Tag: EU

‘Less is More’ in Non-Financial Reporting Initiatives

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By Dr. Georgina Tsagas, Senior Lecturer in Law (Brunel University) and Prof Charlotte Villiers, Professor of Company Law (University of Bristol Law School).

In our paper we shed light on why ‘Less is More’ in the Non-Financial Reporting landscape and explain how an effective decluttering of the non-financial reporting landscape can take place by focusing on improving and widening the scope of the application of the EU Non-Financial Reporting Directive.


What is the root cause of the problem at hand?

Knowing ‘the price of everything and the value of nothing’ is more than just a nice turn of phrase that Oscar Wilde had Lord Darlington quip in one of his plays. Projecting into the future, the phrase has spoken volumes on how modern society has drifted away from cultural values and has also highlighted society’s collective failure to place those values on a par with financial ones. Yet in the area of corporations’ non-financial reporting the problem remains that, although in the year 2020 we have reached a common ground on the fact that sustainability is a value worth preserving, there is no rate, no metric, no price nor cost attached to it, which arguably creates chaos for private and public actors alike. Not only do identified stakeholders face the negative consequences, but in both the short term and long term all actors involved and affected corporations, as well as society as a whole, will face the adverse effects of corporations’ unsustainable practices. The fact that sustainability cannot be accounted for in a consistent way is the essence of the problem. Assuming that the chaotic framework for non-financial reporting is part of the problem, we argue that fixing that framework must be part of the solution. (more…)

The Commission Roadmap on Covid-19: is the EU Finding the Route or Continuing to Lose the Way?

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By Prof Keith Syrett, Professor of Health Law and Policy (University of Bristol Law School)

Credit: European Union, Coronavirus Global Response, 2020

The European Union has been widely criticised for its response to the outbreak of pandemic coronavirus (COVID-19) in early 2020. Still distracted by Brexit and, more recently by the Turkish migrant crisis, EU leaders were caught off guard by the rapid spread of the virus, initially into Italy. Member states took actions into their own hands, imposing border controls, banning exports of protective equipment and, later, banning mass gatherings, closing schools, and instituting lockdowns, while the EU appeared to be a largely impotent bystander.

Perhaps the EU’s muted initial response was unsurprising, given that previous public health threats of a similar type, such as SARS, MERS and Ebola, had had little impact within the Union. However, more than a decade previously, concerns had been raised about lack of preparedness for a pandemic outbreak in Europe.[1] Notwithstanding the EU’s subsequent establishment of a firm legal basis for a response to pandemics, it now seems that the lessons presented previously had not fully been learned. (more…)

Beyond the Pandemic: More Integrated EU-wide Public Debt Instruments?

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By Prof Albert Sanchez Graells, Professor of Economic Law (University of Bristol Law School)

Beyond its terrible death toll and massive public health implications, the COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdown measures put in place to try to contain or mitigate it are bound to have severe and long-lasting economic effects. The European Union (EU) and its economic and financial governance now face very significant challenges, possibly exceeding those of the 2008 crisis. The way in which these challenges are addressed will not only determine the path and speed of European (economic) recovery, but perhaps also pave the way for further changes beyond the pandemic. Here I reflect on some implications of the COVID-19 response for EU-wide public debt instruments. (more…)

The Challenges in Covid19 Times for Refugee Determination and Accessing Protection

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By Prof Elspeth Guild, Queen Mary University of London and Kathryn Allinson, Research Assistant, Queen Mary University of London and Teaching Associate, University of Bristol.

The spectre of the Covid19 pandemic has stalked political leaders, at local, regional, national and European levels since mid-January 2020. In amongst the myriad responses that States have taken to combat the spread of the virus those relating to refugee protection make grim viewing. The scenes at the Turkish Greek land border where the President of the Commission, the President of the European Council, the EU High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs were present to witness, and applaud, the violent actions of the Greek border guards and military in preventing people seeking to cross from Turkey to the EU to seek protection is exemplary of the approach of many States. And it did not help the image of the EU in these exceptional times, as a place where refugees are welcome and provide protection in accordance with international law.

