tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8704899696538705849.post2396470228602664204..comments2024-03-28T02:32:17.979-07:00Comments on EU Law Analysis: Regulatory divergence post Brexit: Copyright law as an indicator for what is to comeSteve Peershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05869161329197244113noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8704899696538705849.post-43914513675400023702020-05-20T09:01:50.150-07:002020-05-20T09:01:50.150-07:00None of us really know what will happen to the leg...None of us really know what will happen to the legislative system. Ultimately it will depend on who can adapt the quickest to the new EU Laws.Hattons Solicitorshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02483994864409545867noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8704899696538705849.post-44292130568772228282020-02-27T00:50:13.512-08:002020-02-27T00:50:13.512-08:00I think we all can agree on a fact that we need to...I think we all can agree on a fact that we need to start changing the legislative system. I wish we could create more such organisations as <a href="https://www.aaappp.org.uk/" rel="nofollow">AAAPPP</a> to provide citizen rights.<br />Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13088266150013124278noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8704899696538705849.post-16081258404189765482020-02-20T13:49:15.758-08:002020-02-20T13:49:15.758-08:00I don't see the vast crisis here. A country ha...I don't see the vast crisis here. A country has left the EU; voters in the remaining Member States can make their view as to whether leaving is a good idea or not and vote accordingly. If another country leaves, the details can be worked out in another withdrawal agreement and future relationship talks. It's a lot to pin on a discussion of applying copyright law post-Brexit. Steve Peershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05869161329197244113noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8704899696538705849.post-28832678599921042802020-02-20T13:15:54.466-08:002020-02-20T13:15:54.466-08:00For the record I think of myself as euro-critical,...For the record I think of myself as euro-critical, not eurosceptic. I voted REMAIN with a very, very heavy heart.<br /><br />You say that countries can leave the EU – well can they? I seriously struggle to see how a country in (say) the eurozone could ever realistically leave. Sure, the treaty right is there on paper, but I question how far that treaty right could be reified – particularly in a world of significant TARGET2 balances. And I think my point stands. Voters were never confronted with the (unspoken) expectation that this would never be reversed, that powers were gone forever, and voters have every right to feel left behind. What one does about that is another matter of course.<br /><br />Of course I grasp that countries choose to remain. Their reasons for doing so surely are clear-cut: power and interests, same as anything in international relations. It makes not one jot of difference to my mind why they want to remain or how they balance power and interests or how (more importantly) voters see power and interests. It could be because they love the mercantilist environment, it could be because they get a vast sum in agriculture subsidies, it could be because they like the tune to Ode to Joy. Similarly it makes not one jot of difference why states want to leave. A50 places no requirement on a leaving state to give a reason for leaving. Power and interests can, should, shift over time and that point just seems to have passed over the heads of generations of European politicians. Power and interests shifting is not an inherent problem. The lack of any mechanism to deal with that in a union that’s had an enormous legal framework built on top of it and with left behind voters very much is a problem. To retrospectively graft some idea of ‘wantonness’ onto the situation, as the link in the article does is just desperate lawfare.<br /><br />The missing gap in the eurosceptic literature... I’ve no idea. The whacking great gap in the European Studies literature is about the limits of neofunctionalism and the constitutional deficit in the EU. This was very much the point I made earlier. On my reading of the article Professor Kretschmer seems surprised that someone has activated A50 – if indeed he is surprised he really shouldn’t be. Nothing about the disintegrationist trends of the past few years was unforeseeable. Nothing about the possibility of a state activating an explicit treaty right should be surprising.<br /><br />Post Lisbon we’ve only ever been a 50%+1 vote away from a state(s) leaving. All the framework and agreements built up, such as copyrights, are on a foundation no more solid than that. Across 28 states. And it should never have been that way. The article may well be correct that a state leaving is, ‘a challenge to established procedural principles that lend legitimacy to a ruling power.’ However that’s not a good thing! Governments should be given legitimacy by the voter at large, not some supranational institution. If we want to turn the EU into some ‘USE’ then fine, but that’s not a debate anyone’s had.<br /><br />There is no mechanism to deal with naturally shifting power and interests and there is in effect no meaningful mechanism to deal with a situation where a country wants to enforce a treaty right. That is a glaring constitutional deficit and I don’t understand why legal scholars are so reluctant to engage on that point.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8704899696538705849.post-87891276830339680352020-02-20T10:34:06.453-08:002020-02-20T10:34:06.453-08:00Of course countries can leave the EU via the means...Of course countries can leave the EU via the means of Article 50. What I wonder is whether criticisms like yours grasp the fact that countries also choose to stay in the EU despite its flaws. Perhaps the missing gap in Eurosceptic literature is why they choose to do so? Steve Peershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05869161329197244113noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8704899696538705849.post-34281536302696298752020-02-19T10:41:54.087-08:002020-02-19T10:41:54.087-08:00‘The legitimacy of governments is increasingly in ...‘The legitimacy of governments is increasingly in doubt. The Brexit process itself is a challenge to established procedural principles that lend legitimacy to a ruling power.’<br /><br />That might carry more weight were it not the case that the EU has long-had a glaring constitutional deficit. Indeed it is that deficit that is at the heart of many of the problems the union now confronts. What this article seems to me to be doing is describing symptoms not cause. Is the EU reversible? I assume so given the existence of A50 – what other purpose is there to A50 if not to specifically see the EU as reversible? That fact that legal scholars by and large do not like that reversibility is neither here nor there! The fact that the implications of that reversibility are (for example) those set out in the article similarly does not matter to my mind.<br /><br />The symptom is, in this case, copyright law. The problem is that we’ve built this supranational entity and all its legal framework on a political and constitutional foundation of sand.<br /><br />None of the ‘centrifugal’ trends we see in the EU now should be a shock to anyone. None of this, or the things described in the article, were unforeseeable, just the EU institutions and national governments didn’t take the idea seriously. There are none so blind as those that will not see. As a European Studies student in the mid 1990s I sat in seminar rooms where several of us thought up dozens of scenarios, all far from theoretical, about how the EU supranational ‘norms’ were not at all settled and how there were gaping holes in the EU’s constitutional footing. Legal and political literature, then as now, was paper-thin on how such questions could be handled. The stark reality is that across Europe governments and EU institutions have not adequately confronted voters with the full implications of the integration we’ve seen and the de facto (if not de jure) irreversibility of it. The net effect has been a crass neofunctionalism where everyone can ‘spillback’ just as long as no one actually does it or thinks too hard about it. Voters have been left behind by the political and legal class and the result has been inevitable. To say as much is not to have a go at anyone, it is to state what’s been clear for decades.<br /><br />Indeed that idea of ‘wantonness’ set out in the link carries with it a rather unpleasant whiff of legalistic retrofitting. For that matter one wonders how the EU’s response to the crisis in the single currency would measure up to the idea of ‘wantonness’ set out in the link. If scholars wish to argue, as does the link, that, ‘adherence to procedure is not enough,’ that’s fine. But the people need to be confronted with that and confronted in the fullest sense. This is not a legal question, it is political. ‘Adherence to procedure is not enough’ in context is a world-view to be tested at a ballot box, not at law.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com