One Health in the EU: The Next Future?

The Article investigates how the One Health concept is used in the European Union and what functions are attributed to it in EU laws and policies. To this end we conduct a systematic analysis of EU laws and policy documents, with specific emphasis on the European Green Deal and its actions. The first section outlines the main conceptual features of the evolving One Health approach over time. The second section analyses how European laws and policies have considered One Health over time, show-ing its erratic use. The third section is dedicated to analysing how One Health is taken into account by the Green Deal’s actions. The conclusion recognises that the EU conceptualization and operationaliza-tion of One Health is far from being clear, coherent or concrete. However, we argue that a transition may be underway and One Health has the potential to become a new political and legal principle ca-pable of permeating future EU actions towards a new phase of policy integration and sustainability

Exploring Regulatory Obstacles to the Development of Short Food Supply Chains: Empirical Evidence from Selected European Countries

This paper explores the challenges in meeting the regulatory requirements of short food supply chains in 9 European countries based upon findings from the European H2020 3-year project “SMARTCHAIN”. The assessments of the barriers that small food producers face in meeting different regulatory requirements are presented. Drawing on the results of 10 multi-actor workshops that involved 124 participants, the most problematic policy frameworks for short food supply chains and key obstacles in different regulatory requirements are summarized. This research shows that current EU and national regulation is an obstacle to the development of short food supply chains, meaning that additional efforts are needed to tailor the regulations to small food producers involved in short supply chains. Furthermore, it is necessary to consider the introduction of more effective support measures for short food supply chain

Does the National Court know European law? : a note on Ex Officio application after Asturcom

This article examines the Asturcom judgment of 6 October 2009 from the angle of ex-officio application of European law, specifically in terms of procedural autonomy, public policy, and international arbitration. In Asturcom, the ECJ was confronted with enforcement proceedings of a final arbitration award made in the absence of the consumer based on an arbitration agreement that contained a potentially unfair term. The ECJ examined the national rule under the principle of procedural autonomy in the form of the effectiveness and equivalence tests. It extended the use of the ‘contextual effectiveness test’ developed in Peterbroeck/van Schijndel to Consumer law. Most remarkably, the ECJ has manipulated the ‘equivalence test’ as to grant certain European norms public policy status on national level. Lastly, in terms of arbitration, the judgment reaches a result that is in conformity with international law

Towards an EU law of damages : damages claims for violations of EU public procurement law before national and European judges

Examining Board: Professor Hans-Wolfgang Micklitz, European University Institute Professor Giorgio Monti, European University Institute Professor Alexandra (Sacha) Prechal, Court of Justice of the European Union Professor Laurence W. Gormley, University of Groningen and College of Europe.Defence date: 16 September 2013First made available online on 15 January 2015.While the law is often highly harmonized at EU level, the ways in which it is realized in the various national courts are not. This thesis looks at enforcement through damages claims for violations of EU public procurement rules. Despite important recent amendments to the procurement remedies regime, the damages provision remains indeterminate. The legislative inertia pressures the CJEU to give an interpretation and raises the question as to how the Court should deal with damages. The requirements on damages claims are clarified under both general and public procurement EU law. The action for damages is conceived as a legal process which incorporates the national realm. Therefore, a comparative law part (covering England, France, Germany and the Netherlands) examines national damages litigation in public procurement law. A horizontal discussion of the legal issues which structurally frame damages claims is provided. The remedy of damages is analyzed as a bundle of rules and its constitutive and quantification criteria are studied, thereby refining the the Member States’ common conceptual base of damages claims. Functionally, the lost chance emerges as a compromise capable of mitigating the typically problematic nature of causation and uncertainty in public procurement constellations. An adjudicative approach to damages in EU law is developed through Member State liability and the procedural autonomy doctrine. Member State liability is construed as a form of constitutional liability which is distinct from damages arising under the 'effectiveness’ postulate of procedural autonomy. Procedural autonomy as currently used is legally indeterminate and inadequate from the point of view of procedural theory. The thesis proposes to sharpen the effectiveness test in three dimensions: material, based on the intrinsic connection between enforcement rules and substantive law; vertical, in delimiting the spheres of influence of national and EU courts; and in terms of institutional balance vis-à-vis the EU legislator

