Court of Justice of the European Union

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Explosive case, cautious ruling: The CJEU prudently favours cooperation in the Puig case

On 31 January 2023, the CJEU issued its much-awaited ruling on the Puig case. The case primarily concerned the surrender of Catalan exile Lluís Puig Gordi, former Catalan minister of Culture in Belgium since October 2017, but bore serious implications for other Catalan exiles targeted by international and European Arrest Warrant (EAW). In August 2020, the Brussels Court of first instance determined there would be a risk of human rights violation should Puig be sent back to Spain and refused the surrender. This was confirmed by the indictment chamber in January 2021. In turn, the Spanish Supreme Court introduced a preliminary ruling request to the CJEU challenging the Belgian refusal. In its 31 January decision, the CJEU eventually sided with the Spanish Supreme Court and ruled that cooperation should prevail. It nevertheless left the door open for national courts to refuse to execute future EAWs in the Catalan case, as these courts have consistently done so far. 1. The long saga of the failed extradition requests for Catalan exiles in short…

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New Rules of Procedure of the Ad Hoc Conciliation Commission in Palestine v Israel

The inter-State procedure under Articles 11-13 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) lay dormant for over 50 years before its activation in March-April 2018 in three inter-State communications, Qatar v Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (2018), Qatar v United Arab Emirates (2018) and Palestine v Israel (2018). These were the first three…

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Belgium asks European Court of Justice to opine on compatibility of Energy Charter Treaty’s investor-State arbitration provisions with EU law

On 3 December 2020, the Government of Belgium announced that it was submitting a request to the Court of Justice of the European Union for an opinion on ‘the compatibility of the intra-European application of the arbitration provisions of the future modernised Energy Charter Treaty with the European Treaties.’ This is major news, potentially sounding the death knell…

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Sovereign (over)borrowing during the COVID-19 pandemic: Do creditors have a responsibility to prevent unsustainable debt situations?

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has prompted across the world massive state intervention for the containment and management of the epidemic, and the mitigation of its socio-economic consequences. The measures so far adopted by many countries are not only indispensable to avert a dramatic deterioration of living conditions (especially for women and the most vulnerable)…

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To Forget, But Not Forgive: Why the CJEU’s Latest Ruling on Google and the ‘Right to Be Forgotten’ is Not at All a Win for US Tech Giants

  Google has recently triumphed in the fight against a worldwide application of the European "right to be forgotten" following the European Court of Justice’s ruling that Google does not have to take down search results revealing sensitive personal information of EU citizens worldwide, rejecting demands by the French Data Protection Authority. The long anticipated judgment by Europe’s…

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