The Evolving Nature of Financial Regulation Until the early 1970s, the various national systems of banking regulation had largely monetary objectives. Controls on commercial banking activity (including administratively set interest rates, quantitative limits on credit expansion, and reserve requirements) were imposed for the purpose of preventing the over- or under-expansion of the money and bank credit supply. In addition, in many countries, including the UK and France, the state sought to direct the flow of available credit towards certain economic areas and activities, and away from others. Another policy concern related to the conditions of competition within the banking industry;... Read more

In most publications that deal with the Banking Union, the global financial crisis of 2008 is mentioned in the introductory paragraph. It is also the unavoidable starting point of this contribution, as it is the collapse of the banking sector that has shown the necessity to rethink the mechanism of banking supervision. Economic growth and financial stability have been seriously damaged by the global crisis that has plagued the world since 2007. The financial and banking crisis shed some light on the need for stronger and more efficient supervision but also on the need for a more effective system of... Read more

The decision by the European Court of Human Rights in Soros v. France centered on questions regarding the principle of legality in article 7 ECHR. More precisely, the interpretation of “insider trading” was challenged and whether or not it was possible to appraise whether the French national law had forbade this kind of acts at the respective time. As the principle of legality is a fundamental right in the EU Charter, this decision could significantly influence the principle’s interpretation in the European criminal law area.

The trafficking of human organs (THO) has gone from being an urban legend for many countries to becoming a dark reality that can end in a custodial sentence. Understood as an international problem that demands a response from governments, legislative institutions, and international organizations, it mainly emerges in the context of the inability of countries to cope with the transplantation needs of their patients. The shortage of organs, disparities accentuated by the economic crisis, the vast differences between health systems, and the voracity of unscrupulous traffickers have, in recent years, led to an increase in transplant tourism and the development... Read more

I. Background United Nations Security Council Resolution 2178 (hereinafter “UNSCR 2178”) was adopted by the Security Council acting under Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations on 24 September 2014. It aims at stemming the flow of so-called “foreign terrorist fighters” (i.e., individuals who travel to another State than that of their nationality or residence for the purpose of “the perpetration, planning, or preparation of, or participation in, terrorist acts, or the providing or receiving of terrorist training”1) to Syria and Iraq to join “ISIL, ANF and other cells, affiliates, splinter groups or derivatives of Al-Qaida.”2 Given the... Read more

European integration in the field of security and criminal law has been largely based on the establishment of mechanisms of inter-state cooperation. Inter-state cooperation has both an internal and an external dimension. The internal dimension consists of the establishment of mechanisms of inter-state co-operation via the application of the principle of mutual recog-nition in the field of criminal law, ensuring that cooperation takes place on the basis of limited formality, automaticity, and speed. The external dimension consists of the establishment of cooperation mechanisms, most notably at the level of trans-atlantic counter-terrorism cooperation, ensuring the transfer of a wide range of personal data from the European Union to the United States. At both levels of cooperation, mutual trust is central. Cooperation mechanisms are based on mutual trust based on presumptions of compliance of the parties with co-operation arrangements on fundamental rights. However, this model of cooperation based on presumed trust is … Read more