Suchergebnisse

The goal of constructing an Area of Freedom, Security and Justice across the Union was agreed at the Tampere EU Summit of 1999. The objective was to create the conditions in which EU citizens could exercise their rights of free movement while at the same time addressing legitimate security concerns. Central to this debate has been the need to ensure that not only are the free movement rights granted by the Treaty protected, but that more broadly, the fundamental rights of EU citizens are not infringed. The Tampere programme was a five-year agenda that concluded in 2004. In June 2004, the Commission presented a Communication taking stock of the implementation of the Tampere agenda and setting future guidelines for a new justice and home affairs strategy for the years to come. Following Council discussions in July and October 2004, the Dutch Presidency produced a new programme for justice and home affairs (subsequently renamed as 'freedom, security and justice'). This will cover the period for the years 2005–2010, and is known as 'The Hague Programme: Ten priorities for the next five years— The Partnership for European Renewal in the field of Freedom, Security and Justice.'1

By any measure the single most important development across the field of Community competition law during the period under review (Spring 2001–Autumn 2003) is the adoption of Regulation 1/2003, by which the Pope abandoned the Vatican for the embrace of the Free Presbyterian Church. Regulation 17 has been the bedrock of the enforcement of the Community rules since 1962.1Fundamental changes to it, first proposed by the Commission in 1999,2were so startling as to be likened to 'a lifelong devout Catholic suddenly converting him/herself to Protestantism'.3Yet they were adopted by the Council in late 2002, and published early in 2003 as Regulation 1/20034—the Council here, maybe, missing a trick in not waiting a fortnight so as to adopt it as Regulation 17/2003. The new regulation is to apply from 1 May 2004—the date also scheduled for the formal accession of the ten new Member States.

The EC maritime transport policy was slow to develop. Although the EC Treaty requires the Member States to create a Common Transport Policy,1the focus of the Treaty transport provisions2is on inland modes of transport (road, rail and inland waterways).3However, the EU Council is expressly given competence to decide what 'appropriate provisions' may be adopted for maritime and air transport.4Maritime transport is by its very nature an international mode of transport regulated by a large number of international treaties and conventions, most of them negotiated and concluded within the International Maritime Organization (IMO). Members of the international community, including some EU Member States themselves, were initially reluctant to transfer their sovereignty in this field of transport to the Community. However, two main events gradually changed the attitude of the Member States to the Community's competence to regulate this mode of transport. First, the mid-1980s impetus to establish an internal market by 1992 placed all modes of transport at the centre of the project. It was not feasible to establish a geographical market, stretching from the Atlantic to the Eastern European countries and from the North Sea to the Mediterranean, where goods, people, services and capital would be able to circulate freely,5and in a competitive manner, without the Community seriously addressing transport issues. Thus, unsurprisingly, a number of important legislative proposals affecting the provisions of maritime transport services were adopted and implemented during that period.6The second significant factor in the development of a maritime transport policy was the number of serious marine accidents which took place in the Community's coastal waters during the last 20 years.7

The period under review (Autumn 2003–December 2006) saw in not only the expansion of the Union from 15 to 25 Member States, but also the attendant 'big bang', on 1 May 2004, in competition rules with the entry into operation of Regulations 1/2003 and 139/2004. The changes introduced by Regulation 1/20031—primarily abandoning the notification/authorization procedure which had obtained since 1962 in favour of a directly effective Article 81(3) andexception légale, and including further measures enabling/compelling the decentralized enforcement of Articles 81 and 82—are discussed in previous notes2and (copiously) elsewhere, and it is not proposed to rerehearse them here. Rather, the concern is the manner in which the dust has settled, in what is, after the frenetic legislative change and the absorption of 10 new Member States into a new culture of competition, a time of consolidation.