Monitoring and enforcement of the rule of law in the EU: rhetoric and reality

This article offers a comprehensive examination of the rationale underlying the rule of law framework adopted by the Commission in March 2014 before outlining its main features. It is argued that while the Commission’s ‘light-touch’ framework falls short of what is required to effectively address internal threats to EU values of a systemic nature, it remains preferable to the new mechanism adopted by the Council in December 2014 and which consists of holding an annual rule of law dialogue among all Member States within the Council. To make the Commission’s framework more workable and effective, which should in turn increase its ‘dissuasive potential’, a number of modest recommendations are also offered at a time where an increasing number of voices are asking the Commission to activate the first phase its new mechanism in relation to Hungary and more recently, Poland

Respect for the rule of law in the case law of the European Court of Justice: a casebook overview of key judgments since the Portuguese Judges Case

In recent years, the European Court of Justice has strengthened the rule of law as a binding value within the EU. This change is the result of several landmark rulings in the period 2018 to 2021, which should be seen in the context of the decline of the rule of law in some Member States. Professors Laurent Pech and Dimitry Kochenov unveil a profound change of the EU as a constitutional system

Better late than never? On then European Commission's Rule of Law Framework and its first activation

This article first offers an overview of the European Commission's Rule of Law Framework, which was adopted in March 2014. The mechanism's potential effectiveness and the Commission's reasoning to justify its first activation against Poland in January 2016, when it has failed to do so against Hungary, are subsequently analyzed. While the Commission should be commended for seeking to address increasing rule of law backsliding at Member State level, our main submission is that reliance on the Rule of Law Framework alone, if only because of its soft and discursive nature, will not remedy a situation where systemic violations of EU values form part of a governmental plan to set up an 'illiberal' regime

Poland’s rule of law breakdown: a five-year assessment of EU’s (in)action

To reinstate what amounts to a “Soviet-style justice system”, Polish authorities have repeatedly and deliberately violated the Polish Constitution and EU law. Rather than comprehensively detailing these repeated violations, this article focuses on the EU dimension of Poland’s rule of law breakdown. Using the activation of the Rule of Law Framework by the European Commission on 13 January 2016 as a starting point, this article offers a critical five-year assessment of EU’s (in)action starting with an overview of the extent to which virtually all of the multiple problematical issues identified early on by the Commission have yet to be addressed by Polish authorities by January 2021. Regarding the Commission and the Council’s (in)action, this article argues that the Commission has systematically acted in a too little too late fashion while the Council has systematically failed to meaningfully act, with the inaction of these two EU institutions amounting, at times, to dereliction of duties. By contrast, the Court of Justice has forcefully defended judicial independence whenever an infringement case was lodged with it by the Commission. The Court of Justice’s record in preliminary ruling cases is more mixed due, in part, to the Court’s apprehension to undermine the principle of mutual trust. The article ends with a list of key lessons and recommendations which reflect the EU’s few successes and many failures highlighted in this article. It is submitted inter alia that more statements, dialogue and reports are not going to help contain, let alone solve Poland’s rule of law crisis. It is indeed no longer a crisis the EU is facing but a total breakdown in the rule of law in Poland which, in turn, represents a threat to the interconnected legal order that underpins the EU

Molecular and Genetic Regulation of Sensory Quality of Climacteric Fruit

The sensory quality of fruit has become a major criterion in making the purchasing decision by consumers. Breeding programs have mainly been directed, from the post-harvest stand point, towards improving shelf-life. Chance seedlings or mutants with improved agronomic traits and/or extended shelf-life have been used for introgressing the long shelf-life character and eventually improved sensory quality traits in commercial genotypes of apple, melon or tomato. Because the plant hormone ethylene plays a central role in both storability and ripening of climacteric fruit, the generation by biotechnology of ethylene-inhibited fruit has offered a powerful tool to better understand, at the molecular and genetic level, the interrelations between storability and sensory quality. In the melon, inhibition of ethylene synthesis results is a strong inhibition of the synthesis of aroma volatiles while the accumulation of sugars is not affected or is even improved. The softening of the flesh is strongly affected but not abolished. Mid or long shelf-life melons generated by classical breeding present the same behavior. The generation of recombinant inbred lines by crossing a typical climacteric melon (Cantaloupe Charentais of the cantalupensis group) with a non climacteric melon (PI161375 of the agrestis chinensis group) allowed to demonstrate that the climacteric character is conferred by 2 duplicated loci only, which are of great importance for the regulation of storability and sensory quality. Due to the importance of aroma volatiles in sensory quality and to the strong negative correlation between aroma production and ethylene synthesis, we have developed a research program aimed at isolating genes involved in the synthesis of aroma volatiles. We will report on the recent advances in the field with special emphasis on the characterization of genes responsible for the synthesis of esters, a family of compounds crucial for the flavor of many fruit

