Disintegration Through Law?

This is certainly not the most propitious time to publish a Journal on "Law and Integration". It is disintegration, not integration, that seems to be the dominant motive behind the contemporary events in Europe; it is the panacea offered to soothe the fears raised by the multiple crises which hold the present state of Europe in a tight grip; it is the invisible thread keeping together the anxieties which underlie the scholarly discussions about its future. It is not our task to determine the multifarious factors, of a social, political or cultural nature, which led to the current state of things. But the analysis of law as a possible disintegration factor would clearly be part of our brief. In all its aspects, the EU-Turkey Statement of 18 March 2016 on the large influx of migrants and asylum seekers in Greece seems to be exploiting the potentialities offered by international law as an alternative decision- making procedure within the EU legal system. This is not a completely unexplored road. The Brexit agreement, adopted by the Member States, acting within the European Council on 18 and 19 February 2016 equally seems to subvert the very mission of the founding treaties: to create an ever closer Union. Even with respect to this precedent, however, the EU-Turkey Statement seems to go one step further as it represents a visible example of the creeping modifications of the EU legal and political system, which almost inadvertently happens with the abdicant consent of the other political EU Institutions. This use of international instruments has the effect of disregarding the European institutional balance upon which the acquis européen has developed and which, with all its limits, constitutes the legacy of the first phase of the European integration. It may shift the centre of gravity to the Member States, the unmoved movers of the European legal universe. It may subdue the institutional pluralism, which has represented the hallmark of the political experience of the European integration, and create, instead, an institutional desert, where the political power is concentrated in the hand of the States acting through the European Council. It may mark the return to a Europe of sovereign States and the definite disappearance of the notion of a European public interest, of which we are in desperate need

The Thousand Cataluñas of Europe

Irrespective of the perspective from which one looks at the Catalonian events, which are still unfolding under our incredulous eyes, the impression can only be univocal: Spain is right and Catalonia is wrong. The claim of the Spanish Government to preserve the unity of the nation is well founded; conversely, the independence proclaimed by the Catalonian Government amounts to an extra ordinem revolutionary act. This is the conclusion that must be naturally drawn from an inquiry conducted on the basis of Spanish Constitutional law. This would inevitably also be the conclusion to be drawn from an international law perspective. The question thus arises as to whether in European law this monolithic representation of statehood can be attenuated in favour of institutional solutions that reflect more faithfully the pluralistic nature of the modern forms of State. The adoption of a pluralistic representation of States within the EU, and in particular, a transformation of the composition of the Council into a permanent body, including not only representatives of the Governments of the Member States, but also of their National Parliaments and, where present, also of their sub-national communities, may considerably defuse the tendency to independentism that is still present around Europe

Denialism as the Supreme Expression of Realism. A Quick Comment on NF v. European Council

By Order of 28 February 2017 in case T-192/16, NF v. European Council, the General Court dismissed as inadmissible an action for annulment brought against the s.c. EU-Turkey deal concluded on 18 March 2016. In the view of the General Court, independently of its binding nature, the deal is to be attributed to the Member States and not to the EU. This Insight examines the technical shortcomings of this conclusion, and its controversial political wisdom

Proportionality and Margin of Appreciation in the Whaling Case. Reconciling Antithetical Doctrines?

In its decision on the Whaling in the Antarctic case, the International Court of Justice used a sophisticated methodology for assessing the legality of a whaling program allegedly designed to pursue purposes of scientific research. Based on the combination of two instruments – margin of appreciation and proportionality review – this methodology ultimately enabled the Court to reconcile apparently divergent needs: to grant a measure of discretion to states in determining their domestic policy requirements and to exert an international control over discretionary powers. From a theoretical viewpoint, this approach can have farreaching implications and contribute to untie some still unresolved knots of the proportionality doctrine

Multidimensional SDEs with singular drift and universal construction of the polymer measure with white noise potential

We study existence and uniqueness of solution for stochastic differential equations with distributional drift by giving a meaning to the Stroock-Varadhan martingale problem associated such equations. The approach we exploit is the one of paracontrolled distributions introduced in [13]. As a result we make sense of the three dimensional polymer measure with white noise potential.Comment: We improved the presentation, corrected some of the proofs and added the global existence for the polymer measure in dimension

Random initial conditions for semi-linear PDEs

We analyze the effect of random initial conditions on the local well--posedness of semi--linear PDEs, to investigate to what extent recent ideas on singular stochastic PDEs can prove useful in this framework

Role of acetaldehyde in alcohol addiction : current evidence and future perspectives

The effects of alcohol have been widely studied during the past century, corroborating the idea that this tiny chemical compound acts throughout most of our neurotransmitter systems since it is capable of inducing addictive behaviour. Two of the most serious problems of alcohol addiction are craving and relapse; several studies have demonstrated that relapse is related to the anxious state which occurs during withdrawal, and it has been proved that this behavioural modifications results from an alteration of the dopaminergic and serotonergic systems. An important role in the neurobiology of alcohol addiction is played by acetaldehyde (ACD), ethanol first metabolite. Our recent studies indeed, have demonstrated that ACD itself is able to induce CRH release from hypothalamic explants, underlying the central role played by ACD in alcohol-induced modifications of the HPA axis. Moreover, for the first time, this group has shown that ACD is able to induce and maintain an operant drinking behaviour after repeated abstinence periods, and in the presence of a conflict situation in rats, mimicking the same characteristics as alcohol. ACD is produced either peripherally or within the brain by alcohol dehydrogenase and catalase, respectively. Studies assert that the highest concentrations of catalase in the brain are mainly located in aminergic neurons suggesting that ACD could take part in alcohol action in those circuitries. Further investigations are then necessary to fully understand the molecular mechanisms underlying the neurochemical and behavioural modifications induced by ACD, as a mediator of alcohol activity in the brain.peer-reviewe

Malliavin Calculus for regularity structures: the case of gPAM

Malliavin calculus is implemented in the context of [M. Hairer, A theory of regularity structures, Invent. Math. 2014]. This involves some constructions of independent interest, notably an extension of the structure which accomodates a robust, and purely deterministic, translation operator, in $L^2$-directions, between "models". In the concrete context of the generalized parabolic Anderson model in 2D - one of the singular SPDEs discussed in the afore-mentioned article - we establish existence of a density at positive times.Comment: Minor revision of [v1]. This version published in Journal of Functional Analysis, Volume 272, Issue 1, 1 January 2017, Pages 363-41

Work-Related Stress, Physio-Pathological Mechanisms, and the Influence of Environmental Genetic Factors

Work-related stress is a growing health problem in modern society. The stress response is characterized by numerous neurochemicals, neuroendocrine and immune modifications that involve various neurological systems and circuits, and regulation of the gene expression of the different receptors. In this regard, a lot of research has focused the attention on the role played by the environment in influencing gene expression, which in turn can control the stress response. In particular, genetic factors can moderate the sensitivities of specific types of neural cells or circuits mediating the imprinting of the environment on different biological systems. In this current review, we wish to analyze systematic reviews and recent experimental research on the physio-pathological mechanisms that underline stress-related responses. In particular, we analyze the relationship between genetic and epigenetic factors in the stress response