Case Study: France

This chapter presents public procurement damages claims in France. It covers the proceedings through which a damages claim can be brought in France, including their personal scope and time limits. The focus of the chapter is on the discussion of the extra-contractual liability of contracting authorities in public procurement as developed in case law. It further examines the quantification of damages claims, notably the recoverable losses (bid costs and lost profits) and quantification methods

Juridisch advies Regulering glyfosaathoudende middelen

This advisory report identifies the various options for regulating the use of glyphosate-containing plant protection products by Member States. Under certain conditions, European law allows national restrictions on glyphosate-containing plant protection products: on the basis of Regulation (EC) No 1107/2009 (the Plant Protection Product Regulation), general zonal authorization restrictions as well as special national authorization restrictions can be imposed. National restrictions based on an exception under Article 114 TFEU or the precautionary principle seem a less convincing options

Revision of the EU Green Public Procurement Criteria for Food Procurement and Catering Services – Certification Schemes as the Main Determinant for Public Sustainable Food Purchases?

Changing public demand in favour of sustainable products is recognised as an important part of “greening” the production of goods, so-called green procurement. 1 Famously, green procurement has been defined as “a process whereby public authorities seek to procure goods, services and works with a reduced environmental impact throughout their life cycle when compared to goods, services and works with the same primary function that would otherwise be procured”. 2 However, when it comes to public buying, public authorities are not free to do what they want. Public authorities are required to advertise the contract, carry out one of the recognised procurement procedures, process bids in the qualification and selection stage according to predetermined criteria, and award the contract according to award criteria, all while respecting binding time frames. Therefore, public procurement regulation has always been characterised by a strong tension between budgetary considerations that would favour the most economically advantageous bids, and the pursuit of other considerations relating to social or environmental goals.EU public procurement rules only gradually allowed the inclusion of certain “green” considerations. Fearing challenges to their procurement procedures, contracting authorities therefore often resort to normal tenders, as “green” tenders are seen as difficult to undertake correctly and marred by legal uncertainty. The Green Public Procurement criteria (“GPP criteria”) were drawn up in order to remedy this problem by providing an example catalogue of permissible tender specifications with the aim of facilitating the take-up by contracting authorities of “green” criteria in their tenders.Food and catering services, with €206.3 billion annual expenditure (in 2011) by the Member States an economically important sector, were an obvious target for the formulation of GPP criteria. 3 An initial version of the GPP criteria for food and catering services was published in 2008, but did not contain very far-reaching example specifications. In the following, we discuss the current revision of the GPP criteria for food, catering services, and vending machines. 4 We outline the relevance of so-called secondary considerations in EU public procurement policy, bringing forward the originally very reluctant approach on behalf of EU policy makers to embrace the greening of public expenditure. We then present the GPP criteria policy-making process, and clarify the different types of procurement criteria that can be included in tendering procedures. We cover the ongoing revision of the GPP criteria on food and catering services, with specific emphasis on food procurement. We argue that the new proposed criteria represent a pragmatic compromise that emerged from intensive stakeholder consultations. The confinement to “green” criteria, while being an improvement to the initial version of the food and catering services GPP criteria, falls shy of full sustainable food purchasing and fails to integrate different policy initiatives at EU level. Lastly, we observe that for the food GPP criteria, reliance on certification schemes remains prevalent as a main determinant for what counts as “green”. In terms of referring to certification schemes in tenders, however, the revised GPP criteria may induce contracting authorities to refer to voluntary food schemes in their tender specifications in a way that is not obviously in line with the procurement law requirements

Procedural theory in EU law

In this contribution I put forward the argument that (1) the application of the adjudicative principle of ‘procedural autonomy’ leads to the creation of a European judge-made procedural law. Further, this procedural law exhibits (2) a potentially problematic trans-substantive tendency, as well as (3) a conceptual difficulty as it is applied regardless of a procedural/substance distinction, exemplified, for example, in its treatment of damages. There is therefore the need for a mechanism of differentiation in the application of the principle of ‘procedural autonomy’, which at the same time articulates procedural justice concerns