As its name suggests, the EJRR focuses on risk regulation by privileging a European perspective. This issue does not intend to depart from this characterizing feature of the journal. What would make it “special” then? The “specialty” has to be found in the type of risk which our authors deal with in their articles contributing to the symposium: the one posed by, and intrinsic to, financial markets, with a particular view to the recent (better said, current?) financial crisis.

In the wake of the global financial crisis, the trajectory of legal reforms is likely to turn towards more transparency regulation. This article argues that transparency regulation will take on a new role of surveillance as intelligence and data mining expand in the wholesale financial sector, supporting the creation of designated systemic risk oversight regulators.

The role of market discipline, which has been acknowledged to be weak leading up to the financial crisis, is likely to be eclipsed by a more technocratic governance in the financial sector. In this article, however, concerns are raised about the expansion of technocratic surveillance and whether financial sector participants would internalise the discipline of regulatory control. Certain endemic features of the financial sector will pose challenges for financial regulation even in the surveillance age.

Modern financial law historically emerged as a patchwork of regulatory reactions to a series of financial crises. It continued to develop in sync with the ebb and flow of regulatory cycles that oscillated between periods of calm, conducive to a deregulatory frenzy, and periods of crises followed by re-regulatory fervour. Reform initiatives spurring in reaction to crises also comprise procedural/institutional reforms (i.e. those relating to the “who” and “how” of regulation, as opposed to the “what”). The latest financial crisis is no exception to this rule. This article focuses on the EU institutional reforms, which arguably represent a more radical departure from the status quo (in comparison to domestic or international initiatives) in that they involve an instance of “proper” institution-building with implications across different levels of governance. This reform is examined first against the backdrop of the existing EU agencies' legal framework and is found to constitute an important milestone in the crystallization of this framework. A closer look is then taken at the new European Supervisory Authorities' role in EU rulemaking, and to their relationship with the European Commission. Subsequently, the paper takes a further step back and offers some thoughts about the continuously mutating relationship between law and new governance practices, as illustrated in the context of EU financial regulation.

This article focuses on misaligned incentives in the lending process caused by the shift from the traditional relationship banking model to a more transaction-oriented ‘originateto-distribute’ model of bank finance as one of the major factors contributing to the financial crisis of the years 2007–2009. Based on a theoretical analysis of banks as financial intermediaries and the agency costs involved if banks distribute assets they have created to other parties in the financial system, empirical studies are reviewed which demonstrate that market mechanisms apparently contain these agency costs in loan syndications and loan sales, but failed to do so in securitisations during the years before the onset of the financial crisis. The EU has already reacted to this breakdown of market mechanisms by an amendment to the Capital Requirements Directive with the purpose of aligning incentives in securitisation transactions by getting more securitiser ‘skin in the game’. Similar legislation has been adopted in the US. This article places the EU and US response to perceived shortcomings in securitisations in the context of the theoretical and empirical literature and discusses alternative regulatory solutions.

This study focuses on the Icesave dispute and Icesave agreements between Iceland, the UK and The Netherlands in the light of European law (EU and EEA law) and explores two main issues: 1) the State liability for breaches of EU/EEA law on the basis of Directive 94/19/EC following a systemic bank collapse in Iceland; and 2) the principle of non-discriminatory interplay between the nationalisation of Icelandic banks (State aid) and the payment of the minimum guarantee of €20.887 to depositors of Icesave accounts in the branches of Landsbanki in the UK and The Netherlands. This dispute was handled through diplomatic negotiations. The author is highly critical of the methodology followed. This cross-border dispute brought to light new complex problems in a grey area of European law which should have been brought before the highest European courts. Icesave also seems to have turned Icelanders against the process of European integration and the EU.

An increased use of nuclear power is now accepted as inevitable by many people, but not without some unease, and the accidents at Chernobyl and Fukushima as described in the media bring little reassurance. So how dangerous is radiation exposure, for instance to those living within the influence of such accidents?

In this contribution we focus on the role of experts in the assessment of tort damages from an economic point of view. We distinguish two different aspects.

First, we examine the role which economists might play in assessing damages in tort cases. This approach focuses on the insights that Law and Economics provides regarding the correct assessment of damages. We pay specific attention to two problematic forms of losses where economic insights may play an important role: pure economic loss and personal injury damage (both loss of income and compensation for immaterial losses due to fatal and non-fatal accidents).

Second, we investigate from a Law and Economics point of view the role of experts in general (not only economists) in the assessment of damages. We discuss i.a. the question why experts may be involved in the assessment of damages, the potential problems (and the possible solutions) when using experts, and differences between party appointed experts and court appointed experts.

It turns out that the economic analysis can provide a different, insightful viewpoint in some respects, such as the fact that market based mechanisms may help to provide incentives to party appointed experts to provide an accurate and objective damage assessment.

