Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Finance, Public – Law and legislation – European Union countries'

Award date: 18 November 2020
Supervisor : Professor Deirdre Curtin (European University Insitute)
This thesis explores the way the development of the European Border Surveillance System (EUROSUR) has been funded and assess whether the funding strategy adopted complies with established principles of financial accountability. Starting from a notion of financial accountability as a duty to report expenditure in a measurable, transparent and coherent way, relevant budget lines contributing to the development of the system will be singled out in order to assess whether they have been implemented in accordance with those criteria. While the funding strategy initially relied on a multi-level system of financial governance involving the EU, the Member States and the executive agency Frontex, EUROSUR funds were then channelled into three main funding streams belonging to different policy areas of the EU: research and development, border management and humanitarian aid to developing countries. An integrated analysis of these financial instruments shows that the overall EUROSUR funding policy infringes principles to be respected to give account of expenditure, because of original accountability gaps affecting the launch of the EUROSUR project. Nevertheless, this deficit has been reduced over time. Chances are that in the next multiannual financial framework, running for the period 2021-2027 compliance will be improved in the field of external border management, with a more efficient use of available resources.

Defence date: 15 October 2007
Examining Board: Prof. Jacques Ziller, Relatore (IUE) ; Prof. Giuliano Amato, (IUE) ; Prof. M.P. Chiti, (Università di Firenze) ; Prof. Giacinto della Cananea, (Università di Napoli Federico II)
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digital archive of EUI PhD theses
no abstract available

Si le droit connaît les médicaments et les denrées alimentaires, il ne reconnaît pas les alicaments. Or, ces dernières années ont vu l’apparition et le développement, sur le marché de l’Union européenne, de « produits-frontière » c'est-à-dire de produits se trouvant à la frontière entre les médicaments et les aliments. Confrontées à un vaste conflit de qualification causé par l’ambivalence conceptuelle des « produits-frontière », les institutions de l’Union ont, au nom de la libre circulation des marchandises ainsi que de la nécessité d’une protection accrue des consommateurs et de la santé publique, entamé, dès le début des années 2000, une large harmonisation des dispositions nationales relatives à ces produits. Considérés comme aliments, leur nature particulière nécessite cependant une approche adaptative de la part du législateur européen. Cette nouvelle approche de l’aliment par le droit, favorable à la reconnaissance d’une santé alimentaire, tant convoitée par la société contemporaine, ne résout toutefois pas l’ambiguïté quant à la place à accorder aux « produits-frontière » dans le corpus juridique de l’Union européenne.
Doctorat en Sciences juridiques
info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

La thèse aborde le droit européen de la télévision sous deux aspects :les régimes administratifs d’accès des émissions télévisées aux réseaux câblés et les droits intellectuels.

En ce qui concerne l’accès des émissions aux réseaux câblés, la thèse met en avant le besoin de sauvegarder un service public de l’audiovisuel. Celui-ci est défini comme un ensemble des règles qui visent à la fois le paysage audiovisuel propre à chaque Etat membre (par exemple pluralisme) et le contenu des émissions proprement dit (émissions informatives, éducatives, épanouissement culturel etc.). Le droit communautaire primaire et dérivé, tel qu’interprété par la Cour de justice, fournit les moyens de conciliation entre, d’une part les intérêts généraux et, d’autre part, les exigences découlant de la libre prestation de services et de la libre concurrence.

En ce qui concerne l’application des droits intellectuels, la thèse aborde la problématique liée à l’épuisement ou la subsistance de ceux-ci. Dans le cas de la câblodistribution, la Cour a affirmé la subsistance du droit. Cette position est corroboré par la nouvelle directive européenne sur le droit d’auteur et les droits voisins dans la société de l’information. La thèse appuie la position de subsistance en considérant qu’elle constitue une condition essentielle pour la juste récompense des auteurs.

Enfin, la thèse aborde les questions plus spécifiques qui naissent à propos de la convergence technologique et juridique. Tout d’abord, il est avancé que le service public de l’audiovisuel n’est pas uniquement lié à des contraintes techniques, mais essentiellement à des objectifs qualitatifs (contenu des émissions). Ainsi, la thèse plaide en faveur de la pérpetuité du service public de l’audiovisuel dans l’ère du numérique. Par ailleurs, des questions plus spécifiques (comme l’accès à la boucle locale, l’interconnexion des réseaux et la numérisation des infrastructures) ont été examinées.

