equally the approach to be taken in developing these relationships will be crucial. This paper proposes the adoption of an Onuf style constructivism in order to best capture the reality of the process that is developing, and has developed for the ex. PJCCM measures internally. This then needs to be allied with a constitutionalism model to ensure a balanced development of all three aspects of the AFSJ

The autonomy of EU law and international investment arbitration

This article argues that, in the context of international investment law, the principle of autonomy need not be construed as broadly as the recent judgment in Achmea may appear to suggest. The Court’s approach in this case is formalist, inward-looking and hostile to the harmonious co-existence between EU and international law. The article argues, however, that this conception of autonomy ought to be confined to the specific legal and policy context of investment agreements between Member States of the Union. A careful reading of Achmea supports such a view. There are, also, sound conceptual, legal, and policy reasons that militate for a more open approach to autonomy when it comes to the Union’s trade agreements with third countries

Market Integration and Public Services in the European Union – Edited by M. Cremona

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/91174/1/j.1468-5965.2012.02247_2.x.pd

The EU’s competence to conclude trade agreements: the EU-Singapore Opinion

A definitive reassessment of the constitutional, economic, institutional and judicial dimensions of the EU internal market, including Brexit