There has never been a more pertinent time to discuss the accountability and the legal responsibility of Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, for fundamental rights violations. In a... Show moreThere has never been a more pertinent time to discuss the accountability and the legal responsibility of Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, for fundamental rights violations. In a period that hosts the first legal actions vis-à-vis the agency and a series of relevant non-judicial investigations, including by the European Parliament, this dissertation aims to address the main problem underlying these accountability efforts, namely the ‘problem of many hands’. As conceptualised by Dennis Thompson, this problem is where the multiplicity of the actors involved obscures the various responsibilities and creates gaps in accountability.To address it, this work contests the dominant ways of looking at the concepts of responsibility and accountability, and reimagines them for their optimal function.It adopts a holistic approach, taking into account not only judicial, but also other forms of accountability, studying not only EU liability law, but also other legal remedies before the CJEU, the ECtHR, and domestic courts, building bridges between international and EU law, and traveling from the empirical to the conceptual, to the normative, and from there to the applied.It creates the foundations for the accountability of the agency inside and outside courts, within the EU borders and beyond. Show less
The fight against torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment is of fundamental importance, which has been broadly acknowledged, and resulted in different ways to pursue the... Show moreThe fight against torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment is of fundamental importance, which has been broadly acknowledged, and resulted in different ways to pursue the effectuation of this prohibition. The coexistence of multiple monitoring mechanisms in the same field can raise important questions concerning overlap, collision and alignment. The subject of this study relates to the coexistence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) and focuses on the relation between these bodies from an organisational, terminological and normative perspective. It concentrates on answering the question how the relationship between the ECtHR and the CPT can be described and whether the current status between these bodies contributes to an effective and efficient protection of detainees against torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. Show less
The current study provides a comprehensive view of the legal and political context in which these instruments were designed, with explanations about their content and recommendations for any future... Show moreThe current study provides a comprehensive view of the legal and political context in which these instruments were designed, with explanations about their content and recommendations for any future amendments. It considers the first initiatives taken by the Commission and the Council on these issues before the entry into force of the Treaty of Amsterdam and also reviews proposals submitted by NGOs that have played a substantial role in the debate. Furthermore, documentation of the various European institutions on the negotiations surrounding the adoption of the texts in question as well as trends in case law are carefully examined. The study aims to answer the following questions: To what extent does the normative content of the guidelines allow a difference in treatment between EU migrants and Non EU migrants, does it give binding force to the obligations of Member States, and provide judicial certainty to stakeholders? Show less
This book deals with the collision of two fundamental rights within the European legal order: the right to access to documents and the right to data protection. If a document which is kept by one... Show moreThis book deals with the collision of two fundamental rights within the European legal order: the right to access to documents and the right to data protection. If a document which is kept by one of the European Union institutions contains personal data the two right collide. Although this possible collision is apparent, it is not sufficiently addressed in the two regulations in which both rights are further elaborated (Regulation 1049/2001 and Regulation 45/2001). After an analysis of legal developments within the EU, case law of the European Court of Human Rights and the relevant national legislation of the 27 Member States, the author presents his views on how the balance between the two rights should be struck. This leads to a concrete proposal for amending both regulations. Show less
