October Courses

3 ECTS

The European Communities, from which the European Union evolved, were created in the 1950s as one (of many) experiments in addressing the problems of international cooperation in Europe. Consisting originally of 3 distinct Communities and 6 member states, it has undergone revolutionary growth and change, some organic, some by new rounds of treaty making.  It underwent significant constitutional reorientation in 1993 with the entry into force of the Treaty on European Union (or Maastricht Treaty) and has since its foundation absorbed another 22 countries, including a (re)unified Germany, 6 Warsaw Pact countries of Eastern Europe and 3 erstwhile Soviet republics. It is the largest trading bloc in the world, and in December 2006 the Euro overtook the dollar as the world’s most traded currency (‘though with the economic and sovereign debt crises and the moribund Greek economy the wisdom of the Euro is coming increasingly to be questioned; this too will be considered). Anyone who had predicted this only 30 years ago would have been thought quite mad.

The Union (as it became in December 2009 with the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty) is now an economic (but not only economic) quasi-federation, underpinned by the instruments which created it (the Treaties) which, although mere treaties, have grown into its constitution. According to the European Court of Justice (amongst many other things it does, the Union’s ‘constitutional court’), the original Treaty ‘albeit concluded in the form of an international agreement, none the less constitutes the constitutional charter of a Community based on the rule of law’ (Opinion 1/91 re the EEA Agreement [1991] ECR I-6079). The purpose of the course is to acquire an understanding of how this came to be so, and to consider the constitutional, institutional and substantive (economic) law of the house that Mr Monnet built.

The course is divided into two parts: the first half considers the nature of Community/Union law, its constitutional/institutional/procedural aspects, some familiarity with which is necessary properly to understand the substantive law which follows. Some consideration will be given to the changes introduced by the Lisbon Treaty, including the development of the Union’s embryonic External Action Service. The second half is the substantive law, itself divided into two halves: the law of the ‘common’ (now ‘internal’) market and the ‘four freedoms’ as it applies to public authorities (the ‘public law’ of the Treaties) and the law of the internal market as it applies to private persons – in other words, competition, or antitrust, law – the ‘private law’ of the Treaties.

We shall also touch upon 'Brexit', an event unprecedented in EU history. Was it an act of national liberation or one of crass, foolhardy recklessness? Whichever of the two, the enormity of the legal and economic difficulties of walking away are still scant understood. But it will crop up from time to time in our discussion.

3 ECTS

The course aims at providing students with an in-depth knowledge of the basic features of European Company Law, with a comparative analysis, also outside the scope of the EU, of the most relevant features of the companies (e.g.: profit purpose, directors’ duties).

We will analyse the freedom of establishment in the jurisprudence of the European Court of Justice and some harmonized areas of company law, with a specific focus on company’s purpose and corporate governance issues.

3 ECTS

The term regulation has gained prominence in recent years in many different (academic) fields, including law, economics and finance, political science and policy making, environmental science, etc.. In this course we will look at the ways in which a wide variations of so-called ‘regulation’ are used to steer, guide, limit or promote specific behaviours by governments, institutions, businesses, sectors, and individuals across digital environments. We will discuss the strategies of regulation, the reasons why specific forms of regulation are chosen, the specific societal, economic, environmental, legal, political or public policy reasons, and what rationales underlie different forms of regulation and their effectiveness. Students will come to understand different regulatory strategies lawmakers and policymakers can choose from when tackling regulatory challenges.  Students should gain an understanding of the pros and cons of different types of regulation, and will learn to make an informed choice for, and to provide proper argumentative underpinnings for, specific forms of regulation in specific cases.

After an introduction we will focus explicitly on regulation and digital technologies. After briefly discussing the ways in which, and the reasons why digital technologies are regulated, we will turn to the main topic of this course: the use of law and technology to steer, guide, and regulate individuals’ behaviour. This has come to be known as ‘techno-nudging’ or ‘techno-regulation’. Techno-nudging can take several forms, ranging from nudging and persuading users to follow a certain course of action. Hard-coding normative or legal codes into technologies to make certain behaviours impossible and stimulate others. The theory is that by hard-coding rules into digital technologies and networked environments, users will automatically comply rather than being asked to make a choice on whether to follow these rules. Since regulation by technology is cost-effective, fool proof, and an efficient way of ensuring regulatees’ compliance with rules or norms, it is not surprising that this approach has spread rapidly. For policy makers, regulators, and technology developers using nudging is considered a valuable solution in ensuring compliance with a wide variety of norms and rules. Sometimes it is used to enforce legal rules, but often times there is an economic or practical drive behind the choice for this form of regulation. The lecture then moves to specific techniques of regulation before moving towards two different case studies (platform regulation and fake news/disinformation) that puts the lessons of the first nine weeks to practical use.