From the State of the Union Address, delivered by the President of the European Commission, Mrs. Ursula von der Leyen, on Wednesday, 16 September 2020

• The Schuman Declaration (1950)

  Declaration by the French Prime Minister Robert Schuman, delivered in 1950, considered as one of the first steps in the development of European integration.

• German Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht), Judgment of 30 June 2009, 2 BvE 2/08, concerning the German Act approving the Treaty of Lisbon (s.c. Lissabon Urteil)
• German Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht), Judgment of 21 June 2016, 2 BvR 2729/13

  This more recent judgment of the German Constitutional Court, which must be read in line of continuity with its previous judgment of 2009 concerning the Treaty of Lisbon (see above), rejects some pleas which had been raised concerning the compatibility with the provisions of the German Basic Law (Grundgesetz) of a policy decision by the European Central Bank establishing the Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT) plan as a means of facing the current situation of economic crisis. Those pleas namely related to the circumvention of the guarantees of democratic representation offered by the legislative procedures provided for by the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), inherent in the establishment of such a plan by means of an autonomous decision by the European Central Bank (see also, on the concerns raised by the said decision, the judgment given by the ECJ on 16 June 2015, case C-62/14, Gauweiler v. Deutscher Bundestag, below).

Cf. Article 6, Treaty on European Union (TEU) and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (above, in the Treaties folder, see particularly Articles 51-53 of the Charter on its scope of application, interpretation and coordination with the European Convention on Human Rights and other human rights instruments)

This folder contains a selection of cases brougth before the European Court of Justice (ECJ), underlining the distinctive features of regulations as binding legal acts of the Union, with particular regard to their general nature and to their direct applicability in the domestic legal systems of the Member States.

This folder contains a selection of judgments by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) concerning the distinctive features of EU directives, as binding legal acts of the Union, with particular regard to their attitude to produce direct effects on private subjects vis-à-vis their Member State, in the absence of implmenting measures adopted by the latter.

This folder collects judgments by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) concerning the effects of decisions as binding acts of the EU. Despite the literal wording of Article 288 TFEU, fourth sentence, whereby decisions addressed to individual recipients are binding only upon them, the Court has given a broad construction to the rule, so that decisions addressed to one or more Member States may be likely to produce direct effects in favour of individuals subject to their jurisdiction, following a line of reasoning similar to that adopted concerning directives. Likewise, the Court has excluded that a decision addressed to a Member State may produce horizontal direct effects between private parties.

This folder contains judgments by the European Court of Justice concerning opinions and recommendations, which, pursuant to Article 288 TFEU, are not binding. Accordingly, in relation to the former, the ECJ has stressed that they may not be resorted to by the EU institutions when thay intend to adopt an act aiming to modify the leagl position of the subjects oncerned, whereas in respect of the latter the Court has stressed that, albeit not binding, they must be taken into account by domestic courts for the purposes of interpreting the relevant binding provisions of EU law.

Art. 216 TFEU provides in general terms for the circumstances in which the European Union may conclude agreements with third countries or international organizations, following, unless otherwise specified in other provisions of the Treaty as may be relevant in respect of the subject matter concerned (such as under Article 207 TFEU, in matters falling under the common commercial policy), the procedure set out under Article 218 TFEU. The present folder collects some of the most significant judgments and opinions delivered pursuant to Article 218, para. 11, TFEU, by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) concering the competence of the EU to conclude such agreements and their compatibility with the Treaties.

The judgments by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) contained in this folder highlight some of the fundamental features of the procedure for infringement, which may be commenced by the European Commission, or, exceptionally, by another Member State, where a Member State is considered at breach with its duties under European Union Law (Arts. 258-260 TFEU).

In the judgments contained in this folder, the ECJ brings to further consequences its position held in the cases of Koebler v. Austria and Traghetti del Mediterraneo v Italy (above, in the folder concerning actions before Member States' courts for liability for breach of EU law), by stating that in certain circumstances the duty for Member States to comply with European Union law might imply a limitation for the effects of a domestic judgment having acquired the effect of res judicata.

• EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement: protecting European interests, ensuring fair competition, and continued cooperation in areas of mutual interest

  Link to the dedicated page on the website of the European Commission, containing updates concerning the long-awaited agreement regulating the future relationships between the European Union and the United Kingdom after the expiry of the transition period on 31 December 2020.

• The European Union and the United Kingdom: Forging a New Partnership

  Link to the webpage of the European Commission's taskforce for conducting the negotiations for an agreement on the future relationships between the European Union and the United Kingdom, providing information both on the ongoing negotiations towards the conclusion of such an agreement and on the process of implementation of the Withdrawal Agreement, in force as of 31 January 2020 (the date on which the withdrawal took effect). The Withdrawal Agreement, in fact, provides for a transition period, during which the United Kingdom, while no longer a Member State of the EU, continues to be bound by EU law and remains subject to the investigating powers of the European Commission and to the jurisdiction of the Court of Justice. The transition period, for an extension of which the UK refused to apply, is deemed to expire on 31 December 2020, and it is most unlikely that the awaited agreement regulating the future relationships between the EU and the UK will have been concluded by that date, since, as from last news available, there are still open questions to be agreed on, and the obstacles posed by the attitude held by the UK government concerning the implementation of the Withdrawal Agreement, particularly as concerns the Protocol on Ireland-Nothern Ireland (see below) make the progress of negotiations on the future relationships with the EU rather difficult.

• F. Marongiu Buonaiuti and F. Vergara Caffarelli, Brexit: A New Solution to the Irish Border Puzzle?

  Link to an article, published by the lecturer and Dr. F. Vergara Caffarelli, Senior Advisor of the Department for Economics and International Relations, Bank of Italy, in the online journal Federalismi.it, No. 20/2020, concerning the solution embodied in the final text of the Protocol on Ireland-Northern Ireland. The correct implementation of the Protocol risks being endangered by a legislative initiative in the UK, consisting of an Internal Market Bill, containing provisions on trade relationships between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK which are inconsistent with the arrangement set out under the Protocol. An infringement procedure has been initiated by the European Commission against the United Kingdom on that account: see https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_20_1798 for further details.

• D. Chalmers, G. Davies and G. Monti, European Union Law, 4th ed., Chapter 5A: The Authority of EU Law beyond the Union

  Link to the dedicated webpage on the publishers' website, from where the above on-line chapter may be downloaded free of charge (select: "resources", then "online chapters", then "Chapter 5A").

This folder collects materials concerning the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the freedom of movement of persons, goods ans services across the European Union, as well as on immigration form third countries. In fact, the restrictions adopted in many countries around the world, including most of the EU Member States, in order to contain the spreading of the virus and ensure the ability of the national health services to cope with the difficult handling of the health emergency, are inevitably deemed to have an impact not only on the freedom of movement of persons, as well as, by implication, of goods and services between the Member States, but also on the availability of the Member States to receive migrants, including prospective applicants for international protection, both for fear of the presence among migrants of persons affected by the virus, whose arrival might further contribute to its spreading, and for reasons related to the difficulty of effectively handling new arrivals at a time when their health and police authorities are overburdened with the handling of the health emergency, and relocations to other Member States, or even across different regions of the same country, might find an obstacle in the restrictions to the movement of persons adopted for sanitary reasons. In this respect, an Inter-Ministerial Decree adopted in Italy on 7 April 2020 may be considered as an example of this state of affairs, raising the question of striking a proper balance between the imperative of the protection of public health and the respect for the international obligations of the country, with particular regard to the respect for the fundamental rights of migrants and for the principles embodied in the 1951 Geneva Convention on the Status of Refugees.

• C. Hruschka, The Pandemic kills also the European solidarity

  Link to an article by a senior researcher of the Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy, Munich, published on eumigrationlawblog.eu (EU Immigration and Asylum Law and Policy blog) on 20 March 2020.