Doctorat en droit
info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Defence date: 19 December 2018
Examining Board: Prof. Claire Kilpatrick, European University Institute (Supervisor); Prof. Joanne Scott, European University Institute; Prof. Gráinne de Búrca, New York University; Prof. László Andor, Corvinus University of Budapest, Université Libre de Bruxelles
As of the 2014-2020 financial period the EU has made increasing use of its budgetary resources to advance its policy objectives at the Member States' level thorough the use of EU spending conditionality. EU spending conditionality is a requirement linked to EU funds expenditure that aims primarily to induce recipients to adopt a conduct desired by the EU and secure its financial interests. This thesis examines the novel spending conditionality tool, through the lens of four distinct theoretical frameworks, metaphorically called worlds: the conceptual world (Part I), the legal world (Part II), the constitutional world (Part III) and the institutional world (Part IV). Each theoretical framework reveals important findings regarding the conceptual roots, the legal reach, the constitutional significance and institutional realities of spending conditionality in the EU. Based on empirical EU-wide data and detailed case studies, this thesis concludes that despite its sophisticated conceptual form, thick legal setting, potentially far-reaching constitutional implications and the monumental institutional effort to render the tool effective, in practice, the policy output of EU spending conditionality has so far been limited and uncertain. In response, this thesis puts forward several recommendations that may usefully inform the effective future operation of spending conditionality within the EU legal and constitutional system.
Part II 'The Legal World' of the PhD thesis draws upon an earlier version published as an article 'Revisiting the dominant discourse on conditionality in the EU : the case of EU spending conditionality' (2017) in the journal 'Cambridge yearbook of European legal studies'
Part III 'The constitutional world' of the PhD thesis draws upon an earlier version published as EUI LAW WP 2017/16

Defence date: 7 June 2017
Examining Board: Professor Giorgio Monti, EUI (Supervisor); Professor Petros Mavroidis, EUI; Professor Roberto Caranta, Università di Torino; Professor Kris Wauters, Université Catholique de Louvain-la-Neuve
The starting point for the thesis is the problem of negative externalities public purchasing gives rise to. We argue that public procurement regulation, having as an objective the structuring of public markets for public contracts, produces the said market failure, which may adversely affect the competitive dynamics in other markets. This may cause a significant loss of social welfare. The reason why public procurement produces such negative externalities is, so we argue, due to the fact that public procurement regulation is foremost concerned with the internal dimension of public purchasing, i.e. the relationship between the public purchaser and actual and potential tenderers. However, public procurement regulation largely omits the external dimension, i.e. the effects public purchasing produces vis-à-vis markets outside the specific market for the public contract at hand. In our quest for a way to address this problem of negative externalities we argue that these externalities converge to a large extent with an ‘advantage’, being one of the conditions for the EU state aid prohibition (laid down in article107 (1) TFEU) to apply. Hence, we deem EU state aid law to be a valuable source of inspiration to ‘enrich’ public procurement regulation. Such ‘enriched’ public procurement regulation would be able to avoid the occurrence of the negative externalities we identified, or at least to minimise the risk of their occurrence. Examining a number of areas within EU state aid law allowed us to identify a number of principles that ensure absence of an ‘advantage’. These principles constitute the basis for our ‘standard for enrichment’, i.e. a framework for regulatory reform as to public procurement regulation. We also apply this standard to a number of aspects of public procurement regulation. More specifically, we clarify how ‘enriched’ public procurement regulation would materialise as to the following aspects of public purchasing: (i) the disclosure obligation as to award criteria and their belongings, (ii) the pursuit of policy objectives through public purchasing and (iii) modifications to public contracts in the performance phase.

Examining Board: Professor Hans-Wolfgang Micklitz, European University Institute Professor Giorgio Monti, European University Institute Professor Alexandra (Sacha) Prechal, Court of Justice of the European Union Professor Laurence W. Gormley, University of Groningen and College of Europe.
Defence date: 16 September 2013
First made available online on 15 January 2015.
While the law is often highly harmonized at EU level, the ways in which it is realized in the various national courts are not. This thesis looks at enforcement through damages claims for violations of EU public procurement rules. Despite important recent amendments to the procurement remedies regime, the damages provision remains indeterminate. The legislative inertia pressures the CJEU to give an interpretation and raises the question as to how the Court should deal with damages. The requirements on damages claims are clarified under both general and public procurement EU law. The action for damages is conceived as a legal process which incorporates the national realm. Therefore, a comparative law part (covering England, France, Germany and the Netherlands) examines national damages litigation in public procurement law. A horizontal discussion of the legal issues which structurally frame damages claims is provided. The remedy of damages is analyzed as a bundle of rules and its constitutive and quantification criteria are studied, thereby refining the the Member States’ common conceptual base of damages claims. Functionally, the lost chance emerges as a compromise capable of mitigating the typically problematic nature of causation and uncertainty in public procurement constellations. An adjudicative approach to damages in EU law is developed through Member State liability and the procedural autonomy doctrine. Member State liability is construed as a form of constitutional liability which is distinct from damages arising under the 'effectiveness’ postulate of procedural autonomy. Procedural autonomy as currently used is legally indeterminate and inadequate from the point of view of procedural theory. The thesis proposes to sharpen the effectiveness test in three dimensions: material, based on the intrinsic connection between enforcement rules and substantive law; vertical, in delimiting the spheres of influence of national and EU courts; and in terms of institutional balance vis-à-vis the EU legislator.

