Product information on freight emissions for consumers : changing the market towards sustainability

This chapter assesses the visibility of the environmental role and effect of freight transport in (global) supply chains and from this point of view questions whether the consumers in fact can make sustainable choices based on information available to them. As opposed to being integrated, the EU’s approach to transport, overall, is fragmented. The same can be said about the Commission’s approach to ‘closing the loop’ with circular economy as well as to carbon emissions in general. However, one key prong of the circular economy package is where all these fragmented strategies should meet: the objective to help consumers choose sustainable products and services. To reach this goal, consumer information on the environmental impact of products sold on the EU internal market should ideally include also transport-related emissions within the value chains – both global as well as local ones – in which they are made. This chapter argues that such consumer information is currently missing and consumers cannot make an overall evaluation of the sustainability of products they purchase. The assessment starts with a practical example from the field of apparel manufacturing and retail, which is followed by general review of the existing indirectly or directly related EU law and how it fails to generate information-fuelled consumer behaviour resulting in market-led change. This leads to the question: what could be the role of law in incentivizing all related companies to support the EU approach – as advocated by the Commission – via more sustainable choices by consumers to rise to the challenge of planetary boundaries and the goal of circular economy, including harnessing the (global) effects of freight-transport?Peer reviewe

Collective valuation of common good through consumption : What is (un)lawful in mandatory country-of-origin labelling of non-food products?

Abstract This chapter aims to assess whether the concept of sustainable consumption would support a reinterpretation of relevant trade law—namely EU and WTO rules—to allow robust and harmonious country-of-origin (COO) labelling. Some—but only some—consumers have a bias towards goods and services produced locally, which relatively recent opinion polling confirms. Nevertheless, 40 percent of the EU population, when polled, signals a willingness to pay more for goods ‘produced under certain social and environmental standards’, and roughly a fifth claim that the origin of products affects their everyday purchase decisions. A product’s COO arguably works as a proxy for social and environmental standards in its production. COO is also material product information in itself, especially in light of product safety statistics. EU case law on the (discriminatory) requirements of COO indication has traditionally been interpreted as holding mandatory COO requirements to be ‘obviously illegal’. To uphold national COO labelling measures, defences based on consumer protection and the fairness of commercial transactions have been rejected as ‘equally applicable in form only’. This is despite the fact that a duty to disclose COO arguably already exists in EU law and the European Commission continues to pursue harmonised mandatory COO labelling rules for non-food products. Under WTO law, mandatory COO labelling—understood as information on processes and production methods (PPMs)—is a suspect category of trade barrier. Assessment of its lawfulness may fall under Article XX GATT and Article 2 of the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT). Hence the legality of mandatory COO labelling under both EU and WTO law remains unclearPeer reviewe

From Resource to Burden: Rescaling Solidarity with Strangers in the Single Market

'Organised solidarity' of a mediated legal form constitutes the backbone of the modern welfare state built on solidarity between strangers. The interplay between the single market and the national social systems is key in defining who owes what to whom under the 'transnationalised' European solidarity. Free movement rights have increased the 'entanglement' of national social systems' revenue and expenditure sides, considered to jeopardise their steering capacity. As a corollary to free movement, transnational solidarity does not take place beyond or between national welfare states, but rather within: as solidarity with strangers. Here transnational solidarity is applied by way of a sociological framework to trace the evolutionary path of free movement of persons as it fluctuates between 'commodification' and 'decommodification'. Against that backdrop, this article reviews whether a paradigm shift is currently promoted as to the question where solidarity with strangers begins and ends

Nudging a Behavioural Change in Maritime Carriage of Goods - The Role of Information

The purpose of this chapter is to examine how the maritime transport industry can be nudged in the direction of more environmental carriage resulting in less greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. We argue that in addition to new technical solutions, so called clean/green-tech, emissions can also be mitigated through an overall shift in the behaviour of the transport industry. The chapter examines the regulatory means already in place as regards GHG emissions from maritime carriage of goods and questions the idea that there is a lack of information on emissions produced by the transport industry. Relying on behavioural insight, this existing emissions information should, however, be utilized in several different ways in order for it to act as a nudge towards choosing more environmentally friendly alternatives for carriage of cargo: to directly influence the choices of shippers or freight forwarders as well as indirectly influence them through better informed end-consumers of products carried. These nudges, if successful, would in turn affect the behaviour of the maritime transport industry. Hence, focusing on the carriage of cargo, we explore some ways in which the information on GHG emissions could be integrated into the regulatory framework concerning the maritime transport industry and product labelling. The core idea of the chapter is hence to outline and analyse the potential of combining the information that is already collected due to environmental regulation with behavioural insight to mitigate emissions of maritime carriage of cargo.Peer reviewe

Why did the citizenship jurisprudence change?

