Private v Public Enforcement of European Competition Law? : Relationship between effective enforcement of the law and individual justice

In western market economies, it is generally accepted that competition is the key point of achieving social and economic welfare. Therefore, it is necessary to protect competition and there are, basically, two main approaches to deterring such socially harmful behaviour: an administrative public enforcement by public agencies and fine proceedings or a private enforcement through litigations by private parties and especially damage claims. But, the work will show that private enforcement of European competition law is underdeveloped, but still necessary as access to individual justice with reference to the theoretical analysis by Aristotle and other moral philosophers. Because of the underdevelopment, the work argues in favour of a necessity to implement a general right of pre-action disclosure and access to files in the possession of the competition authorities to improve the effectiveness of private enforcement of European competition law. On the other hand, the given rights of the European Commission make its fine proceedings an effective information gathering system and thus an effective way of detecting and proving an infringement of European competition law, especially Art 101 TFEU. But, the Commission has to rely on members of cartels to apply for leniency and therefore to disclose a hidden infringement, i.e. cartel. Furthermore, an efficient leniency programme has to offer effective protection to its whistle-blowers. However, this protection policy is in conflict with an effective private enforcement because the private plaintiffs have to provide evidence of an infringement. Recently, the European Commission gets the ball rolling again by introducing its Directive 2014/104/EU that focuses on the effectiveness of private enforcement of European competition law and especially of civil damage claims. Therefore, it is highly topical to highlight the theoretical and practical relationship between public and private enforcement and the main tasks and problems by implementing the European rules into national law

Time-Encoded Raman: Fiber-based, hyperspectral, broadband stimulated Raman microscopy

Raman sensing and Raman microscopy are amongst the most specific optical technologies to identify the chemical compounds of unknown samples, and to enable label-free biomedical imaging with molecular contrast. However, the high cost and complexity, low speed, and incomplete spectral information provided by current technology are major challenges preventing more widespread application of Raman systems. To overcome these limitations, we developed a new method for stimulated Raman spectroscopy and Raman imaging using continuous wave (CW), rapidly wavelength swept lasers. Our all-fiber, time-encoded Raman (TICO-Raman) setup uses a Fourier Domain Mode Locked (FDML) laser source to achieve a unique combination of high speed, broad spectral coverage (750 cm-1 - 3150 cm-1) and high resolution (0.5 cm-1). The Raman information is directly encoded and acquired in time. We demonstrate quantitative chemical analysis of a solvent mixture and hyperspectral Raman microscopy with molecular contrast of plant cells.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure

The European Union’s post-Brexit reckoning with financial markets. Bruegel Policy Contribution Issue n ̊8 | May 2020.

In the negotiations between the European Union and the United Kingdom over their future relationship, we see a high probability of a weak contractual outcome, given the dominance of politics over considerations of market efficiency. The EU will thus face a great deal of readjustment and regulatory realignment of its market for financial and other services. The future relationship will start out with closely aligned regulations which will allow equivalence, and therefore seamless transactions, to continue in many sectors for a number of years. As regulatory autonomy has been one of the main Brexit rationales, we expect divergence to increase after a couple of years. The UK will become a third country for financial service transactions, dependent on temporary equivalence rulings, whereas in the past it could do business under a comprehensive regulatory passport. London will remain a global financial hub, even as EU companies move operations out of the UK, set up additional licences and distribute activities across the EU. This will result in duplication and thus higher costs in both the UK and the EU as market participants strive to adjust to a future structure that will remain highly uncertain for years to come. In the EU-UK negotiations on financial services, the aims should be to seek an agreement to provide stability for a defined, though limited, time period; a plan for how to manage divergences and the regulatory barriers that may result; and an EU reckoning with what kind of financial market it wants. This would ensure a stable transition to what we assume will be a structurally very different link than existed when the UK was part of the EU. The UK has historically been both a business centre and policy leader in the financial sector. In its absence, the EU will need to decide how prominent a role finance should play and where regulatory and supervisory responsibilities should be located. Brexit can act as a catalyst for the EU to address what its capital markets should look like and how to get them there. The challenges of restructuring and recovery in the wake of COVID-19, of ensuring confidence in the euro and of preserving pensions systems all require highly integrated, functional and fair financial and capital markets, as public budgets are highly under stress. These integrated markets do not exist in the EU. Action now is of the essence

