October 28th, 2008 at 08:08pm
On October 23, the Court of First Instance of the European Communities annulled the December 2007 renewal of an order of the EU Council freezing the assets of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI). The Court found that there was insufficient legal justification for the order. It doing so, it relied on a 2007 British decision removing the PMOI from a list of organizations concerned with terrorism. According to the Court, the Council had failed to provide additional evidence to justify keeping the PMOI’s funds frozen.
Under the authority of a December 2001 regulation, the Council can freeze the funds of organizations involved in terrorism. Since May 2002, the Council has identified the PMOI as one such organization. The PMOI, a pro-democracy movement founded in 1965, claims to have ceased military operations in 2001. It has repeatedly litigated the Council’s decision to freeze its assets. In December 2006, the organization won an annulment of the Council’s decision on the basis of procedural and evidentiary defects. The Council renewed the freeze order and remedied these defects.
Although the Court approved of the Council’s procedural remedies, it still invalidated the December 2007 freeze order. The Court cited an November 2007 British Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission (POAC) decision ordering the Home Secretary to remove the PMOI from its list of proscribed organizations concerned with terrorism. POAC called classifying the PMOI as a terrorist organization “perverse” and “unreasonable.” Given this forceful declaration by a competent national authority on the same evidence before the Council, the Court reasoned, the Council’s assertion that the Home Secretary intended to appeal the decision did not constitute sufficient grounds to maintain the freeze order. The Court also noted that the Home Secretary cannot appeal POAC’s findings of fact, thus requiring the Council to submit additional evidence beyond what POAC considered in order to justify continuing to freeze the PMOI’s assets.
The Council reaffirmed the decision to freeze the PMOI’s funds in July 2008, citing the availability of new information. A PMOI challenge to that decision is still pending.
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October 28th, 2008 at 12:27pm
The WTO Secretariat reported a 39 percent increase in new anti-dumping investigations initiated during Janurary 1 to June 30, 2008 as compared to the 2007 corresponding period. 16 WTO Members initiated a total of 85 new investigations, 31 of which were by developed Members applying 13 of the 54 new final anti-dumping measures.
Turkey reported the highest number of new initiations at 13, followed by the United states reporting 12, and India reporting 11. The products most affected were base metals (21 initiations), the textiles sector (20 initiations), followed by the chemical sector (10 initiations). China was the subject of 37 of all new initiations reported, a 76 percent increase from the 2007 corresponding period.
India applied 16 of the new final anti-dumping measures while European Communities applied the second most with 8 new measures. China’s product exports are the most frequent subject of the new measures, accounting for 13 of the 54 new measures. Chinese Taipei exports are second with six new measures applied. The sectors most affected by new measures applied during the first half of 2008 are the chemical sector (subject to 16 of the 54 new measures reported), the base metals sector (subject to 14), and the plastics sector (subject to 13).
The semi-annual reports of WTO Members to the ADP Commitee can be found here .
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October 17th, 2008 at 09:06am
On Wednesday Serbia won a bid in the United Nations General Assembly to have the International Court of Justice review Kosovo’s recent declaration of independence. Serbia considers Kosovo to be a “breakaway province” which unilaterally declared independence and thus wants a ruling on the legality of the region’s actions.
Although the ICJ is often called upon to resolves border disputes, it is rarely asked to make legal rulings of this nature. Kosovo is a particularly difficult case because there are no guidelines to follow in international law for secessions within Europe. Former colonies in regions such as Africa or Latin America have formal steps to follow in order to declare independence, but such steps cannot easily be applied to regions that are more established.
77 countries in the General Assembly voted in favor of Serbia’s request, with six countries voting against it and 76 countries abstaining. The United States and Albania, which has strong ties to Kosovo, are among those voting against the measure, asserting that Kosovo’s independence is irreversible and that Serbia’s request is merely “dragging its domestic disputes into the international arena.” Most European states refrained from voting. However, a number of European countries with separatist factions of their own, such as Spain and Cyprus, voted in favor of letting the ICJ review the issue. These nations are interested in hearing how the court rules in order to determine how it may impact secessionist movements in their own states in the future.
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October 16th, 2008 at 09:22pm
Former president of Finland, Martti Ahtisaari, won the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize for his work as an international mediator in conflict resolution efforts around the globe. The Norwegian Nobel Committee particularly recognized Ahtisaari’s work in Namibia, Indonesia, Kosovo, and Iraq, praising his dedication to “peace and reconciliation” in those areas.
Ahtisaari was seen as a conservative choice by some, especially following last year’s controversial award of the prize to Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. International mediators rarely win the Nobel Peace Prize, which is often awarded to inspirational figures or even to a conflict’s principal actors. Ahtisaari joins only six other laureates chosen for their role in conflict mediation, including Theodore Roosevelt (1906), for mediating peace between Russia and Japan, and Jimmy Carter (2002), for brokering the Camp David Accords, among other achievements. In comparison with these laureates, Ahtisaari’s choice is unusual because it comes in recognition of a decades-long career in international mediation, as opposed to any particular high-profile success, a selection regarded by some as reaffirming “the original vision of Alfred Nobel.”
