Suchergebnisse

Abstract
The EU Blocking Regulation intends to exclude the effects of extraterritorial legislation by third countries and, in particular, those of US economic sanctions, to protect the interests of economic actors in the EU. The goals of the Regulation—effective enforcement of EU law and the protection of the interests of EU economic actors—give rise to an enforcement paradox: a lack of enforcement by the Commission and the state authorities. The Bank Melli case not only demonstrates a shift in the enforcement of the Blocking Regulation to private parties but also sheds light anew on the doubts about its ability to protect private interests.

The reliance on constitutional identity by EU courts and governments has been widely discussed in legal scholarship, but less attention has been devoted to the impact of constitutional identity-based arguments on the evolution of judicial cooperation in civil matters. Member States have increasingly relied on constitutional identity in the area of private international law to claim the application of their own law or reject the recognition of foreign situations. Constitutional identity can be invoked through the public policy exception, to avoid the normal operation of private international law rules. Member States can also refer to constitutional identity when staying outside the adoption of EU private international law rules, especially regarding family law. Constitutional identity can thus impede judicial cooperation in civil matters and contribute to the fragmentation of EU private international law. Constitutional identity does not grant unfettered freedom to Member States, however. The autonomous private international law rules of the Member States must respect EU fundamental principles if the situation demonstrates some connection to EU law and the public international law obligations assumed by the Member State concerned.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is gradually undergoing multilevel transformation in the European Union (EU). Hardening of the initially voluntary CSR approach of the EU is progressively taking place in an interaction between the law of the Member States and EU law. Domestic solutions can serve as a model for EU legislation. In this progress, the Non-Financial Reporting Directive, granting considerable flexibility both to companies and the Member States, can indeed be seen as an intermediate stage and it is expected that, under the impact of human rights due diligence requirements recently imposed on companies by Member States, more substantive obligations will also be introduced at an EU level in the future.

AbstractMost private international laws do not address cultural property specifically but, instead, apply the general lex rei sitae rule also to artifacts. Legal scholarship has revealed the flaws of the rigid application of the lex rei sitae principle to cultural goods and has proposed alternative connecting factors, such as the lex originis principle, to prevent forum and law shopping in this field. Reacting to the criticisms, some of the more recent private international law codifications have decided on the adoption of specific rules on stolen and illegally exported cultural goods that combine the lex rei sitae and the lex originis rules and provide room for the parties' autonomy. This article draws the conclusion that these more recent legislative solutions do not necessarily promote legal certainty and predictability with regard to the governing law and are far from being a Holy Grail for the conflict of laws of cultural property, whether on a national level or within the European Union.

The free movement and residence of Union citizens and their third country national family members may be restricted under Article 35 of Directive 2004/38/EC on the grounds of abuse of rights. Although the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) had the opportunity to address abuse of rights cases, so far there have been no cases where it has established that abuse of rights took place. For this reason, the legal literature has tended to downplay the significance of the abuse of rights exception. The analysis of national case law, however, demonstrates that the courts of the Member States do apply Article 35 in its implemented form and have established abuse of rights on several occasions. Moreover, national courts have decided legal questions related to the abuse of rights which were not answered previously by the CJEU.

Almost at the same time, two significant projects related to civil procedure have been launched. The first one is the ELI/UNIDROIT project 'From Transnational Principles to European Rules of Civil Procedure', while the other is the codification of the New Hungarian Civil Procedure Act. This article briefly summarizes the lectures delivered at the Conference on the 'New Hungarian Civil Procedure Act and the Development of European Rules of Civil Procedure' held in Budapest at the Hungarian Academy of Justice on 30 and 31 May 2016. The goal of the conference was the introduction of the ELI/UNIDROIT project to Hungarian lawyers as well as giving an insight into the Hungarian codification process for the international audience. At the conference, internationally renowned academicians who are participating at the elaboration of European Rules of Civil Procedure discussed the major topics of the draft European model rules, whereas Hungarian scholars presented the parallel issues of codification concerning the New Hungarian Civil Procedure Act.