Defence date: 20 May 1997
Examining board: Prof. R. Barents (Luxembourg/Maastricht) ; Prof. R. Dehousse (Florence), co-supervisor ; Prof. Ch. Joerges (Bremen/Florence), supervisor ; Judje P.J.G. Kapteyn (Luxembourg)
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digitised archive of EUI PhD theses completed between 2013 and 2017

Defence date: 19 November 2010
Examining Board: Rainer Baubock (EUI); Gerard-René De Groot (Universiteit Maastricht); Marie-Ange Moreau (Supervisor, EUI); Bruno Nascimbene (Università degli Studi di Milano)
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digital archive of EUI PhD theses
The main objective of this study is to examine the phenomenon of dual nationality in the European Union (EU), particularly against the background of the status of European citizenship - a status that is linked to the nationality of each EU Member State (Article 20(1) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union provides that ‘citizenship of the Union shall be additional to and not replace national citizenship’). The study consists of two parts. The first part (Chapters 1 and 2) sets out the approach towards (dual) nationality in Private International Law and EU Law, in particular by analyzing the case law of the European Court of Justice (ECJ). The second part (Chapters 3- 6) consists of an overview of the dual nationality regimes in four EU Member States - France, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain -, and their possible effects on the EU as a whole. Chapter 2 of the thesis is entitled the ‘intra-EU context’, since it primarily deals with the ECJ’s approach towards a dual nationality consisting of two Member State nationalities. The country reports, on the other hand, deal with the ‘extra-EU context’ because the dual nationality policies of the countries under consideration predominantly affect non-Member State nationals. Thus, France and the Netherlands have for some time already faced the question how to integrate the (Muslim) immigrant population; Italy and Spain have long since adopted a system of preferential treatment for (Latin American) former emigrants and their descendants. The country reports demonstrate how dual nationality is used (or rejected) in these four countries. Finally, the question whether the EU should in time acquire (limited) competence in the field of European nationality law is one of the major themes of this study. Regardless of one’s stance on this question, it must be readily admitted that the subject of Member State autonomy in nationality law is becoming ever more salient with the enlargement of the Union and the growing relevance of European citizenship in the case law of the ECJ. In the opinion of this author, the study shows that the almost absolute autonomy of Member States in the field of nationality law is becoming increasingly problematic for the EU as a whole. Based inter alia on the findings from the country reports, this thesis takes the position that there is arguably a need for the (minimum) harmonization of European nationality laws.

Examining Board: Professor Marie-Ange Moreau, Lumière University Lyon 2, (EUI Supervisor); Professor Loïc Azoulai, European University Institute; Professor Achim Seifert, University of Jena; Professor Łukasz Pisarczyk, University of Warsaw.
Defence date: 17 November 2012
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digital archive of EUI PhD theses
The impact of the EU law on patients' rights in cross-border health care on national health care systems was subject to many fervent debates among European academics. For all the rhetoric of that debate, beneath it lies an attempt to delimit the boundaries of EU competences. These were determined by the Court’s interpretation of the Treaties. However, the recent development of patients' rights has escaped the boundaries of this interpretation and broadened the influence of patients' free movement rights into social fields. The primary concern is to answer the question about the cause which brought the Member States to give up their sovereignty for the sake of the internal market and about the effects of these sacrifices for the EU, the States and European citizens respectively. The detailed analysis of the development of EU law on cross-border health care proves that this system was an inescapable result of the decisions taken decades ago. Furthermore, by examining the different definitions and meanings of the European Social Model, the argument is explored that EU law on patients' rights, in its present form, can be considered to be not only a factor enriching the European Social Model but also an actual part of it. A new type of solidarity among the Member States and the citizens of the European Union exists, namely functional solidarity. The subject of cross-border health care has been analysed by academics in all possible ways. However, the points of view of the countries that only recently joined the Union are different to the points of view of the states that participated in the creation of the cross-border health care system. The aim of this thesis is to contribute to the debate by placing focus on the fact that there is a very important difference between the effects caused by the development of the cross-border health care systems in "Old” and "New” Member States. The thesis will describe the impact of EU law on cross-border health care in the national systems and the opposition raised against it. The objective of this work is specific. It aims to underline the difference in the impact of cross-border health care on "Old” and "New” Member States, as well as the different interests of these two groups of states in relation to EU health care policy. The intention is not only to give an empirical impression of the impact of European integration on the set-up of healthcare states, but also to explore the different tensions caused by the cross-border health care system and the different expectations of it. An attempt will be made to prove that the relation between the EU law and the national health care systems was built on two-way influence. Not only did the Member States alter their health care systems to accommodate the rules of the internal market, but that the system of co-ordination of social security also had to be adapted in order to fit the multiple national systems.

