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)

Poland has got its last seven days in court – with a bouquet of rulings in Warsaw and at the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in Luxembourg that could have far-reaching implications for the European Union’s (EU’s) legal order. We will unpack what these rulings are about and how they fit into Poland’s clash with the EU. Read more... (Petra Ágnes Kanyuk)