With the end of the third year of operation of the European Law Blog approaching, it is once again time to take a brief look back at the most popular posts of the year. Based on our Google Analytics statistics and keeping in mind that there is a certain bias in favour of older posts which have had more time to become popular, we receive the following little tour d’horizon of EU law…
1. Rising like a Phoenix: The ‘Right to be Forgotten’ before the ECJ, by Orla Lynskey
One hot topic this year has certainly been data protection. It comes thus as no surprise that Orla Lynskey’s concise analysis of the Google Spain case has been the most popular post of the year.
2. C-176/12 AMS: Charter principles, subjective rights and the lack of horizontal direct effect of directives, by Benedikt Pirker
The year has also brought quite some developments in the field of EU fundamental rights more generally. In AMS, the CJEU was presented with an opportunity to elaborate on the topics of horizontal effect of fundamental rights implemented by a directive and of the Charter’s distinction between principles and rights.
3. Joined Cases C-293/12 and 594/12 Digital Rights Ireland and Seitlinger and Others: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, by Orla Lynskey
It is not every day that you see the CJEU invalidating a directive based on fundamental rights concerns. Orla Lynskey’s discussion of the Court’s decision on the Data Retention Directive has therefore raised quite some interest.
4. STC 26/2014: The Spanish Constitutional Court Modifies its case law in response to the CJEU’s Melloni judgment, by Mario García
Our widely spread net of contributors sometimes provides to the blog fascinating insights into the operation of EU law at the level of national courts, as does Mario García here discussing for us how the well-known Melloni saga continued in Spain.
5. Case C-206/13 Siragusa: A further piece for the Åkerberg Fransson jigsaw puzzle, by Benedikt Pirker
After the Akerberg Fransson decision had already been widely discussed last year, our readers continue to be highly interested in the topic of the scope of application of EU fundamental rights.
6. Melloni as a Wake-up Call – Setting Limits to Higher National Standards of Fundamental Rights’ Protection, by Vanessa Franssen
While Vanessa Franssen feared her post on the landmark decision in Melloni might come very late, our readers obviously thought otherwise and made this post one of the most popular of the year 2014.
7. Dependent family members in EU free movement law: Comment on Reyes, by Georgios Milios
Not all the year has been about EU fundamental rights. Georgios Milios provides some insights in this regard in an interesting topic of migration law, i.e. the interpretation of the notion of dependent family members.
8. The legal limits to ‘agencification’ in the EU? Case C-270/12 UK v Parliament and Council, by Laurens Ankersmit
And then, there is of course institutional law as well. Based on an important CJEU judgment, Laurens Ankersmit sets out here the limits to the delegation of powers in the case of EU agencies in his post.
9. Cases C-456/12 O. and B. and C-457/12 S. and G.: Clarifying the inter-state requirement for EU citizens?, by Nathan Cambien
Let us not forget about EU citizenship and free movement rights. In this post, Nathan Cambien discusses extensively new case law by the CJEU on the topic of what actually constitutes „sufficient“ movement for EU citizens to be able to invoke e.g. the right to be joined or accompanied by close family members.
10. The Biocides judgment: In search of a new chemistry for the principle of EU institutional balance, by Alberto Alemanno
Alberto Alemanno provides some more insights into another topic of institutional law that has been addressed in recent case law of the CJEU. We may not yet have the full answer to the „million dollar question“ of how to distinguish between delegated and implementing acts, but some first steps seem to have been undertaken.
In conclusion to this small tour d’horizon of EU law in 2014, I would like to thank all our readers and contributors on behalf of the editors team for their interest and all their efforts, which seem to make every year of blogging even more exciting and more rewarding than the previous one also for us editors. We hope you enjoyed the year 2014 on the blog and look forward to sharing and discussing interesting developments with you in 2015.
Happy holidays and all our best wishes for 2015!