Defence date: 3 July 2013
Examining Board: Professor Hans-Wolfgang Micklitz, European University Institute (EUI Supervisor); Professor Giorgio Monti, European University Institute; Professor Mads Andenæs, Universiteteti Oslo; Professor Jan Wouters, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digital archive of EUI PhD theses
This thesis studies and analyzes the current paradigm governing the legal protection of retail investors in the United States and the European Union, by framing both of the legal systems within the transnational financial regulatory arena. In order to do so, the thesis carries out an evolutionary analysis of the European and American statutes dealing with financial markets regulation and gives an account, also grounded on the previous professional experience of the author, concerning the relationship between a retail investor and an investment services provider. It, then, examines whether and how far the US and EU legal systems either are affected by or affect transnational financial regulation, namely those (soft-law) rules adopted by the International Organization of Securities Commissions IOSCO, in particular as regards the protection of retail investors. Subsequently, the thesis describes the Organization’s governance structure, the decision-making process, the content of its financial rules and how far these are implemented into national domestic legislation. The third and last part of the thesis gives an analysis of the different legal tools provided by the European and American systems for public and collective private enforcement mechanisms, with the purpose to check whether a set of tools is preferred over the other (private VS public), and how far retail investors have the chance to concretely protect their rights. At the end, an assessment will be provided regarding the workability of the current paradigm from the point of view of retail investors.

Defense Date: 08 March 2010
Membres du jury : Professeur Jacques Ziller, Institut universitaire européen (Directeur de thèse IUE / extérieur) Professeur Luis Miguel Poiares Maduro, Institut universitaire européen Professeur Gérard Marcou, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne Paris 1 Professeur Guido Corso,Università degli Studi, Roma Tre
First made available online 25 March 2019
Depuis quelques années, l'organisation des services publics locaux connaît dans la plupart des Etats membres de l'Union européenne d'importantes transformations. D’une part, l'organisation administrative des Etats change et les fonctions des collectivités territoriales sont redéfinies. D’autre part, les formes de la gestion des activités d’intérêt général font l'objet de réformes du fait de l'évolution du contexte normatif. Si des dynamiques internes expliquent en partie ces phénomènes, la part que la réception du droit communautaire joue dans ces développements, est significative. De fait, la libéralisation des services publics nationaux étant largement avancée, les institutions communautaires poursuivent désormais l'ouverture des marchés locaux. Les collectivités territoriales ne peuvent donc plus ignorer les règles de la concurrence et de la libre prestation des services. Or l'organisation traditionnelle des services publics locaux n'est pas toujours conforme à ces principes et nécessite des ajustements, voire des réformes drastiques. Il paraît donc utile d'étudier dans quelle mesure le droit communautaire affecte les services publics locaux, dans une perspective matérielle, c'est-à-dire sur le fond des activités, et d'un point de vue institutionnel, c'est-à-dire sur le rôle des collectivités territoriales. Les normes communautaires imposent-elles un modèle unique de gestion des services? La diversité des formes d'organisation locale est-elle prise en compte et respectée comme l'implique le principe de neutralité? L'encadrement réglementaire communautaire n'est-il pas finalement attentatoire à l'autonomie locale? A travers les exemples français et italien et une étude de secteur sur les transports publics de voyageurs, il appert que l'impact du droit communautaire sur les services publics locaux est tout-à-fait considérable. Cependant il ne faut pas négliger l’effet inverse qui s'illustre par la prise en compte par la Cour de justice et la Commission européenne, des pratiques locales et par la promotion en parallèle, dans le droit primaire de l'Union européenne, des services d'intérêt général et des autorités locales.