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The Advocate General, in his Opinion delivered on 16 December 2021, proposes that the Court allow the appeal brought by Ireland and annul the Commission’s decision declaring aid which Luxembourg granted to Fiat as being incompatible with the internal market. Read more… (Krisztina Széles)
The exponential growth in the importance of the digital economy and the debates surrounding it fill a large part of today’s legal discourse. Demonstrating the unheard-of advance of this new economic segment, a 2018 Commission report found that the largest digital companies had an average annual growth rate of around 14% in the seven years preceding the report, compared to 0.2% for ‘traditional’ transnational companies, and five of the six largest companies in the world were digital companies. Read more… (Márton Ferenc Bak)
In the latest episode of the intra-EU investment arbitration saga, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled on 26 October 2021 in Poland v. PL Holdings (Case C-109/20) that EU Member States are precluded from concluding with investors from another EU Member State an ad hoc arbitration agreement identical to an arbitration clause of an international treaty deemed invalid under the CJEU’s Achmea case law (Case C-284/16). Read more… (Petra Ágnes Kanyuk)
In a resolution adopted on 21 October, the European Parliament (EP) declared the Constitutional Tribunal of Poland as not only “lacking legal validity and independence” but also “unqualified to interpret the Constitution of Poland”. This scathing denunciation comes as an answer to the 7 October decision of the Constitutional Tribunal that found the provisions of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) incompatible with the Polish Constitution on multiple grounds, thus posing a direct challenge to the established principle of the primacy of EU law. Read more… (Daniel Szilágyi)
The Convention on Biological Diversity is an international convention signed in Rio de Janeiro, dedicated to promoting sustainable development. It seeks to conserve the diversity of life on Earth at all levels – genetic, population, species, habitat and ecosystem – and to ensure that this diversity continues to maintain the life support system of the biosphere overall. The Convention recognizes that biological diversity is about more than plants, animals and micro-organisms and their ecosystems – it also is about how dependent people are on a healthy environment and that we need nature in our lives. Read more… (Beáta Bella Szutor)
In view of the economic difficulties caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, it was unthinkable for the European Commission not to ease restrictions on State aid. As such, the European Commission approved unprecedented forms of State aid to save the epidemic-struck European economy. In this context, the governments of the member states have poured billions of euros into the airline industry, which has been hit particularly hard by virus-related restrictions and lockdowns. According to Ryanair, State aid given to national airlines constitutes unfair competition; as such, the airline has filed 16 lawsuits against the Commission for allowing the provision of State aid to individual airlines. On 19 May, the General Court has delivered three judgments, deciding to uphold Ryanair’s actions for the annulment of Commission State aid decisions in respect of TAP and KLM, but dismissed the action concerning Spain. Read more… (Krisztina Széles)
The right to have access to public services (in EU terminology ’services of general interests’, SGIs and ‘services of general economic interests’, SGEIs) is of crucial importance for citizen. It has also been confirmed by the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. This right involves the requirement for establishing an effective consumer protection regime both at the national and the EU level. Due to the evolution of the legal framework, the EU is an important supranational actor in the regulation of public services today. The paper analyses the evolution of consumer protection in this field from the very beginning stage of the European integration until today, with a special focus on secondary legislation of the European Union aiming at liberalization in the energy sector. Read more… (Ildikó Bartha)
The European General Court has ruled that Amazon’s cost-sharing arrangement in Luxembourg did not breach EU competition law. The General Court says that there was no selective advantage in favour of a Luxembourg subsidiary of the Amazon group; as such, it annuls the Commission’s decision declaring the aid incompatible with the internal market. Accordingly, Amazon will not be expected to pay 250 million euros in back taxes. As regards Engie in Luxembourg, the General Court has confirmed the Commission’s decision that a set of tax rulings issued by Luxembourg artificially reduced Engie’s tax bill by around 120 million euros. Read more… (Krisztina Széles)
According to Advocate General Pikamäe’s Opinion in Case C-564/19 IS, delivered on 15 April 2021, the Hungarian legislation enabling the public prosecutor to bring an action before the Supreme Court (Kúria) to declare a lower criminal court’s order for reference to the Court of Justice of the European Union unlawful, and the decision of the Supreme Court establishing that unlawfulness, are incompatible with the principle of the primacy of EU law, as they undermine the power of the lower court to refer questions to Court of Justice. As such, in the opinion of the Advocate General, the decision of the Kúria and the underlying national legislation must be set aside. Read more… (Daniel Szilágyi)
In a previous blog post, I explored the notion of the average consumer as defined in European Union law and its interpretation by the European Court of Justice. This current article aims to serve as a continuation of the previous study, with the objective of presenting a brief analysis of two potential interpretations of consumer vulnerability developed in the literature of consumer protection, followed by an examination of the appearance of a singular major exception to the average consumer concept within the European Union consumer protection regime: the narrow scope of consumers acknowledged as ‘particularly vulnerable’. Read more… (Daniel Szilágyi)