This book examines the EU accession to the ECHR from a systemic perspective as well as from the specific perspective of the 2013 draft accession agreement negotiated between the relevant body of the Council of Europe and the EU Commission. It mainly follows a legal positivist approach to examining the nature and scope of obligations that will regulate the new relationship between EU law and European Convention on Human Rights law, concentrating specifically on the issue of jurisdictional interface between the Strasbourg and Luxembourg courts. The book offers an in-depth examination of the core mechanisms of the draft accession agreement, taking into account the remarks in Luxembourg's Opinion 2/13, focusing especially on the issue of attribution of responsibility when a violation of ECHR has been jointly committed by the EU and its Member States, the inter-party procedure and the prior involvement mechanism. The work basically argues that EU accession to the ECHR will have a constitutional impact on the EU legal order, and may also have certain implications for the jurisdictional interface between the Strasbourg and Luxembourg courts. It also questions the mode of interaction between some normative aspects of ECHR law and EU law, offering certain arguments as to the interaction between the Charter of Fundamental Rights and ECHR from overlapping and accommodative perspectives post-accession. The book concludes that with the EU accession to the ECHR – as it stands right now with the draft accession agreement – the macro relationship between the Strasbourg and Luxembourg courts will change significantly, while their constitutional roles will become vertically accommodated and better specialized.

"The institution of citizenship has undergone significant change in the last two decades. Since the 1990s, dozens of countries have changed their laws to permit dual citizenship, moving away from the previous model that demanded exclusive allegiance. As a consequence, tens of millions of people around the world now hold citizenship in two (and sometimes three or four) countries. These changes have inevitably had an affect on the lived experience and personal meaning of citizenship, but the existing literature on dual citizenship has mostly focused on immigrants in Western Europe and North America and has inquired about identity and sentimental aspects of citizenship. Yossi Harpaz looks beyond the West in this book, arguing that the rise of dual citizenship has created new opportunities for non-Western elites to convert local advantages into a global resource. Millions draw on ancestral or ethnic ties to Western/EU countries or create such ties strategically in order to obtain a second nationality that will provide them with additional opportunities, an insurance policy, a high-prestige passport and even social status. He draws on qualitative and quantitative material from three cases that represent three pathways to compensatory citizenship: Hungarian-speaking Serbians who draw on their ethnicity to acquire a second citizenship from Hungary; upper-class Mexicans who engage in "birth tourism" in order to secure American citizenship for their children; and Israelis who reacquire the citizenship of European countries from which their parents and grandparents had immigrated half a century earlier"--

It is well known that investments in real estate provide relatively stable yields compared with stock market volatility, so it is not surprising that, with globalisation, investors have pursued such opportunities across borders, especially where foreign countries offer beneficial tax regimes. Nor it is surprising that states should fear erosion of their tax base in the presence of such investments. This groundbreaking book – the first in-depth comparative analysis of taxation of real estate investment trusts (REITs) in different European Union (EU) Member States – investigates the impact of EU law on direct taxation in the case of REITs, and whether EU policies in this area have led national legislators to adjust their REIT regimes. Presenting detailed case studies of three EU Member States – France (a well-established REIT regime), Bulgaria (a new accession state) and Spain (a recent REIT regime) – this book explores the idea of a harmonised EU REIT, and whether harmonisation among national REIT regimes may be possible. Among the issues and topics arising in the course of the presentation are the following: – ‘goodness of fit’ and adaptational soft pressure; – relevant case law from the European Court of Justice, including both tax and company law; – ‘REIT shopping’; – noncompliance of REIT regimes with EU law; and – criteria for the ‘misfit’ analysis of REIT regimes and potential infringements of EU law. The analysis ultimately documents conditions and circumstances for the creation of a harmonised ‘Euro-REIT’ by assessing the level of change on the area of direct taxation within the Member States which would be needed for such a creation to become reality, identifying common themes across different legal systems that could assist the harmonisation of laws. Throughout, a holistic view is taken, linking tax and company law with considerations of sovereignty, policy and culture. In its structured framework comparing REIT regimes, this incomparable study takes a giant step towards overcoming resistance to a common REIT taxation regime in the EU. As the first comparative study of REIT regimes to identify an emerging common understanding informed by European jurisprudence and Europeanisation policy and theory, it is sure to be welcomed by practitioners, academics and policymakers in European law and international taxation as well as European studies.

W M Gordon, who retired from the Douglas Chair of Civil Law at the University of Glasgow in 1999, is well known for his distinguished contribution to Roman law, legal history and land law. He is the author of several books in these subject areas, but it is a mark of his international eminence that much of his prolific output has been published in a wide variety of journals and essay collections outside, as well as within, the UK. This important collection draws together in an accessible format much of his most important writing and, as such, will be in indispensable purchase for all those interested in these core areas of legal scholarship.

This book examines the electoral rights granted to those who do not have the nationality of the state in which they reside, within the European Union and its Member States. It looks at the rights of EU citizens to vote and stand in European Parliament elections and local elections wherever they live in the EU, and at cases where Member States of the Union also choose to grant electoral rights to other non-nationals from countries outside the EU. The EU's electoral rights are among the most important rights first granted to EU citizens by the EU Treaties in the 1990s. Putting these rights into their broader context, the book provides important insights into the development of the EU now that the Constitutional Treaty has been rejected in the referendums in France and the Netherlands, and into issues which are still sensitive for national sovereignty such as immigration, nationality and naturalization.

In this set of interdisciplinary essays leading scholars discuss the future of the Rule of Law, a concept whose meaning and import has become ever more topical and elusive. Historically the term denoted the idea of 'government limited by law'. It has also come to be equated, more broadly, with certain goods suggested by the idea of legality as such, including the preservation of human dignity and other individual and social benefits predicated upon or conducive to a rule-based social order. But in both its narrow and broader senses the Rule of Law remains a much contested concept. These essays seek to capture the main areas and levels of controversy by 'relocating' the Rule of Law not just at the philosophical level, but also in its main contemporary arenas of application - both national, and increasingly, supranational and international.

Is the unification and harmonisation of (international) family law in Europe necessary? Is it feasible, desirable and possible? Reading the different contributions to this book may certainly inspire those who would like to find the right answers to these questions.

The emergence of a common security and foreign policy has been one of the most contentious issues accompanying the integration of the European Union. In this book, Michael Smith examines the specific ways foreign policy cooperation has been institutionalized in the EU, the way institutional development affects cooperative outcomes in foreign policy, and how those outcomes lead to new institutional reforms. Smith explains the evolution and performance of the institutional procedures of the EU using a unique analytical framework, supported by extensive empirical evidence drawn from interviews, case studies, official documents and secondary sources. His perceptive and well-informed analysis covers the entire history of EU foreign policy cooperation, from its origins in the late 1960s up to the start of the 2003 constitutional convention. Demonstrating the importance and extent of EU foreign/security policy, the book will be of interest to scholars, researchers and policy-makers.