GMO regulation in Europe: undue delegation, abdication or design flaw?

On 22 April 2015 the European Commission published a review of the current GMO legislation (the GM Review) and tabled a proposal for its amendment (the GM Proposal). The GM Proposal aims to allow to the member states to ban on their territory the use of GMOs authorised under the EU legislation. This is very similar to the possibility for opting out from cultivation of authorised GMOs which was finally adopted earlier this year. While this may look like a new trend, all the more interesting in the context of possible Brexit, Grexit and Danish opt-out from the provisions on Justice and Home Affairs, the present article will focus only on the GM Review, which essentially admits that the existing GMO regime is a failure.4 Indeed, a dozen years after the relevant legislation has been adopted, only one decision for authorisation of a new GM crop was adopted – the Amflora potato – and it was annulled by the General Court.5 Decisions for marketing have fared slightly better – there are a fewd ozen authorized GMOs – but still the decisions take many years, raise persistent controversies and are adopted without the support by the relevant committee of national experts. It is remarkable that while the Commission has been constantly in favour of the authorisation of new GMO varieties, its assessments persistently fail to convince the Member States so the expert committees (and the Council) have never reached any decision in any direction. As the stalemate leaves the Commission in position to proceed with the authorisations, and it routinely does so, sometimes in defiance of a clear majority of member states against it. This is a responsibility which its current President rightly believes it should not bear.6 However, instead of finding a way to restore the credibility of the regulatory process, now the Commission is proposing to keep it ‘intact’, and only allow to the Member States to opt out of it. In the following I shall first take the Commission’s understanding of its role in the existing regime on its face value and show that this is inherently contradictory and in violation of the EU law as interpreted by the Union courts. In the second section, I shall question the soundness of this interpretation of the case law and argue that it is wrong, and that in this way the Commission is abdicating fromits responsibility to make informed choices itself. The concluding section briefly discusses a possible way out of the trap

Citizenship deprivation

Most critical analyses assess citizenship-deprivation policies against international human rights and domestic rule of law standards, such as prevention of statelessness, non-arbitrariness with regard to justifications and judicial remedies, or non-discrimination between different categories of citizens. This report considers instead from a political theory perspective how deprivation policies reflect specific conceptions of political community. We distinguish four normative conceptions of the grounds of membership in a political community that apply to decisions on acquisition and loss of citizenship status: i) a ‘State discretion’ view, according to which governments should be as free as possible in pursuing State interests when determining citizenship status; ii) an ‘individual choice’ view, according to which individuals should be as free as possible in choosing their citizenship status; iii) an ‘ascriptive community’ view, according to which both State and individual choices should be minimised through automatic determination of membership based on objective criteria such as the circumstances of birth; and iv) a ‘genuine link’ view, according to which the ties of individuals to particular States determine their claims to inclusion and against deprivation while providing at the same time objections against including individuals without genuine links. We argue that most citizenship laws combine these four normative views in different ways, but that from a democratic perspective the ‘genuine link’ view is normatively preferable to the others. The report subsequently examines five general grounds for citizenship withdrawal – threats to public security, non-compliance with citizenship duties, flawed acquisition, derivative loss and loss of genuine links – and considers how the four normative views apply to withdrawal provision motivated by these concerns. The final section of the report examines whether EU citizenship provides additional reasons for protection against Member States’ powers of citizenship deprivation. We suggest that, in addition to fundamental rights protection through EU law and protection of free movement rights, three further arguments could be invoked: toleration of dual citizenship in a political union, prevention of unequal conditions for loss among EU citizens, and the salience of genuine links to the EU itself rather than merely to one of its Member States

La scala nell'architettura palaziale cinquecentesca palermitana: continuità e innovazione

Il ruolo preponderante della scala in pietra a vista nel progetto architettonico cinquecentesco , più in particolare con riferimento alla tipologia palaziale, pare essere confermato in ambito palermitano dalla inusuale frequenza di cantieri relativi alla sola realizzazione di nuove scale, intese come elementi di aggiornamento linguistico e di rinnovamento di più antiche dimore, e comunque in grado di conferire loro più di ogni altra cosa un carattere aulico e monumentale

The theatre today: experimentation and innovation

The use of technology enables theatre to modernize its own language and appeal to a younger audience, one less entrenched in tradition. New generations accept and are open to experimentation in a technological climate, contamination and cross-fertilization between art forms. The use of English terminology is evidence of this (virtual theatre, interactive theatre, computer theatre, webcam theatre, electronic theatre, interfaced theatre, \u2026 just to cite a few of the most common terms). What seems evident is that digital multimedia both off-line and on-line has reached the stage and its practice in theatrical live performance is in continuous evolution

