The Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz and Others v. Switzerland judgment attracted immediate and global attention. It has been referenced as a landmark judgment, one that may influence and even transform climate litigation in Europe and beyond. However, more than a year later, questions about its exact impact remain unanswered. This contribution critically reflects on the procedural aspect of the judgment, in particular the ECtHR's approach to locus standi and the victim status of the applicants. It argues that KlimaSeniorinnen marks an important step in advancing the justiciability of climate-related claims by allowing associational standing, but that it also imposes clear limits because it effectively excludes individual victim status. This outcome is not only paradoxical in light of the Court's existing case law, but also places a disproportionate burden on individual applicants, given that collective action may not always be a suitable or available avenue. Consequently, this contribution explores ways in which the Court's approach to legal standing could be adapted in pending and future climate cases.
Despite decades of policy initiatives and broad recognition of its effectiveness, mediation remains underutilized across much of Europe – a phenomenon termed the ‘EU Mediation Paradox’. This article presents new evidence on mediation use and practice, drawing on a 2024 survey of more than 2,400 mediation experts and related professionals across EU Member States and the UK. Latent class analysis identifies four archetypal national mediation frameworks – Minimalist, Statutorily Recognized, Court-Promoted and Regulated & Incentivized – revealing substantial variation in institutional design and uptake. The study quantifies mediation's potential to reduce dispute duration and costs, showing that even modest mediation success rates can yield meaningful gains. Multilevel models identify key institutional drivers of mediation use, highlighting the role of legal mandates and judicial incentives while cautioning against overly restrictive accreditation regimes. The analysis also examines experts’ preferences over legislative and non-legislative reforms, demonstrating that these preferences closely reflect prevailing institutional contexts. Taken together, the findings indicate that institutional design shapes both mediation practice and reform perspectives. By combining expert judgement with quantitative empirical analysis, the article provides a contemporary assessment of mediation in Europe and offers practical guidance for refining EU policy and strengthening mediation's role in civil justice.
The escalating climate crisis and major advances in climate litigation question the existence of constitutional protection for environmental rights in the EU legal system. For forty years, Article 11 TFEU has mandated the integration of environmental protection requirements into all EU policies. Yet it remains largely dormant in the case law even as the EU Green Deal evidenced progress in policymaking. Although the provision is often dismissed as unenforceable by the scholarship, this article argues that Article 11 TFEU provides for a constitutional obligation akin to a general principle of EU law with significant untapped potential. Through textual, systemic and teleological analysis, we establish Article 11's binding nature and constitutional significance. The article retraces the evolution of the CJEU's case law and demonstrates how, despite inconsistencies, Article 11 TFEU already performs all functions generally fulfilled by general principles of EU law, thanks notably to recent grand chamber judgments of the Court of Justice. Accordingly, we propose an interpretation of this principle that both respects judicial precedents and realizes its true legal potential, offering a robust constitutional foundation for advancing environmental protection within the Union's legal framework at a time when such protections are increasingly vital.
The article examines the scope and limits of the single-state principle in EU social security law. Article 11(1) of Regulation 883/2004 provides that a person shall be subject to the legislation of ‘a single Member State only’. This is commonly understood to give the conflict rules in Title II exclusive effect, designating one competent Member State whose legislation applies to the exclusion of all others. The article submits, first, that precluding non-competent Member States from granting benefits exceeds what is necessary to ensure freedom of movement for workers under Article 48 TFEU. Second, drawing a distinction between the powers of national authorities and the rights of individuals, the article argues that while non-competent Member States may not levy compulsory contributions on individuals subject to the legislation of another Member State, individuals may still claim benefits under national law, applied in accordance with applicable EU law. Third, the article rejects an expansive interpretation of the Treaty provisions on freedom of movement that would require non-competent Member States to grant contributory benefits to persons over whom they lack the power to levy contributions. EU law permits – but does not require – non-competent Member States to provide protection to persons not subject to their legislation under Regulation 883/2004.
This article examines the legal, regulatory and societal challenges posed by deepfake technology, situating its analysis within a comparative framework spanning the European Union, United States and China. It explores the multifaceted harms of deepfakes – from non-consensual pornography and political disinformation to financial fraud and identity manipulation – and analyses their rapid dissemination through online ecosystems that undermine both individual dignity and democratic trust. The study assesses the EU Artificial Intelligence Act, highlighting its transparency-based approach, definitional boundaries and classification of deepfake systems as ‘limited-risk’, while identifying contexts that may warrant high-risk or prohibited status. It underscores the limitations of transparency obligations in addressing malicious actors, cross-border disinformation and intimate image abuse, and examines the complementary roles of the Digital Services Act, the General Data Protection Regulation and the EU Directive on combating violence against women in regulating different stages of the deepfake lifecycle. Ultimately, the article argues for a multi-layered, adaptive governance model that reconciles the protection of rights, dignity and democratic integrity with the preservation of legitimate innovation in AI-driven creativity and communication.