Published online: 26 February 2018The overall aim of this volume is twofold. First, it tries to deconstruct legal, political and social forces that affect the European citizenship jurisprudence generally. Second, and more particularly, it seeks to explain and contextualise the Court’s shift towards a restrictive approach to free movement rights of European citizens. So far, literature has singled out two structural elements and three contextual factors, which could make the latter shift intelligible: the role of the legislator in the European Union (EU) and the role of law writ large, as well as the financial, the constitutional (Brexit) and the migration crisis. The latter especially increased the pressure on the European Court of Justice (the Court) to prioritise the general interests of the Member States over the colliding interests of individual European citizens. In this chapter, we do not question this explanation or the legal claim that the citizenship jurisprudence has become more restrictive. Instead, we raise the question whether two institutional factors, namely internal reorganisation and the professional composition of the Court contributed to this process of transformation alongside the external factors already identified

Workers no longer welcome? Europeanization of solidarity in the wake of Brexit (Discussion Forum. Brexit: understanding the socio-economic origins and consequences)

Peer reviewe

Constitutional Pluralism and Judicial Adjudication : On Legal Reasoning, Minimalism and Silence by the Court of Justice

Peer reviewe

Legal Reasoning in Context

This study in EU law analyses the reasoning of the Court of Justice (the Court of Justice of the European Union) in a set of its preliminary rulings. Preliminary rulings are answers to national courts questions on the interpretation (and validity) of EU law called preliminary references. These questions concern specific legal issues that have arisen in legal disputes before the national courts. The Court of Justice alone has the ultimate authority to interpret EU law. The preliminary rulings bind the national courts in the cases giving rise to the preliminary reference, and the interpretations of EU law offered in the preliminary rulings are considered generally binding on all instances applying EU law. EU law is often described as a dynamic legal order and the Court of Justice as at the vanguard of developing it. It is generally assumed that the Court of Justice is striving to realise the EU s meta-level purpose (telos): integration. Against this backdrop one can understand the criticism the Court of Justice is often faced with in certain fields of EU law that can be described as developing. This criticism concerns the Court s (negatively) activist way of not just stating the law but developing or even making law. It is difficult to analyse or prove wrong this accusation as it is not in methodological terms clearly established what constitutes judicial activism, or more exactly where the threshold of negative activism lies. Moreover, one popular approach to assessing the role of the Court of Justice described as integration through law has become fairly political, neglecting to take into consideration the special nature of law as both facilitating and constraining action, not merely a medium for furthering integration. This study offers a legal reasoning approach of a more legalist nature, in order to balance the existing mix of approaches to explaining what the Court of Justice does and how. Reliance on legal reasoning is found to offer a working framework for analysis, whereas the tools for an analysis based on activism are found lacking. The legal reasoning approach enables one to assess whether or not the Court of Justice is pertaining to its own established criteria of interpretation of EU law, and if it is not, one should look more in detail at how the interpretation fits with earlier case-law and doctrines of EU law. This study examines the reasoning of the Court of Justice in a set of objectively chosen cases. The emphasis of the study is on analysing how the Court of Justice applies the established criteria of interpretation it has assumed for itself. Moreover, the judgments are assessed not only in terms of reasoning but also for meaningful silences they contain. The analysis is furthermore contextualised by taking into consideration how the cases were commented by legal scholars, their substantive EU law context, and also their larger politico-historical context. In this study, the analysis largely shows that the Court of Justice is interpreting EU law in accordance with its previous practice. Its reasoning retains connection with the linguistic or semiotic criteria of interpretation, while emphasis lies on systemic reasoning. Moreover, although there are a few judgments where the Court of Justice offers clearly dynamic reasoning or what can be considered as substantive reasoning stemming from, for example, common sense or reasonableness, such reasons are most often given in addition to systemic ones. In this sense and even when considered in its broader context, the case-law analysed in this study does not portray a specifically activist image of the Court of Justice. The legal reasoning approach is a valid alternative for explaining how and why the Court of Justice interprets EU law as it does.Ei saatavill