This unedifying political spectacle addressed towards the Turkish President and intended as a response to his responsibilities came at a most problematic time. EU states were within a week of closing internal and external borders to movement of persons with little regard to the needs of refugees. In this blog we will examine the subsequent efforts of the EU (and associated countries including the UK) to comply with their obligations under the 1951 Refugee Convention, in particular, as regards the processing of asylum applications. (more…)

Detention of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants under Corona lockdown risks becoming arbitrary

Posted on by lee.mcconnell

By Prof Elspeth Guild, Queen Mary University of London and Kathryn Allinson, Research Assistant, Queen Mary University of London and Teaching Associate, University of Bristol.

As the Covid-19 pandemic has tightened its grip on many western states, many refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants continue to be detained in reception and detention centres, without any prospect of release. With asylum processing at a standstill and returns to countries of origin on hold, detention of these individuals risks becoming arbitrary, if not inhumane.

“Everyone lawfully within the territory of a State shall, within that territory, have the right to liberty of movement and freedom to choose his residence”, states article 12(1) of the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). The liberty of movement is a human right – a right that has been severely curtailed since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.

In order to reduce disease dissemination, states worldwide have put in place severe travel and movement restrictions, affecting both internal and external travelling. Article 12(1) is a qualified right and so exceptions can be made in the context of public health necessity. These restrictions have resulted in lockdowns in countries around the world, confining people to their homes with only specific exceptions permitted. (more…)

Procurement in the time of COVID-19

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By Prof Albert Sanchez-Graells, Professor of Economic Law and Co-Director of the Centre for Global Law and Innovation (University of Bristol Law School).

Public procurement is at the forefront of the response to the challenges of COVID-19. Only well-equipped hospitals can save patients’ lives without endangering those of the medical, nursing and support workers in the NHS. Shortages of relatively simple consumables such as personal protection equipment (PPE), but also cleaning and hygiene products, can endanger lives and have devastating effects on the resilience of the healthcare system to (continue to) cope with the pandemic. Shortages of essential equipment such as ventilators can have even more direct nefarious impacts on individual lives.

The importance of public procurement and supply chain management has rarely been so prominently in the public eye and political debate—except, perhaps, in the case of notorious procurement scandals, such as the recent Brexit-related #ferrygate. In this blog post, I reflect on some of the emerging issues in the procurement response to COVID-19 and on the perhaps even bigger challenges that will follow, from a regulatory perspective. (more…)

Brexit and counter terrorism in the UK

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By Prof Steven Greer, Professor of Human Rights (University of Bristol Law School)

Speculation about the consequences of Brexit for the UK has, not surprisingly, focused much more upon the economy, trade, migration, and self-governance than upon countering terrorism. While the most important contribution to the latter lies, in any case, with states themselves, the UK’s departure from the EU will, nevertheless, have counter terrorist implications. The two principal ones are likely to concern the effects upon the UK of its disconnection from the EU’s relevant policy frameworks, data bases and networks, and the galvanising effect a ‘hard’ border, ie one with physical impediments between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, may have upon dissident armed Irish republicanism with the risks this could pose for the peace process in Northern Ireland.

In order to assess these issues more fully, three core questions need to be addressed: what kind of counter terrorist relationship did the UK have with the EU before Brexit? How might this be affected by Brexit? And what kind of alternative arrangements, if any, might be provided afterwards? (more…)

Big divergences in procurement transparency across the EU – even under the new Open Data Directive

Posted on by lee.mcconnell

By Prof Albert Sanchez-Graells, Professor of Economic Law (University of Bristol Law School), Dr Kirsi-Maria Halonen, Senior Lecturer in Law (University of Lapland, Finland), Prof Roberto Caranta, Professor of Administrative Law (Turin University, Italy)

Together with competition and integrity, transparency is one of the fundamental pillars of every procurement system around the world. Much of the efforts to ensure probity in the expenditure of public funds through procurement concentrate on mandating competition-enabling transparency of contract opportunities and accountability-facilitating transparency of the outcome of procurement processes. In the European Union, the 2014 Public Procurement Package continued to place the principle of transparency amongst its general principles and established rather detailed disclosure obligations, including the mandatory publication of a wider range of electronic notices (including for contractual modifications), a consolidation of the tenderers’ rights to access information about the procurement process, and higher standards for documentation and record-keeping by the contracting authorities.