This article examines the role of national courts tasked with constitutional jurisdiction in the ex-ante review of acts adopted in the context of European integration requiring unanimous agreement among the Member States, such as the European Treaties, mixed agreements, inter se agreements and certain secondary EU legal acts. National courts often review the constitutionality of these acts prior to their adoption, becoming veto players in the composite European constitution. This article explores reviewing courts’ reasoning in such instances, discussing how they balance their duty to protect national constitutions while enabling the smooth functioning of the EU and promoting its integration. It finds that a key component of the reviewing courts’ reasoning is the evaluation of the uncertainty regarding the future development of the act under scrutiny. It critiques two approaches to the evaluation of such uncertainty: a ‘distrustful’ approach, which overly restricts integration to protect the constitution, and a ‘trustful’ one, which prioritizes integration at the cost of constitutional safeguards. The article argues for a more balanced approach, where national courts adopt a reasonable interpretation of the act under review, reserving for themselves the prerogative to intervene in case of future abnormal developments.
Content moderation practices of online platforms are underpinned by a complex interplay between public and private power. This interplay raises important questions concerning the division of responsibility for safeguarding fundamental rights, particularly freedom of expression, among various actors involved in online content governance. This article examines the role of the CJEU in shaping an elaborate multi-actor system for the protection of fundamental rights within the context of EU platform regulation. It establishes that in the absence of comprehensive EU legislation on content moderation, the CJEU offered crucial reflections on the existence, scope and content of obligations which may be incumbent upon the EU, the Member States and online platforms under the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. The CJEU's case law has therefore laid essential groundwork for the rules set out in the Digital Services Act (DSA), which has codified and expanded on the Court's key findings. At the same time, the article shows how the DSA's rules challenge the core tenets of the framework crafted by the CJEU. This underscores the need to refine the principles for distributing responsibility for securing the protection of fundamental rights, which must be rooted in a more comprehensive understanding of the intricate relationships between public and private actors in the digital environment.
In the past two decades, the European Court of Human Rights has struggled to determine when a killing caused in extraterritorial context reaches the necessary threshold to establish jurisdiction. Its case-law differs depending on the type of bombing or artillery used and from what distance a person was killed. Since Georgia v. Russia II, the Court has established ‘the element of proximity’, in which it acknowledges that the physical distance between the state agent and victim plays a role in establishing jurisdiction. This paper provides the first attempt to critically assess and conceptualize the element of proximity. We argue that the Court's understanding of proximity has the potential to exclude instances of killings in remote warfare through drones, autonomous weapon systems and cyber-attacks, even if they are conducted with precision. At the same time, remote killing takes place daily and remote warfare and cyber-attacks have become part and parcel of any warfare. To ensure that the Court keeps temporal proximity with technological advancements, we argue that the Court only needs to reflect on and apply how proximity in the age of remote warfare, precision in the age of biometrics, and state agent and control in the age of AI and robotics is exercised. Alternatively, the Court should drop the application of the element of proximity in warfare if it fails to provide a victim-centred approach by overly focusing on the technicalities of proximity between the victim and the perpetrator and the type of the tool used to cause the death or injury of the victim.
This article concerns the compliance of Hungarian legislation on the use of face recognition technology in misdemeanour procedures with AI law, data protection and its status in criminal justice. Hungary has recently modified a series of national laws in an attempt to abolish assemblies which would represent any sexual or gender identity which does not conform to heterosexuality or traditional gender roles, in other words, Pride. To this end, the legislator widely extended the use of face recognition technology in criminal justice. A number of stakeholders and commentators flagged the modifications as potentially violating EU law. It is against this background that we analyse the legislation regarding the use of Hungarian face recognition technology from various approaches including AI regulations, data protection, criminal justice and the protection of human rights.
Recently, the promotion of large-scale deployment of electricity storage technologies has become an essential component of EU policies, as it is deemed crucial to the advancement of the green transition. Photovoltaic and wind generation are intermittent and cannot consistently meet electricity demand; hence, these technologies can store electricity during periods of excess generation and release it into the electricity system when needed, while also contributing to its security and reliability. Many Member States have implemented support schemes targeting these technologies to overcome investment barriers and foster their development. The study investigates these support schemes and the manner in which state aid rules address electricity storage. Then, it analyzes the Italian scheme for the promotion of electricity storage, which is regarded as highly innovative and is hence attracting significant international attention. It will be questioned whether the scheme constitutes state aid, despite being notified and approved as such, or whether it could have been considered as providing compensation for the performance of a service of general economic interest in line with the Altmark conditions.
