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- Assessing the impact of artificial intelligence systems on fundamental rightsPublication . Cosentini, Andreia; Pollicino, Oreste; Gregorio, Giovanni De; Ermellino, Andrea; Fontanella, Dario; Inverardi, Nicole; Paolucci, Federica; Penco, Ilaria Giuseppina; Regoli, Daniele; Trapani, Silvia TessaroThis paper presents a structured framework for conducting a Fundamental Rights Impact Assessment (FRIA) tailored to high-risk Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems, including Generative AI. Grounded in the obligations of the Artificial Intelligence Act, the proposed framework - FRIAct - operationalizes fundamental rights protection by bridging regulatory requirements with practical implementation. The paper situates the FRIA within the broader European legal and constitutional framework, emphasizing the role of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union in shaping AI governance. It then introduces FRIAct, a two-pronged assessment methodology combining qualitative and quantitative tools, namely a Questionnaire and a Risk Matrix. The effectiveness of the framework in assessing transparency, fairness, privacy, and human oversight is then demonstrated by applying it to a fictitious but realistic case study that represents a high-risk AI system for credit scoring.
- Digital exhaustion and hybrid software productsPublication . Rendas, TitoThe article examines the applicability of the exhaustion doctrine under EU copyright law to hybrid software products – works that combine computer programs with expressive content like user interfaces, icons, fonts, and templates. According to the CJEU’s case law, whereas the Software Directive permits digital exhaustion for computer programs, the InfoSoc Directive prohibits it for other types of works. This divergence creates significant legal uncertainty for hybrid products. To address this problem, the article proposes a “predominant purpose” test grounded in the lex specialis relationship between the two directives. This test evaluates hybrid products along a spectrum of software hybridization, ranging from pure functional code to predominantly expressive works. The article outlines a multi-factor analysis considering the proportion of components, functional integration and intended consumer use. By prioritizing the product’s primary function, this approach aligns with the rationale of the exhaustion doctrine, while preventing rightholders from circumventing consumer rights by simply embedding minimal expressive content into programs that are intended to be functional.
- Enforcing the EU digital acquis: overlaps and possible pathwaysPublication . Gregorio, Giovanni De; Vicinanza, AnnaThe European Union has intensified its regulatory efforts in the digital domain, resulting in a complex and layered legal framework. Significant attention has focused on the lack of coherence across legislation and other regulatory instruments, while less consideration has been given to enforcement, particularly to the expansion of powers and responsibilities distributed across multiple national and supranational authorities. This paper aims to address the primary challenges to the enforcement of the EU digital acquis and explore potential pathways for enhancing its effectiveness. The first part provides examples of how the growing number of EU legal instruments in European digital policy, particularly targeting digital services, has not fully considered the intersections between different technologies and overlapping regulatory frameworks. The second part then underlines how these substantive overlaps translate into enforcement challenges. It addresses the quantitative dimension of the enforcement framework, detailing the multiplicity of bodies involved while analysing the overlapping competences that arise from this institutional complexity from the national and supranational perspectives. The final section explores possible solutions, evaluating opportunities and limitations of various pathways to improve the enforcement of European digital regulation.
- The transformation of risk regulation: managing uncertainty and powers in the digital agePublication . Vargas, M. Verónica; Gregorio, Giovanni DeRisk regulation has increasingly expanded in European digital policy, yet it is diverging from its roots, especially the precautionary principle. Rather than traditionally focusing on scientific evidence and knowledge, the European approach to risk regulation has been increasingly based on constitutional values such as the protection of fundamental rights and democracy. This article seeks to unravel the logic that has led the Union to move from an approach to risk more based on science to a model which considers constitutional values as parameters to assess and mitigate risks. By focusing on European digital regulation, primarily the GDPR, the DSA and the AI Act, this work underlines how the constitutional rationale of this transformation comes as a response to the intangibility of risks resulting from digital technologies and to imbalances of information and knowledge coming from the concentration of private power in the digital ecosystem. The primary argument is that risk regulation in European digital policy does not seek to rationalise uncertainty through science but to govern epistemological uncertainty through the instruments of constitutionalism, with the goal of addressing the impact of digital technologies on fundamental rights and imbalances of power.
- The proposed directive on multi-territorial licensing for online music: is competition a good idea?Publication . Silva, Nuno Sousa e
- European Model Companies ActPublication . Anderson, P. Krüger; Andersson, J.; Bartkus, G.; Baums, T.; Clarke, B.; Conac, Pierre-Henri; Daskalov, W.; Antunes, J. Engrácia; Fuentes, M.; Giudici, P.; Hannigan, B.; Kalss, S.; Kisfaludi, A.; de Kluiver, H. J.; Opalski, A.; Patakyova, M.; Perakis, E.; Porkona, J.; Roest, J.; Sillanpää, M.; Soltysinski, S.; Teichmann, C.; Urbain-Parléani, I.; Vutt, A.; Engsig Sorenson, K.; Winner, M.; de Wulf, H.
- Human rights of women in the Islamic Republic of Iran and international law: a conceptual comparisonPublication . Abbasi, SalarThis article seeks to analyze the conceptual frameworks of the human rights of women outlined in international law with those delineated in the legal structure of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The article delves into the conceptual congruence or incongruence between these two diverse spectrums of jurisprudential agendas regarding the human rights of women. The comparison is composed of an analysis into the conservative protectionist and reformist dichotomy in shaping the principles based upon which the human rights of women in the I.R. of Iran is formulated, through a theoretical juxtaposition with the grounding theories that have shaped the human rights of women in international law. The Woman-Life-Freedom protests in Iran highlighted the urgent need to address ideological and systemic violations of women's human rights, and advocate for gender equality in the I. R. of Iran and worldwide. The article is a contribution to such a pressing inquiry.
