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Virtual currencies have gained popularity as part of the digital transformation of the financial system. In particular stablecoins are becoming increasingly popular with consumers. The tokens, which are pegged to a value and - according to their name - promise price stability, pose significant risks from which consumers need to be protected. This article focuses first on consumerspecific risks (B.) and German consumer protection law and in particular on the applicability of a right of withdrawal from the acquisition of stablecoins (C.). Subsequently, the EU legislator’s effort to minimize price stability as well as transparency and exchangeability risks, the Markets in Crypto-assets Regulation (2023/1114), is examined in terms of its consumer protection instruments (D.).
The Åland Islands archipelago enjoys a special international status sui generis, which essentially encompasses demilitarisation, neutralisation, and autonomy. This status is guaranteed under international law by the agreements of 1921, 1940, and 1947, which are still in force. Furthermore, there are convincing reasons to assume that the Åland Islands regime has grown into European customary law. By virtue of her international (treaty) obligations, Finland cannot unilaterally change this status under the present conditions, irrespective of domestic (constitutional) decisions. While integration into NATO’s collective defence system and the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy structures is compatible with the special status of the Åland Islands, care must be taken by Finland and her partners to ensure that the obligations arising from these developments are fulfilled in accordance with the demilitarised and neutralised status of the archipelago. This includes that the use by Finnish troops for preventive defence, beyond the exceptions laid down in the 1921 Åland Agreement, is only permitted in the case (of threat) of an immediate and clearly identifiable attack.
The autonomous character of the Åland Islands was established under a League of Nations dispute settlement and implemented, inter alia, in Finnish legislation. Its essence even grew into customary law. The arrangements of 1921, however, do not constitute a bilateral treaty between Finland and Sweden. The UN assumes that the international mechanism to protect Åland’s autonomy did not become obsolete with the demise of the League of Nations, but was only “suspended until such time as an express decision has been taken by the United Nations to put it back into force”. A corresponding proposal could be submitted, in any case, both by Finland and/or Sweden or possibly even by any other UN member state, for discussion in the Sixth Committee. However, the final decision to re-activate this special mechanism would have to be adopted by the UN General Assembly.
EU Law applies to the Åland Islands in principle; however, Finland’s Accession Treaty to the EU to which Protocol No. 2 on the Åland Islands was annexed, established a number of specific rules which are still in force today. This, most notably, results in the limited application of value added tax and excise duties in the Åland Islands. Therefore, the rules on customs procedures apply with respect to the movement of goods to and from the Åland Islands. In addition, other provisions of Union law, in particular those relating to fundamental freedoms and European state aid law, may be relevant in view of the special fiscal status of the Åland Islands. However, assessing individual cases would require further information and in-depth studies. Irrespective of the requirements set out in the said Protocol, the EU is obliged to respect the national identity of Member States pursuant to Article 4 para. 2 TEU; this obligation includes respect for the special status of the Åland Islands under both international and Finnish constitutional law.
Corporate governance is the set of rules, be they legal or self-regulatory, practices and processes pursuant to which an insurance undertaking is administrated. Good corporate governance is not only key to establishing oneself and succeeding in a competitive environment but also to safeguarding the interests of all stakeholders in an insurance undertaking. It is insofar not surprising that mandatory requirements on the administration of insurance undertakings have become rather prolific in recent years, in an attempt by regulators to protect especially policyholders against perceived risks hailing from improperly governed insurance undertakings. In Germany this has been regarded by many undertakings as an overly paternalistic approach of the legislator, especially considering that the German insurance sector has experienced for decades if not centuries a remarkably low number of insolvencies and that German insurers were neither the trigger nor the (especially) endangered actors in the financial crisis commencing in 2007. Notwithstanding the true core of this criticism, that the insurance industry was taken to a certain degree hostage by the shortcomings within the banking sector, the reform of German Insurance Supervisory Law via implementation of the Solvency II-System has brought many advances in the sense of better governance of insurance undertakings and has also brought to light many deficiencies that the administration of some insurance undertakings may have suffered from in the past, which are now more properly addressed.