This paper critically examines the evolving landscape of effective judicial protection within the European Union’s Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) following the case of KS and KD . While the right to effective judicial protection is enshrined in Article 47 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Article 19(1) TEU, the CFSP remains a constitutional anomaly due to explicit jurisdictional carve-outs laid out in Articles 24 TEU and 275 TFEU, which restrict the jurisdiction of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJE]U). The paper argues that, although the CJEU consistently claims to enhance individual remedies, its case law reveals a primary commitment to preserving the structural coherence and uniformity of EU law, sometimes paradoxically at the expense of legal certainty. From this vantage point, the case law of the Court, culminating in KS and KD , has failed to take seriously the important role that Member State courts could play in ensuring effective judicial protection in the CFSP. Meanwhile, KS and KD may just mark the beginning of a new line of case law, with the CJEU facing pressure to adapt EU non-contractual liability rules so they can function as human rights remedies. Whether the Court will achieve this remains unresolved.
Article 1 EEA establishes a ‘homogeneous European Economic Area’ that entails ‘the free movement of persons’. Nationals of the EEA EFTA States are afforded rights of movement and residence, regardless of whether they are economically active. The CJEU has characterized the legal status of EEA nationals as ‘objectively comparable’ with that of EU citizens. Differences between the rights protection afforded in the EEA EFTA pillar and the EU pillar will constitute discrimination. EU secondary legislation that pursues the aim of the fullest possible realization of the free movement of persons falls within the scope of Article 1 EEA and shall be implemented through Articles 98 and 102 EEA. The detailed regulation provided for by such measures makes Article 1(2)b EEA sufficiently precise and unconditional to be relied upon before courts. It affords EEA EFTA nationals a primary, written and individual right to free movement that is homogeneous with Article 21.1 TFEU.
Both awaited and criticized, the Court of Justice's judgment in Commission v. Malta reflects a broader disquiet surrounding citizenship and its delicate task of sorting the ‘us’ and ‘them’. Amid this disquiet, the judgment delivers a seemingly straightforward message: money cannot ground the bonds of citizenship. The message however rests on shaky foundations. The Court deploys a vast array of concepts but leaves many underused or overstretched. In the haste to conclude that the Maltese investor citizenship scheme is in breach of the Treaties, the judgment ultimately misses two opportunities: first, to engage with the value of agency in the construction of citizenship; and second, to clarify how the relationship between citizenship and mobility has evolved in the penumbra of European citizenship.
This article addresses the reasons why Proposal COM(2008)426, often referred to as the horizontal equal treatment directive, should be adopted as soon as possible in order to protect persons across the EU against discrimination on the grounds of religion and belief, disability, age and sexual orientation outside the employment sphere, a protection that is currently lacking. The arguments for this are, first, that adoption would deal with some of the reasons for the hierarchy between discrimination grounds that is said to exist in EU law. Second, and most important, adoption of the proposal would fulfil, to a large extent, the positive obligations of the EU and of the Member States under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The latter part of this article analyses the CRPD and compares this to Proposal COM(2008)426 in its present compromise form to establish this.
The CJEU's judgment in Case C-4/23 Mirin establishes an obligation for the Member States to recognize the change in name and the gender transition – and, accordingly, amend civil status entries, documents and certificates – after a legal gender recognition (LGR) procedure undertaken in another Member State. Mirin thus connects three different streams of case law: the one on names and EU citizenship, the one on LGBTIQA+ rights in a free movement dimension and that on transgender rights. In our paper, we argue that this case opens several questions for the development of EU law. First, although Mirin is firmly rooted in a free movement language and reasoning, it seems a preparatory ruling gradually setting the scene for a non-free-movement-only solution in relation to the previous case law on LGBTIQA+ rights. Second, the CJEU strengthens the fundamental rights dimension of this case law. Third, we argue that Mirin represents an occasion for the CJEU to develop a more comprehensive understanding of transgender rights, which have so far been framed in a purely medicalized definition.
The present paper examines a preliminary ruling on the principle of proportionality in criminal investigations involving digital data stored on mobile phones. The increasing reliance on technology in daily life has a significant impact on criminal proceedings. The data collected from these activities can provide insights into the private life of the user, which may be essential for law enforcement purposes. That said, police surveillance is a controversial debate. In October 2024, the CJEU issued the C.G. judgment (Case C 548/21), addressing the conditions under which investigating authorities can access such data under the Law Enforcement Directive. While the CJEU has previously interpreted access to retained data for criminal investigations by public authorities, this case introduces notable changes, particularly concerning the processing of location and traffic data for non-serious crimes. In this regard, the article compares the newest case with the Prokuratuur case (Case C-746/18) in order to illustrate the main differences. The C.G. case, read in conjunction with recent Union developments, such as the adoption of the e-Evidence Regulation, reflects a shift in the EU’s approach to these issues. Additionally, it highlights the fragmentation of domestic legal frameworks governing retained data, underscoring the challenges in achieving a harmonized approach.
