CAREER







Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Greek Administrative Court rules state liable for Covid-19 vaccine side effects due to "excessive sacrifice"

Image
Greece: The Administrative Court of First Instance of Athens, in its decision no. 4202/2025, has ruled that the Greek State is liable for damages sustained by an individual due to side effects following a preventive "COVID-19" vaccination. This landmark decision was issued in a compensation lawsuit filed against the Hellenic Republic. The Case: Seeking Compensation for Vaccine-Related Harm The lawsuit was brought by a plaintiff seeking compensation for material damage and moral harm (non-pecuniary damage), alleging that they suffered severe side effects after their preventive COVID-19 vaccination with a specific vaccine. The initial claim was for €461,835.26, but this amount was subsequently restricted during the proceedings. The plaintiff based their claim on two legal grounds: Article 105 of the Introductory Law of the Civil Code (EισNAK): This article concerns the State's liability for compensation arising from illegal acts or omissions of its organs in the exe...
Read more

Ombudsman inquiry on Commission President’s text messages is a wake-up call for EU

Image
The European Ombudsman inquiry into the Commission’s handling of a request for text messages between its President and the CEO of a pharmaceutical company is a wake-up call for all EU institutions about ensuring accountability in an era of instant messaging. One year after the initial request by a journalist, the Commission has still not clarified whether messages reported to concern major vaccine procurement deals exist and whether the public is entitled to see them. The Ombudsman had asked the Commission, in a finding of maladministration in January, to conduct a more thorough search for the text messages. The Commission’s recent response failed to say whether it had looked directly and correctly for the text messages and if not, why not. While the response recognised that work-related text messages can be EU documents, it reiterated that the Commission’s internal policy is, in effect, not to register text messages. The Ombudsman has closed  the inquiry  and upheld...
Read more

The Title Deed Issue in Cyprus and the "Trapped Buyers" Phenomenon

Image
Article By Giorgos Kazoleas, Lawyer LL.M.  The issue of title deeds in Cyprus and the phenomenon of "trapped buyers" constitutes one of the greatest legal, financial, and social peculiarities of Cypriot real estate law. The Cypriot Peculiarity: Sale Without a Title Deed Under Cypriot law (pursuant to the Immovable Property (Tenure, Registration and Valuation) Law, Cap. 224), legal ownership of a property is transferred and acquired solely upon its registration with the Department of Lands and Surveys and the issuance of the relevant Certificate of Registration (Title Deed). However, a major peculiarity exists: it is entirely legal to sell a property that does not (yet) possess a separate title deed. This typically occurs in new developments (apartment buildings or residential complexes), where the title deed for the plot of land belongs to the developer, but the separate title deeds for each apartment or house can take years to be issued due to bureaucracy, pending ap...
Read more

From Regulation to Strategy: Europe’s New Tech Agenda

Image
Written by Efi Thoma, Senior Global Legal Counsel  Europe’s approach to technology regulation is entering a more practical phase. After several years of ambitious rule-making, Brussels is increasingly focused on implementation, enforcement and simplification. For technology companies, the key question is no longer simply “What does the law require?” but “How do we make these requirements work in practice without unnecessarily slowing innovation?” The EU AI Act (Regulation (EU) 2024/1689) establishes a risk-based framework covering areas such as transparency, governance, human oversight and high-risk AI systems. As implementation progresses, the emphasis is increasingly on making the framework workable in practice, including through regulatory sandboxes and measures supporting implementation. For businesses, the practical approach is to embed AI governance into existing processes rather than create an entirely separate compliance structure. AI inventories, risk classification, procu...
Read more

Fully-funded PhD position in AI, Law and Public Power

Image
Erasmus University Rotterdam School of Law, department Law & Markets, is looking for a fulltime PhD researcher in AI, Law and Public Power (4,5 years with 20% teaching tasks). PhD AI, Law and Public Power Are you curious about how artificial intelligence is changing state actor powers? Do you want to conduct critical and in-depth legal research at the intersection of technology, law and power? And would you like to combine that with academic teaching? Then this PhD position at Erasmus School of Law is for you. Within the Law & Markets team, you will spend 4.5 years researching the legal regulation of AI in the public sector. How do we protect fundamental rights when algorithms help decide on who receives public benefits, how to perform enforcement or how to enact environmental policy? What is the role of the state, and where is the limit of government power in a data-driven society? You will have plenty of space to choose your own research angle and work in a multidisci...
Read more

Balancing Crime Control and Ne Bis In Idem: ECtHR Finds No Violation in Successive Proceedings

Image
The case concerned the right not to be tried or punished twice – a right protected by Article 4 of Protocol No. 7 and known as the “ne bis in idem” principle. In its Grand Chamber judgment in the case of Jesus Pinhal v. Portugal (applications nos. 48047/15 and 2276/20) the European Court of Human Rights held, by fifteen votes to two, that there had been no violation of Article 4 of Protocol No. 7 (right not to be tried or punished twice) to the European Convention on Human Rights. The applicant had been a member and Vice-Chairman of the Banco Comercial Português bank (“the BCP”). Following a complaint, the Lisbon public prosecutor’s office, the Securities Market Commission (CMVM) and the Portuguese central bank (BdP) initiated proceedings against him for various criminal and administrative offences. Before the Court, the applicant argued that he had been tried three times for the same acts. The Court used this occasion to clarify the criteria to be applied in striking a fair bala...
Read more

Moving between Member States without an identity card or passport - A fine amounting to 20% of the amount of the offender’s average net monthly income, is not proportionate to the seriousness of the offence

Image
In its Judgment in Case C-35/20 (6.10.2021) , the European Court of Justice ruled that a Member State may require its nationals to carry a valid identity card or passport when travelling to another Member State, irrespective of the means of transport used and the itinerary, subject to sanctions. While EU law does not preclude the imposition of a criminal penalty, it does preclude disproportionate penalties, such as a fine amounting to 20% of the offender's average net monthly income. A, a Finnish national, made a round trip between Finland and Estonia in August 2015 on a pleasure boat. During that trip, he crossed the international waters between Finland and Estonia. He was the holder of a valid Finnish passport, but did not have it with him during that trip. As a result, during a border check in Helsinki on his return, A was unable to produce his passport or any other travel document, although his identity could be established on the basis of his driving licence. The syyttäjä ...
Read more