An Analysis of Some Illustrated Books by Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) in the Museum of Oriental Art in Venice

The collection of Japanese prints, albums and illustrated books (ehon) in the Museum of Oriental Art in Venice is the result of the last stop in Japan of a journey to the Far East of Prince Henry Bourbon-Parma, Count of Bardi and his wife Adelgunde of Bragança, during the years 1887-1889. The gathering of more than thirty thousand objects became the core of the present collection. Among these there are about 500 illustrated books of famous ukiyoe masters, surimono, and colour prints nishikie. The creation of catalogue entries in Japanese and Italian and the analysis of each print reveals an amazing quantity of unpublished ukiyoe masterpieces and allows a division into different groups according to the subject matter. At the same time, this distinction into different genres shows an interesting tendency in the formation of the collection together with a possible new classification of the prints themselves. This study aims to shed a new light on this particular collection while focusing on a series of illustrated books by Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1848). Among these the famous volumes of the Manga, the illustrated books on warriors, an unusual album with some prints from the One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji and a selection from the five volumes dedicated to teach the artisans how to draw all kind of decorations

Bulgarian constitutionalism : challenges, reform, resistance and ... frustration

The paper offers an analysis of Bulgarian constitutional development since 2001 and the impossibility of progressive reforms. It links the decline of quality of democracy with the decline of quality of public discourse

NETWORK FOR A EUROPEAN DEMOI-CRACY: ARE THE NATIONAL PARLIAMENTS UP TO THE JOB?

This article focuses on the new opportunity for the national parliaments to get involved in the EU legislative process which is provided by the so-called yellow card mechanism introduced by the Lisbon Treaty. I start with a discussion of the incentives for national parliaments to seize the new opportunity to influence European decision-making. I argue that the importance of the mechanism goes far beyond its stated goal to enforce the subsidiarity principle. Its true significance will first be in the engagement of parliaments in debates on the substantive issues of European policy, and second in stimulating cooperation amongst the parliaments of different Member States. In turn, this engagement and cooperation of parliaments can be expected to bring about communication among the citizens across national public spheres and their engagement with substantive policy issues rather than merely arguing for or against integration as is the case today. Thus, this modest-looking mechanism promises to nurture a transnational network of public spheres and to become what may be called a demoi-cracy. I also argue that the creation of such a network democracy (post-national rather than supra-national) is the only available road for democratisation of the EU because it does not depend on a forged common identity or solidarity. In the final section, I discuss experience with the mechanism during its first year, which seems disappointing

Michelangelo Blasco versus Ferdinando Fuga: una nuova attribuzione per il ponte sul Milicia in Sicilia

The finding at the National Library of Spain of an eighteenth-century engraving of the bridge over the river Milicia, along the coast to the east of Palermo, is a chance not only to shed light on the complex history of the design and construction of one of the main Sicilian bridges, but also to attribute the real paternity rather than to the famous architect Ferdinando Fuga to the lesser-known military engineer, serving the Austrian Crown, Michelangelo Blasco, whose long and successful career is reconstructed: from Sicily, through Milan, Wien and Lisbon, to the uncharted territory of Brazil

Portrait of the Eu as a Rational Agent: Collective Reason and Democratic Deficit

In the present article I take a critical view of the well-known discursive dilemma which captures the difference between governance by collective reasoning and governance responsive to majoritarian will. I identify a problem with the solution preferred by the republican theory which I call the rationality gap and suggest that in principle deliberation in the public sphere may bring the two ends together, thus avoiding the gap. Then I look at the European Union (EU) through the prism of civic republicanism and analyse it as an example of a system which collectivises reason. From such a perspective, the notorious democratic deficit is explainable as a contradiction between collective reason and popular will. In principle, pan-European deliberation could close the gap there, too. However, it is obstructed by competition from spontaneous deliberation in the existing national public spheres. The latter are more robust and for that reason the rationality gaps arising there are closed faster so that national public opinions polarise and defend ‘national’ interest against further deliberative challenges at the upper level. I argue that the notion of competition is useful to explain why, despite the development of common democratic institutions at the EU level and despite the emergence of a weak pan- European public, the deficit is bound to persist

Anassessment of current regulation of GMOs in the EU and proposals for amending it

Vesco Paskalev argues that the regulation of GMOs in the EU is a shambles. The main problem lies in a very narrow conception of risk and safety. All the emphasis is wrongly on laboratory tests, and evidence on the wider environmental effects is scant. Wider studies on the effects on consumption patterns or the cost pressures on non GM farmers are ignored. In addition, experts supplant the proper role of the political institutions, and the precautionary principle is rendered inoperative. Paskalev proposes specific legal amendments to remedy these faults