On 1 February 2023, the Committee of the Parties to the Council of Europe Convention on the Protection of Children against Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse (“Lanzarote Committee”) held an... Show moreOn 1 February 2023, the Committee of the Parties to the Council of Europe Convention on the Protection of Children against Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse (“Lanzarote Committee”) held an exchange of views with the European Commission on the EU’s Proposal for a Regulation to prevent and combat child sexual abuse (“proposed EU Regulation”). As part of this exchange, Dr Mark Leiser and Dr Sabine Witting, legal academics presented a report on the potential implications of the proposed EU Regulation.The proposed EU Regulation seeks to establish a clear and harmonised legal framework for preventing and combating online child sexual abuse. It seeks to provide legal certainty to providers as to their responsibilities to assess and mitigate risks and, where necessary, to detect, report and remove known and new child sexual abuse material as well as child solicitation on their services in a manner consistent with the fundamental rights laid down in the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms and as general principles of EU law.The debate around the proposed Regulation continues to lack consensus, with child protection advocates calling for the proactive use of safety technology with robust safeguards to detect child sexual abuse in digital environment, and digital rights and privacy advocates calling such measures ‘mass surveillance’ on the other side. Such conflicting positions risk missing the complexity of the debate and hinder thoughtful child rights and human rights-based policy decisions. Privacy and safety are independent and interrelated rights that benefit from each other’s strength: high privacy standards will positively impact children’s safety online, just as the victims of child sexual abuse material have the right to privacy and protection from the images of their abuse being repeatedly shared online.The report launched today puts forward measures to address some concerns regarding the compliance of the proposed EU Regulation with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the prohibition of general monitoring obligations for digital platforms and services, as well as potential impact on specific fundamental and human rights. The report also highlights several measures the EU could take to prevent and respond to online child sexual abuse, such as setting mandatory standards for child-friendly reporting mechanisms and ensuring that adolescents are not referred to law enforcement for consensual sexual exploration. As to the EU proposal’s new EU Centre to prevent ad combat child sexual abuse, the report suggests that it should be independent of EUROPOL and serve as a platform for knowledge sharing, coordination, and EU-wide victim support. Show less
In the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM), decisions to grant or oppose an acquisition of a qualifying holding in a bank are adopted in a so-called composite procedure. First, the national... Show moreIn the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM), decisions to grant or oppose an acquisition of a qualifying holding in a bank are adopted in a so-called composite procedure. First, the national competent authority (NCA) assesses the proposed acquisition based on five criteria enshrined in Art. 23(1) of the Capital Requirements Directive IV (CRD IV) and implemented into national law. Then, it forwards a proposal for a decision to the European Central Bank (ECB). The ECB adopts the final decision. One of the criteria requires an assessment of whether, in connection with the proposed acquisition, there are reasonable grounds to suspect (potential) breaches of rules on the prevention of money laundering (AML) or financing of terrorism (CFT). While the NCAs have the competence to assess such (potential) breaches, the SSM Regulation did not confer AML and CFT-related supervisory tasks on the ECB. The ECB must thus to a certain extent rely on the national AML/CFT assessment. The question is how to reconcile the ECB’s lacking AML/CFT competence with its sole responsibility and legal accountability for the final decision on a proposed acquisition. This contribution suggests that the general principle of duty of care can be calibrated to allow the ECB to review the AML/CFT assessments made by the NCA without exceeding the limits of its competence and ensure a judicial review by the EU courts. Show less
In this chapter, three generations of Dutch administrative procedural law are identified and discussed. The first generation is characterized by appeal procedures within the administration, among... Show moreIn this chapter, three generations of Dutch administrative procedural law are identified and discussed. The first generation is characterized by appeal procedures within the administration, among which the appeal to the Crown. This generation did not focus on the protection of individual rights, either procedural or substantive. Rooted in a formal Rechtsstaat conception, subjective rights against the state were thought to compromise the sovereignty of the state. Instead, administrative appeal was meant to uphold the quality and legality of decision-making and therefore the common good. Although this did not necessarily preclude assigning procedural rights to parties, the legislator thought extensive procedural law would jeopardize administrative efficiency. During the first half of the 20th century, specialized and independent law courts were created, but these mainly followed the design of the administrative appeal procedure, focusing on legality review. Although this often resulted in a form of accessible and inexpensive legal protection, the first generation’s procedural law did most certainly not turn around the concept of parties. Throughout the 20th Century, independent judicial review began to gain ground, especially after the ECHR judged the appeal to the Crown in violation of the right to a fair trial. At the same time, the intellectual idea began to take hold that the goal of administrative procedure should be individual legal protection. In 1994, the General Administrative Law Act (GALA) came into force, signaling the start of the second generation of procedural law. Although the legislator explicitly chose individual conflict resolution as the main goal of administrative procedure, the foundational reorientation remained incomplete. Leaving many of the first generation’s characteristics, such as legality review of single administrative decisions, intact, while at the same time assuming an increased responsibility for litigants, the GALA turned out to foster a climate of efficiency, echoing the spirit of the first generation’s focus on the public good. Furthermore, the focus on individual legal protection hampered the development of procedural law for collective decision-making procedures like rulemaking or policy instruments. Over the last years, the incapacity of administrative law to adequately deal with some major crises of governance have highlighted the vulnerable design of the second generation’s procedural law. On the one hand, the GALA does not effectively protect the individual, as Dutch administrative law lacks certain procedural safeguards and substantive individual rights to do so. On the other hand, the GALA fails to adequately tackle the collective dimension underlying many major administrative problems, by scattering policy conflicts and bureaucratic failure in single law cases on single decisions. Currently, many proposals are made to rectify these tendencies. A common theme in these is the turn to constitutional values and safeguards within administrative law, such as human rights protection and enhancing democratic control. Accordingly, a steady maturation of a more substantive and responsive notion of the Rechtsstaat emerges. Together, these developments show how individual rights protection and enhancing collective decision-making procedure are not antithetic, but, when integrated in an overarching design, can strengthen each other. Although it might be too early to speak of a definitive third generation, contemporary developments like digitalization can be excepted to only contribute to the contours of a new procedural law, fit for the 21st century. Show less