Over the past years, a series of milk crises in China — culminating in the melamine milk scandal in 2008 — have seriously undermined public confidence in food safety. Drawing on international experience to strengthen its regulatory system, China recently introduced elements of risk assessment in its two main Food Safety Laws, namely the Law on the Quality and Safety of Agricultural Products and the Food Safety Law, which represent its basic legislation and institutional framework in terms of food safety. The article explores this new Chinese risk assessment framework in an international context. Specifically, given the similarities between the melamine milk scandal in China and the bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) crisis in Europe in the 1990s in terms of both severity and link to respective corresponding reforms, much of the article focuses on a comparison of the food risk assessment institutions of the two jurisdictions in the aftermath of the crises.

The plant protection law within the European Union has been continuously developed over the past two decades. Whereas harmonized provisions for the placing of plant protection products on the common market were introduced by Council Directive 91/414/EEC of 15 July 1991 (hereinafter the “Directive”), almost two decades later, a revision of the Directive has been passed which takes, in order to ensure consistency throughout the Member States and to provide for simplification, the form of a regulation. Regulation (EC) No. 1107/2009 concerning the placing of plant protection products on the market (hereinafter the “Regulation”) was adopted on 21 October 2009.

While the introduction of GMOs in food is still being debated in many Member States of the European Union, a new field of discord just appeared around the issue of animal cloning.

On 13 April 2011 the Commission tabled a package of two legislative proposals implementing enhanced cooperation in the field of unitary patent protection and translation arrangements. Such proposals have subsequently been agreed upon by the EU ministers in an Extraordinary Competitiveness Council on 27 June 2011. Patent protection is indeed key to the European Union (EU) and constitutes a priority in EU institutions’ agenda, as it is capable of stimulating innovation and competitiveness.

Nanosciences and nanotechnologies are a field of blooming technological applications, developed or manufactured at the nanoscale (a billionth of a meter). At this scale, matter shows new and unexpected properties. These may significantly differ from one case to the other, which results in a great diversity of different industrial applications, and eventually in very heterogeneous end-user products. As a matter of fact, the generic dimension of nanotechnologies, understood as a platform or enabling technology, drives their diversity, and potentially affects almost every industrial sector.

Cognitive neuroscience was born when the theories and methods of cognitive psychology and neuropsychology were combined after a long period of parallel development. Over the last few decades, neuroscientific studies have begun to meet the challenge of understanding cognitive functions, thereby identifying the causal chain of neural events that underlies cognition. The development of powerful brain imaging technologies is now likely to present a range of opportunities in many spheres of public life, such as the criminal and civil justice system, and the business world.

The SPS Agreement may apply to budgetary measures if they are motivated by SPS concerns. Equivalence-based measures are subject to regular disciplines of the SPS Agreement, including but not limited to Article 4. This means that WTO Members when engaging in the recognition process need to observe other SPS provisions such as requirement of scientific risk assessment (Articles 5.1–5.3) or quasi-consistency obligation of Article 5.5. An SPS measure which has been found inconsistent with certain provisions of the SPS Agreement (e.g. Articles 2 and 5), cannot be later justified under the general exception of Article XX(b) of the GATT 1994 (author's headnote).

A national component is a necessary basis for a measure to freeze assets and once the Netherlands repealed the Sanctieregeling 2003 which formed the basis for Stichting Al Aqsa's asset freeze at the national level, the Community basis for the asset freeze also seized to exist (author's headnote).

In rendering this decision, the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland entered for the first time into a detailed analysis of questions relating to the cost-effectiveness of human healthcare. The decision, concerned with the availability of a drug for a rare genetic disease, makes it clear that the maximum amount available from a public health insurance provider for the medical treatment in a particular case has been reached once the amount requested by the individual patient cannot also be provided to all other persons in a comparable situation. It remains unclear, however, how cost-effectiveness is to be assessed below this maximum amount (author's headnote).

Article 88 (1) (a) of Directive 2001/83/EC must be interpreted as meaning that it does not prohibit the dissemination on a website, by a pharmaceutical undertaking, of information relating to medicinal products available on medical prescription only, where that information is accessible on the website only to someone who seeks to obtain it and that dissemination consists solely in the faithful reproduction of the packaging of the medicinal product, in accordance with Article 62 of Directive 2001/83, and in the literal and complete reproduction of the package leaflet or the summary of the product's characteristics, which have been approved by the authorities with competence in relation to medicinal products (official headnote).

Cases C-236/08 to C-238/08 Google France SARL, Google Inc. v. Louis Vuitton Malletier SA (C.236/08) and Google France SARL v. Viaticum, Luteciel SARL (C-237/08) and Google France SARL v. Centre national de recherche en relations humaines (CNRRH) SARL, Pierre-Alexis Thonet, Bruno Raboin, Tiger SARL (C-238/08)

1. The proprietor of a trade mark is entitled to prohibit an advertiser from advertising, on the basis of a keyword identical with that trade mark which that advertiser has, without the consent of the proprietor, selected in connection with an internet referencing service, goods or services identical with those for which that mark is registered, in the case where that advertisement does not enable an average internet user, or enables that user only with difficulty, to ascertain whether the goods or services referred to therein originate from the proprietor of the trade mark or an undertaking economically connected to it or, on the contrary, originate from a third party.

The interaction between organised interests and the European Union institutions has been subject to increasing study and analysis in recent years, and the relevance of this increasingly important research agenda has been highlighted by political scandals and developments in 2011.