Effect of fertility control on a population's productivity

The effect of a sterilising agent upon the productivity of vertebrate pests, such as feral horses, feral dogs, wild rabbits or fruit-eating birds, depends upon the population's social structure and mating system. We investigated the theoretical effect on productivity of three forms of dominance, two effects of sterilisation on dominance, and four modes of transmission. Seventeen of the possible 24 combinations are feasible but lead to only four possible outcomes. Three of these result in lowered productivity. The fourth, where the breeding of a dominant female suppresses breeding in the sub-ordinate females of her group, leads to a perverse outcome. Productivity increases with sterilisation unless the proportion of females sterilised exceeds (n- 2)/(n- 1) where n (> 2) is the number of females in the group. A knowledge of social structure and mating system is therefore highly desirable before population control by suppressing female fertility is attempted or even contemplated

AdaptiveVLE: an integrated framework for personalised online education using MPS JetBrains domain-specific modelling environment

This paper contains the design and development of an Adaptive Virtual Learning Environment (AdaptiveVLE) framework to assist educators of all disciplines with creating adaptive VLEs tailored to their needs and to contribute towards the creation of a more generic framework for adaptive systems. Fully online education is a major trend in education technology of our times. However, it has been criticised for its lack of personalisation and therefore not adequately addressing individual students’ needs. Adaptivity and intelligence are elements that could substantially improve the student experience and enhance the learning taking place. There are several attempts in academia and in industry to provide adaptive VLEs and therefore personalise educational provision. All these attempts require a multiple-domain (multi-disciplinary) approach from education professionals, software developers, data scientists to cover all aspects of the system. An integrated environment that can be used by all the multiple-domain users mentioned above and will allow for quick experimentation of different approaches is currently missing. Specifically, a transparent approach that will enable the educator to configure the data collected and the way it is processed without any knowledge of software development and/or data science algorithms implementation details is required. In our proposed work, we developed a new language/framework using MPS JetBrains Domain-Specific Language (DSL) development environment to address this problem. Our work consists of the following stages: data collection configuration by the educator, implementation of the adaptive VLE, data processing, adaptation of the learning path. These stages correspond to the adaptivity stages of all adaptive systems such as monitoring, processing and adaptation. The extension of our framework to include other application areas such as business analytics, health analytics, etc. so that it becomes a generic framework for adaptive systems as well as more usability testing for all applications will be part of our future work

Classification Algorithms Framework (CAF) to enable Intelligent Systems using JetBrains MPS domain-specific languages environment

This paper describes the design and development of a Classification Algorithms Framework (CAF) using the JetBrains MPS domain-specific languages (DSLs) development environment. It is increasingly recognized that the systems of the future will contain some form of adaptivity therefore making them intelligent systems as opposed to the static systems of the past. These intelligent systems can be extremely complex and difficult to maintain. Descriptions at higher-level of abstraction (system-level) have long been identified by industry and academia to reduce complexity. This research presents a Framework of Classification Algorithms at system-level that enables quick experimentation with several different algorithms from Naive Bayes to Logistic Regression. It has been developed as a tool to address the requirements of British Telecom’s (BT’s) data-science team. The tool has been presented at BT and JetBrains MPS and feedback has been collected and evaluated. Beyond the reduction in complexity through the system-level description, the most prominent advantage of this research is its potential applicability to many application contexts. It has been designed to be applicable for intelligent applications in several domains from business analytics, eLearning to eHealth, etc. Its wide applicability will contribute to enabling the larger vision of Artificial Intelligence (AI) adoption in context

Thorium and uranium isotopes in a manganese nodule from the Peru basin determined by alpha spectrometry and thermal ionization mass spectrometry (TIMS): Are manganese supply and growth related to climate?

Thorium- and uranium isotopes were measured in a diagenetic manganese nodule from the Peru basin applying alpha- and thermal ionization mass spectrometry (TIMS). Alpha-counting of 62 samples was carried out with a depth resolution of 0.4 mm to gain a high-resolution230Thexcess profile. In addition, 17 samples were measured with TIMS to obtain precise isotope concentrations and isotope ratios. We got values of 0.06–0.59 ppb (230Th), 0.43–1.40 ppm (232Th), 0.09–0.49 ppb (234U) and 1.66–8.24 ppm (238U). The uranium activity ratio in the uppermost samples (1–6 mm) and in two further sections in the nodule at 12.5±1.0 mm and 27.3–33.5 mm comes close to the present ocean water value of 1.144±0.004. In two other sections of the nodule, this ratio is significantly higher, probably reflecting incorporation of diagenetic uranium. The upper 25 mm section of the Mn nodule shows a relatively smooth exponential decrease in the230Thexcess concentration (TIMS). The slope of the best fit yields a growth rate of 110 mm/Ma up to 24.5 mm depth. The section from 25 to 30.3 mm depth shows constant230Thexcess concentrations probably due to growth rates even faster than those in the top section of the nodule. From 33 to 50 mm depth, the growth rate is approximately 60 mm/Ma. Two layers in the nodule with distinct laminations (11–15 and 28–33 mm depth) probably formed during the transition from isotopic stage 8 to 7 and in stage 5e, respectively. The Mn/Fe ratio shows higher values during interglacials 5 and 7, and lower ones during glacials 4 and 6. A comparison of our data with data from adjacent sediment cores suggests (a) a variable supply of hydrothermal Mn to sediments and Mn nodules of the Peru basin or (b) suboxic conditions at the water sediment interface during periods with lower Mn/Fe ratios