More generally, the push for the development and adoption of open data standards for public procurement—in particular by the Open Contracting Partnership—has renewed efforts to bring procurement under the open government umbrella and to facilitate higher levels of transparency and accountability, in particular through big data analysis. In the European Union, the Commission highlighted the importance of procurement transparency in its 2017 Communication on ‘Making procurement work in and for Europe’, stressing that ‘The digital transformation, the growing wealth of data in general and the availability of open data standards offer opportunities to create better analytics for needs-driven policy-making and warning systems to signal and tackle corruption in public procurement’. The Commission thus established the goal of increasing transparency, integrity and better data as one of its six key strategic priorities. In particular, the Commission advocated the creation of national public contract registers by the Member States, providing transparency on awarded contracts and their amendments to enable dialogue with civil society and hold governments more accountable. (more…)

Brexit and LGBT+ Rights

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By Dr. Peter Dunne, Lecturer in Law (University of Bristol Law School)

On 6 July, groups and individuals from around the United Kingdom gathered to mark the annual LGBT+ Pride (‘Pride’) festivities in London. An estimated 1.5 million people filled the streets of the nation’s capital – proudly expressing their identity, supporting friends and family, or merely enjoying what has become one of the largest and most popular public celebrations across the country. In 2019, Pride events (both at home and abroad) have a particular significance – coming fifty years after the famous ‘Stonewall Inn Riots’ in New York City, which are often cited as a key moment for developing sexual orientation and gender identity (‘SOGI’) rights in the United States.

In the UK, Pride is a time to both celebrate recent advances and to highlight the many, complex challenges which LGBT+ communities still confront. The limited efficacy of non-discrimination frameworks, deficiencies within LGBT+ asylum processes and on-going controversy surrounding the Gender Recognition Act 2004 are just three (among many) challenges which impede full SOGI-related equality within this jurisdiction. Yet, despite the pressing needs of LGBT+ populations in the UK (as emphasised by the National LGBT Survey), issues relating to sexual orientation and gender identity have – like many other important political concerns – been largely drowned out by the all-consuming Brexit debates.

At the London Parade festivities last Saturday, representatives of most of the UK’s main political parties were present – publicly reaffirming their commitment to LGBT+ rights. However, it has been striking to observe the extent to which LGBT+ populations (and the potential impact of leaving the European Union upon their lives) have been absent from Brexit conversations. (more…)

The case for revoking the A50 notification

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By Prof Phil Syrpis, Professor of EU Law (University of Bristol Law School)

This blog is written after the European Council conclusions were agreed yesterday, on 21 March, on the assumption, which is widely shared, that the EU’s extension plan is accepted by the UK.  It is in two parts. In the first, I explain the nature of the choices ahead. In the second, I seek to make a positive case for revoking the A50 notification.

The choices ahead

As has been the case for a while now, there are four possible outcomes to the Brexit process.

  1. The UK leaves the EU under the Withdrawal Agreement
  2. The UK leaves the EU with no deal
  3. The UK leaves the EU under a different deal
  4. The UK does not leave the EU

The first option is Theresa May’s preferred outcome: that we leave the EU under the terms set by the Withdrawal Agreement. Under the terms of the conclusions, the European Council agreed to an extension until 22 May ‘provided the withdrawal agreement is approved by the House of Commons next week’. The European Council reiterates that there can be no reopening of the Withdrawal Agreement, adding that ‘any unilateral comment, statement or other act should be compatible with the letter and the spirit of the Withdrawal Agreement’. This looks very much like the ‘technical extension’ Theresa May asked for in her letter of 20 March, with the 22 May date chosen so that the UK leaves the EU before the elections to the European Parliament occur, and with a clear indication that no sugar-coating of the backstop will be tolerated. (more…)