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• Luxembourg v Strasbourg – Legal Impediments in the Process of the Accession of the EU to the ECHR

  101-119

  Zoltán Angyal

  Lilla Nóra Kiss

  Views:

  123

  The accession of the European Union (EU) to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) has been on the agenda of the EU for long. Although the Lisbon Treaty settles this question in theory by obliging the EU to accede, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) resorted to its rights laid down in the Treaties and published its Opinion 2/13 on the matter by the full Court. This opinion scrutinizes the draft document concerning accession. According to the opinion the EU cannot accede to the ECHR in the present form because the draft document is not in compliance with the special characteristics and features of EU law, therefore it would require the amendment or reorganisation of the whole EU legal system. By this judgement the ECJ outlines the legal impediments in the way of the accession. The main objective of our article – after summarizing the brief history and legal framework of the accession – is to present and evaluate the critical elements of accession determined by the ECJ and predict the decision’s possible consequences.

• European Public Administration of Consular Protection

  49-65

  Erzsébet Csatlós

  Views:

  168

  The organizational issues of European public administration are especially apparent when the cooperation between the EU and its Member States is considered. The regulation of administrative institutions and bodies is fundamentally a subject of national competence. The European public administration for consular protection is based on the cooperation of the organs and authorities on both levels of European public administration. It is regulated as a framework which leaves a wide range of freedom for Member States to settle the missing details and also leaves too much room for voluntarism. All this makes the system unpredictable and despite the application of the principle of loyal cooperation and solidarity, the European administrative structure of consular protection is incompatible with the rule of law and the principle of good administration, and even with the principle of loyal cooperation and solidarity.