Latest blog articles

  • Recently, politicians in different EU countries have suggested barring Russian tourists from visiting the EU (see reporting here and here). Such a ban would be in retaliation for the war waged by Russia against Ukraine. From a legal perspective, these suggestions raise the interesting question...

  • Breath in, breath out. Yes, the judgment of the (unlawfully composed) Polish Constitutional Tribunal is a serious challenge to the European Union’s legal system and to the principle of primacy of EU law. No, Poland has not activated the process of withdrawal from the EU under Article 50 TEU. Yes, EU...

  • On Friday 31 July, the Cypriot parliament voted against the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) with Canada. This latest development in the ratification process of CETA illustrates perfectly how facultative mixity continuously frustrates our collective interest in seeing the...

  • With the development of international trade, local products have started to spread all around the world and become popular worldwide. Geographical indications (GIs) are meant to protect the use of the name that indicates certain characteristics and the origin of products typical for a particular...

  • There is wide agreement that the EU has not been effective in dealing with what I would define here as values’ awkwardness, cases in which EU Member States threaten the rule of law and the other common values of the European project. The obvious reference is in this respect to Hungary and Poland...

  • Het Europees Semester

    The European semester

    On 15 September, the Montesquieu Institute published her 6th policy paper, this time on the European semester... This blog is only available in Dutch.