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October 9th, 2008 at 09:15pm
In an editorial published Wednesday by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, former German president Roman Herzog vehemently attacked the current state of the European Court of Justice (ECJ). Herzog believes that the ECJ has lost the trust of the EU member states by its “astonishing” rationales for interfering in national legal systems and member state competencies.
His remarks come on the eve of the German Federal Constitutional Court’s decision regarding the ECJ’s 2003 Mangold judgment. In the Mangold case, the ECJ determined that German labor policy violated an EU directive on non-discrimination. The German legislation expressly prohibited age discrimination, while the EU directive permitted it in certain circumstances. As in the famous Solange II judgment, the FCC is again being asked to address the question of EU law’s fundamental supremacy.
Herzog maintains that the ECJ has overreached as both labor market and social policies remain state competencies. As age discrimination in the labor market does not cross borders, he believes that the ECJ has overstepped the boundaries of the principle of subsidiarity. He wrote that past cases have shown that “the ECJ deliberately and systematically ignores fundamental principles of the Western interpretation of law, that its decisions are based on sloppy argumentation, that it ignores the will of the legislator, or even turns it into its opposite, and invents legal principles serving as grounds for later judgments. They show that the ECJ undermines the competences of the Member States even in the core fields of national powers.”
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October 9th, 2008 at 08:22am
The U.S. Congress passed legislation granting India access to nuclear technology on October 1. The move comes more than three decades after India tested its first nuclear weapon.
On September 28, the bill passed in the House of Representatives. Shortly afterward, the Senate approved the measure by a vote of 86 to 13. It will now go to President Bush, who says he looks forward “to signing this bill into law and continuing to strengthen the U.S.-India strategic partnership.”
Under the agreement, India will gain access to U.S. nuclear technology, material, and equipment, as well as components for nuclear research. Both countries hope that India will now be better equipped to meet its rapidly growing energy needs. According to President Bush, the legislation also brings India’s nuclear programs under international inspections and strengthens nuclear non-proliferation efforts.
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October 9th, 2008 at 07:56am
Thailand has joined eight other Asian countries in approving the first Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ (ASEAN) Charter, a constitution establishing ASEAN as an international legal entity. The Thai Senate ratified the ASEAN charter in mid-September, sending the document to the King of Thailand for his signature.
Thailand is the ninth of the ten ASEAN states to ratify the charter. News reports indicate that the last remaining state, Indonesia, will likely follow suit next week. For the charter to become legally binding all ten states must ratify it before the next ASEAN summit in December 2008.
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October 8th, 2008 at 12:20am
The top UN envoy in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has asked for an increase in the number of peacekeepers in the country (in addition to the 19,000 already there), expressing alarm about the renewal of hostilities in the eastern provinces. Alan Doss, Special Representative for the DRC, expressed concern that the Congo may plunge back into a civil war, pinpointing the provinces of North Kivu, where ethnic tensions have risen, and Orientale, where Ugandan rebel armies have launched attacks. While granting that the peacebuilding budget is limited and that the peacekeeping mission in the DRC (MONUC) needs to maximize its current resources, Mr. Doss stressed that armed groups must be dealt with, if the rule of law is not to give way to “the rule of gun.”
MONUC was set up in 1999 to help enforce the ceasefire of the civil war and restore peace and stability. Since then, the UN has helped to organize elections and maintain relative calm.
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October 7th, 2008 at 10:00am
The United States ratified on October 1 the Singapore Treaty on the Law on Trademarks. The Singapore Treaty, concluded under the auspices of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in March 2006, marks international efforts to update the 1994 Trademark Law Treaty (TLT) in light of changing trademark practices. Over 50 countries have signed the Treaty, which will enter into effect when 10 contracting parties (countries or qualifying intergovernmental organizations) ratify it. The US is the eighth party to finalize the ratification process.
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October 6th, 2008 at 10:39pm
The Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled on July 8 in the case of Yumak & Sadak v. Turkey. The case was brought by the plaintiffs after they lost in Turkey’s recent parliamentary elections. Although eighteen parties participated in the elections, only two were able to garner enough votes nationally to meet the 10% threshold necessary to be seated in the Parliament. As a result, Turkey’s new Assembly is the least representative since the multi-party system was introduced. The plaintiffs alleged that the high threshold interfered with the right to free elections, which is protected by Article 3 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.
In this case, the Grand Chamber found that the 10% electoral threshold was not a violation of the Convention. However, it did admit that such a threshold would generally seem “excessive”. In its opinion, the Grand Chamber twice cited an article by Ricardo Zimbron entitled “The Unappreciated Margin: Turkish Electoral Politics Before the European Court of Human Rights,” which had been previously published in Harvard International Law Journal.
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