Bibliometric analysis of research publications would be the basis of the present study which would therefore highlight the inter linkage between the already existing researches which mainly talk about the concept of taxation with respect to it in the sphere of exemption of taxes from a set of organizations. The frequency of the publication on the same would be determined. Keeping in track the frequency of publications about the said exemptions and tax regimes. The topic clearly hasn't got much attention from the researchers. The data was collected from the Scopus and Web of Science database and has been analysed using VOSviewer software. The literature review which was pursued was gathered respectively in order to understand the concept of taxation of these charitable trusts and religious institutions. The study consists of a total of 1773 documents from Scopus and 617 documents from Web of Science (English) which are classified into articles, letters, books and editorial reviews etc. The data which is collected on the same lines would be analysed by the researchers using graphs, tables and charts.
Women are overrepresented in informal employment in the Indian labour market. They also devote more time to unpaid care work than men do. The poor working conditions of women are attributable to this double burden of work. Due to the lack of regulatory measures to protect the interest of informal women workers along with rigid gender norms, women’s participation in paid work is drastically reduced. As far as unpaid care work is concerned, feminist economists have been striving to make such work visible for a long time now. There have been some developments in labour statistics, with time use surveys quantifying women’s paid and unpaid contributions to the economy. This article delves into the examination of unpaid care work in India with the help of the Indian government’s recent Time-use Survey. It attempts to study the connection between paid work and unpaid care work and its implications for the working conditions of women in India. Finally, it evaluates the ‘right to work’ as a possible solution by using the example of employment guarantee schemes in India.
“Protection of the environment“ and “sustainability“ are more significant than ever. The legal system contributes an important share to the protection of the environment. However, an overview of the German private environmental liability law shows that conventional tort law is not a suitable basis for civil liability for the environmental consequences of officially approved emissions of greenhouse gases. In general, one of the main problems of private environmental liability law lies in proving the individual causality of the conduct of an emitter, as the lawsuit of a Peruvian homeowner against a German energy company pending before the Higher Regional Court of Hamm illustratively demonstrates. The outcome of this lawsuit, which may have an outstanding significance for the status and development of private environmental liability law in Germany, is awaited with great anticipation. The article also briefly examines recent developments in private environmental liability law outside Germany and the question to what extent insurance can be an instrument to protect the environment.
This paper analyses, if the Intertemporal Guarantee of Freedom, that was developed by the German Federal Constitutional Court (GFCC), can be used to expand the protection of human rights against the harms of climate change. The case of the Swiss Senior Women shows that there are jurisdictions, where the Intertemporal Guarantee of Freedom could be applied to improve standing and the control standard of states’ climate change action. Within international law bodies with jurisdiction over human rights treaties there are distinctive standards of protection against the harms of climate change. A major deficit within the international human rights protection against climate change lies within the focus on the positive obligations and the corresponding wide margin of appreciation granted to the states. The Intertemporal Guarantee of Freedom could provide a protection expansion in this regard, especially in the case of the European Court of Human Rights. It could also enable and legitimise present human rights concerns focused on the future actions of states following their past inaction. One considerable hurdle that is not addressed by it are procedural hurdles like the Plaumann formula applied by the European Court of Justice. The Intertemporal Guarantee of Freedom cannot solve major problems for climate change litigation like procedural hurdles. Yet, it can provide a new approach for complaints to address unambitious mitigation legislation which will lead to future human rights infringements.
In memory of Brigitte Haar
(2021)
Nachruf auf Brigitte Haar (1965-2019).
This article provides an overview of the current state of the regulation of disinformation in the EU. It shows that the concept of disinformation, the purpose of anti-disinformation measures and their content and enforcement can only be understood if a holistic view is taken of private, hybrid-co-regulatory and public-law norms. The delicate field of disinformation is to a large extent dealt with outside of statutory law. The questions raised thereby are largely unresolved.