- Remuneration of content creation in the digital space: challenges, obstacles and a common language to foster economic sustainability and cultural diversityPublication . Mazziotti, GiuseppeWhat is the role of remuneration to ensure diversity of cultural creation at a time when access to knowledge, culture, news and entertainment occurs through a great variety of sources, media, technologies and devices? Diverse cultural expressions in musical, cinematographic and other audiovisual works as well as journalism, photography and video games presuppose economic sustainability, at least when it comes to professionally created works. Content creators would not be able to author new works without relying on adequate economic incentives and rewards. Copyright is the area of law and policy where these incentives and financial rewards have been built, traditionally. However, copyright protection is not, as such, sufficient to guarantee economic sustainability and support to diverse cultural creation. Firstly, copyright has become difficult to enforce and monetize, especially by individual creators, in the context of on-demand streaming services and content-sharing platforms and even more so in decentralised forms of content distribution such as peer to peer networking. Secondly, the rights granted under copyright law and the way these rights are exercised via contract tend to protect more corporate interests than individual creators’ remuneration opportunities. Cultural industries gather as many copyright interests as possible, taking advantage of freedom of contract and of their bargaining positions and market power. In addition to that, as the paper shows, the potential ineffectiveness of copyright for the purpose of guaranteeing remuneration to creators and enhancing cultural diversity is related to how today’s online platforms have been desig ned and to the transition from markets based on permanent acquisition of copies by customers to web-based services giving access to repertoires and/or vast collection of creative works for free (as content-sharing or social media platforms do) or a monthly flat fee basis (as in the case of streaming services). In particular, social media and user-generated content platforms have blurred the distinction between professional and nonprofessional works and have significantly weakened creators’ bargaining power.
- Financing the costs of tackling climate change: the financial transaction tax at the COP 30Publication . Correia, MiguelAdapting to climate change and mitigating its effects will require a major global financial effort. One of the financial instruments that has been discussed over the past two decades to finance this effort, without ever achieving visible success, is the Financial Transaction Tax (FTT). More recently, at the COP 28, the tax was given new impetus with the creation of the Global Solidarity Levies Task Force, led by France, Kenya and Barbados and supported by several other countries and a wide range of international organisations (including the IMF, the World Bank, the UN, the OECD and the G20), with the aim of identifying sources of financing for the global effort. The Task Force has identified the FTT as one of the levies that merits further research. It is hoped that at the forthcoming COP 30, to be held in Brazil in November 2025, the Task Force will present final technical proposals for the introduction of new levies at the global level, including an FTT. The aim of this study is to contribute to this endeavour by evaluating the FTT proposal recently released by the Task Force for public consultation and, where relevant, making policy suggestions for consideration.
- Business law in Europe after Brexit. The need for legal transnationalisation in the international market place. The example of international assignmentsPublication . Dalhuisen, Jan HendrikAfter Brexit, legislators, practitioners, and legal scholars in the EU have to reconsider what may be legally needed to support business increasingly conducted in or from the EU rather than from London. Practically, practitioners and legal scholars will have to ask whether and to what extent a contractual choice of English or alternatively New York law is or remains sufficiently effective and enforceable especially in proprietary and regulatory matters to overcome the basic conflicts of law approach still cutting up transactions in the international business flows into local parts depending on closest connections in the hope that these legal pieces together still present an adequate legal framework for the business as a whole. The true question is then to what extent common law can remain dominant through a party choice of law. More fundamentally, in all international commerce and finance, therefore in international professional dealings, not only this approach but substantive key building blocks of private law may need reconsideration, especially new financial structures and funding mechanisms, to operate and find more universal legal support. This goes well beyond the EU or a party choice of law and affects all national legal systems connected with the international market place and its operation, therefore also the U.S, South America, Japan, China, South Korea, Singapore, India, Indonesia, and many others. The question then is what the alternatives are. It is submitted that transnationalisation of private law is here the more ready and efficient tool and way forward especially in trans-border manufacturing, supply, and distribution chains by accepting, on the one hand, the legal unity of international business transactions and, on the other, the direct application of international fundamental and general principle, custom and market practices, and a strong form of party autonomy subject to transnational minimum standards of behaviour in the international market place. Although the common law is closer, which derives in contract and moveable property law from its origin in commerce, it needs to respect the rules of the international markets and its legal structures just as much to remain truly relevant and move forward. It means that these are issues no less relevant to international business when connected with or operating from the US, the UK, Canada, or Australia or made subject to a contractual choice of their laws. This article attempts to meet this challenge for international assignments of portfolios of monetary claims with assignees in other countries and debtors in many. It is a vital part of the international financial infrastructure. The solution is found in the approximation of monetary claims to, and treatment like, promissory notes, which developed similarly as negotiable instruments under the older law merchant, the applicable law and relevant sources to be found in the manner of public international law pursuant to Art. 38(1) of the Statute of the ICJ, as it was for all law before the 19th Century when nationalisation set in. Assuming globalisation holds, it is submitted that in international commercial and financial dealings we are returning to this earlier model which, in the Grotian manner, in terms of methodology reunites all law formation and application at the international level at least for professional participants.