Rural innovation activities as a means for changing development perspectives – An assessment of more than two decades of promoting LEADER initiatives across the European Union

Since the 1990s the LEADER approach has very powerfully addressed the spirit of mobilising actors in the countryside through focusing on endogenous potential and activating local stakeholders across all sectors. Given the long-term experience and wealth of diverse development initiatives across the European Union (EU), the diversity of implementation is huge. Considering the limited financial support as a Community Initiative (until 2006), a significant extension and ‘upgrading’ of LEADER was intended by integrating it into the EU Rural Development Programmes (RDPs) since 2007. The shift from the character of a ‘pilot’ instrument at the start of LEADER to its ‘mainstreaming’ into the RDPs involved radical administrative changes and high expectations of increased impacts. The interest in LEADER practice and effectiveness led to many studies that in general apply a limited perspective of self-evaluation and refl ection on LEADER activities. Its main impact is seen in providing learning processes in rural regions and the effects on changes in local governance through extended involvement of local stakeholders and institutions. This paper provides a synthesis of European experiences and analyses of core changes, in particular by referring to the example of implementation in the Austrian context. The main lessons are based on the refl ection of obstacles and promoting factors of implementation during the last 25 years against the LEADER principles. The limitations in the assessment of LEADER call for a systemic approach that includes interrelations to a much wider degree. LEADER’s legacy is seen well beyond a quantitative measurement, but has to be found in its influence on actors’ perspectives, new pathways and strategies for rural development

Informed MCMC with Bayesian Neural Networks for Facial Image Analysis

Computer vision tasks are difficult because of the large variability in the data that is induced by changes in light, background, partial occlusion as well as the varying pose, texture, and shape of objects. Generative approaches to computer vision allow us to overcome this difficulty by explicitly modeling the physical image formation process. Using generative object models, the analysis of an observed image is performed via Bayesian inference of the posterior distribution. This conceptually simple approach tends to fail in practice because of several difficulties stemming from sampling the posterior distribution: high-dimensionality and multi-modality of the posterior distribution as well as expensive simulation of the rendering process. The main difficulty of sampling approaches in a computer vision context is choosing the proposal distribution accurately so that maxima of the posterior are explored early and the algorithm quickly converges to a valid image interpretation. In this work, we propose to use a Bayesian Neural Network for estimating an image dependent proposal distribution. Compared to a standard Gaussian random walk proposal, this accelerates the sampler in finding regions of the posterior with high value. In this way, we can significantly reduce the number of samples needed to perform facial image analysis.Comment: Accepted to the Bayesian Deep Learning Workshop at NeurIPS 201

Multimodale Verkehrslösungen als Chance für nachhaltige städtisch-ländliche Beziehungen

Nicht nur in städtischen Gebieten, sondern auch in erweiterten Stadtregionen und peri-urbanen Gemeinden ist ein deutlicher Trend zu multimodalem Mobilitätsverhalten zu beobachten. Der Trend, nur einen Verkehrsträger zu nutzen, ist hingegen rückläufig. Vielmehr wollen die Verkehrsteilnehmerinnen und Verkehrsteilnehmer das für ihren jeweiligen Zweck und ihr aktuelles Ziel am besten geeignete Verkehrsmittel oder die geeignetste Kombination von Verkehrsmitteln nutzen. Multimodale Mobilitätskonzepte machen diese Verknüpfung möglich. Dieser Trend zu einer nachhaltiger Mobilitätsentwicklung wird anhand der beiden Good-Practice Beispiele „GUSTmobil“ und „REGIOtim“ im Steirischen Zentralraum aufgezeigt. Die Realisierung dieser alternativen Mobilitätskonzepte fördert sowohl die Lebensqualität der Bewohnerinnen und Bewohner als auch die Austauschbeziehungen und Synergien zwischen den städtischen, stadtnahen und ländlichen Gebieten der Region