On 15 December 2020, the European Commission submitted a proposal for a regulation on a single market for digital services (Digital Services Act, DSA) and amending Directive 2000/31/EC. The legislative project seeks to establish a robust and durable governance structure for the effective supervision of providers of intermediary services. To this end, the DSA sets out numerous due diligence obligations of intermediaries concerning any type of illegal information, including copyright-infringing content. Empirically, copyright law accounts for most content removal from online platforms, by an order of magnitude. Thus, copyright enforcement online is a major issue in the context of the DSA, and the DSA will be of utmost importance for the future of online copyright in the EU. Against this background, the European Copyright Society takes this opportunity to share its view on the relationship between the copyright acquis and the DSA, as well as further selected aspects of the DSA from a copyright perspective.
Combining insights from the history of citizenship with contemporary legal analysis, this article both highlights and problematizes what we may call sorting strategies – restrictive closure and selective openness – which rely on ‘varieties of affluence’ (income, wealth, equity, credit, and the like) in shaping possibilities for entry, settlement, and naturalization. By emphasizing the growing significance of income barriers and thresholds on the one hand, and fast-tracked investment-based entryways on the other, this article investigates the role of wealth as both accelerator and barrier to citizenship, contributing to the varied toolbox used by governments to advance goals that may at times appear contradictory; these tools both tighten and relax the requirements of access to membership at the same time. These new developments represent different facets of the same trend. Without explicitly stating as much, programs that turn wealth into a core criterion for admission conceptually reignite an older, exclusive, and exclusionary vision according to which individuals must hold property (in land, resources, or in relation to one’s ‘dependents,’ including women, slaves, and children) in order to qualify as a citizen. While such a trajectory is no stranT8ger to ancient models, it raises profound challenges to modernist accounts of political membership that place equality at their core.
This research attempts to provide for an overview of the state of co-operation between the United Nations and regional organizations like the CoE, OSCE, EU and NATO during the last Yugoslav wars, considering the 1991-2008 period. In this case, the "reconstruction" of what the organisations did in each of the countries involved in the conflicts, the country-by-country approach used in writing the research and the consideration of both headquarters and field level should facilitate the understanding of the state of things at that time. The research further includes an analysis of the co-operative trends developed by the considered international organisations since the beginning of the 1990s and is concluded by a reflection on the normative relevance of the issue of "international cooperation". In this case, the intention of the author was to go beyond the general policy level approach used for the description of UN-regional organizations interaction and propose a re-consideration of the concept of "international co-operation" as a possible normative tool in guiding the so far nebulous division of tasks of international actors in conflict-related scenarios. In this case, the concise description of the general framework for co-operation under Chapter VIII of the UN Charter, already matter of wide debate by academics and practitioners, sets the frame for a more elaborate, and hopefully innovative, consideration of the notion of "international cooperation". This, of course, is to be contextualized to the lessons learned extrapolated from the case study.
The essay argues that anti-suit injunctions granted in disputes on standard-essential patents are inconsistent with the general standards governing anti-suit injunctions. The section on anti-suit injunction demonstrates that the case law on anti-suit injunctions is not comparable to disputes over standard essential patents. In contrast, anti-anti-suit injunctions are a legitimate response to an extraterritorial assertion of jurisdiction by foreign courts. Under EU law, the courts of member states might even be required to issue anti-anti-suit injunctions to protect their exclusive jurisdiction over patents.
This article provides an overview and critical assessment of WIPO ALERT. It locates this initiative in the broader context of transnational IP enforcement schemes on the Internet. These initiatives are classified into two categories according to their point of attachment and geographical effect. Whereas source-related measures (e.g. website takedowns) tend to have a transnational and possibly even a global effect, recipient-related measures (e.g. website and ad blockings) typically mirror the territorially fragmented IPR landscape. This fragmentation is where WIPO ALERT comes into play. It can be understood as a matching service which interconnects holders of information about copyright infringing websites (“Authorized Contributors”) and actors of the online ad industry who want to avoid these outlets (“Authorized Users”). The critical assessment of WIPO ALERT calls for more transparency and the establishment of uniform substantive and procedural standards that have to be met if a new “site of concern” is added to the global ad blacklist.
We contribute to the debate about the future of capital markets and corporate finance, which has ensued against the background of a significant boom in private markets and a corresponding decline in the number of firms and the amount of capital raised in public markets in the US and Europe.
Our research sheds light on the fluctuating significance of public and private markets for corporate finance over time, and challenges the conventional view of a linear progression from one market to the other. We argue instead that a more complex pattern of interaction between public and private markets emerges, after taking a long-term perspective and examining historical developments more closely.
We claim that there is a dynamic divide between these markets, and identify certain factors that determine the degree to which investors, capital, and companies gravitate more towards one market than the other. However, in response to the status quo, other factors will gain momentum and favor the respective other market, leading to a new (unstable) equilibrium. Hence, we observe the oscillating domains of public and private markets over time. While these oscillations imply ‘competition’ between these markets, we unravel the complementarities between them, which also militate against a secular trend towards one market. Finally, we examine the role of regulation in this dynamic divide as well as some policy implications arising from our findings.
This essay argues that access to water, and the right to water in India is subject to legal pluralism in India: the plurality of state law and the normative order of the caste system in India. While the Constitution of India prohibits discrimination against or exploitation of the Scheduled Castes, society is also subject to a parallel set of social rules set forth by caste hierarchies. The Dalit community has been historically subject to exploitation and limited access to resources, with the use of religious and social sanction, this essay focuses particularly on the right to water, which is an essential part of the constitutional right to the environment is subject to plural legal systems, of state law and caste-based normative orders. Ethnographic social science research, particularly in anthropology and sociology has produced extensive findings on how the caste system limits access to natural resources and particularly water, owing to ideas of purity and impurity associated with water use, and the status of water as a common public good. This essay explores how lawyers must consider legal pluralities when understanding access and management of natural resources. The essay analyses John Griffiths’ idea of legal pluralism which describes a scenario in which not all law is administered by the State or its institutions, and there exists de facto law, beyond the boundaries of the State. This paper expands Griffiths’ model of pluralism to explain how the right to water is subject to both caste order and state law and how the lived reality of Dalits when accessing water is subject to a constant pluralism.
Climate crimes – a critique
(2023)
This paper aims on taking a critical approach to the emerging debate on climate criminal justice, that is mostly about something labeled „climate criminal law“ („Klimastrafrecht“). The critique is directed at climate crimes intended to protect our habitable climate („Klimaschutzstrafrecht“) or to prevent climate change („Klimawandelpräventionsstrafrecht“) staged as transformational criminal law. “Fighting" climate change with climate crimes can lull us into deceptive certainties and by extension into perilous idleness; and it will do so if we think of climate protection essentially in terms of traditional criminal law. Climate crimes are based on the idea that we can counter climate change with the "sharpest sword" available to a polity (cf. the German and Continental European ultima-ratio principle) and that we can thereby also get hold of "the powerful". But these certainties rest on but normative (and at heart: liberal) doctrines, which are deceptive in having lost touch with the realities of the administration of criminal justice. They obscure that more effective measures are available to mitigate the climate crisis and that "the powerful" will likely be shielded with and by climate crimes. Therefore, the climate crimes approach to the climate crisis may just turn out to be (self-)appeasement. It obfuscates that more effective measures are likely necessary to avert impending crises. Our critique is therefore not "only" directed at the symbolic, but the dysfunctional and "dark side" of climate crimes.
Venture capital-backed firms, unavoidable value-destroying trade sales, and fair value protections
(2021)
This paper investigates the implications of the fair value protections contemplated by the standard corporate contract (i.e., the standard contract form for which corporate law provides) for the entrepreneur–venture capitalist relationship, focusing, in particular, on unavoidable value-destroying trade sales. First, it demonstrates that the typical entrepreneur–venture capitalist contract does institutionalize the venture capitalist’s liquidity needs, allowing, under some circumstances, for counterintuitive instances of contractually-compliant value destruction. Unavoidable value-destroying trade sales are the most tangible example. Next, it argues that fair value protections can prevent the entrepreneur and venture capitalist from allocating the value that these transactions generate as they would want. Then, it shows that the reality of venture capital-backed firms calls for a process of adaptation of the standard corporate contract that has one major step in the deactivation or re-shaping of fair value protections. Finally, it argues that a standard corporate contract aiming to promote social welfare through venture capital should feature flexible fair value protections.