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The article starts from the examination of the reasons of the recent trends towards legal integration and gives a brief overview on the system to pursue the objective of legal integration. Then the major form of legal integration in the African continent ‐ the OHADA ‐ is taken into consideration by giving the main features of this legal harmonization process. The article further focuses on the possibility of reaching harmonization of the legal rules on telecommunications in the countries belonging to the OHADA. The paper also presents the reasons in favour of such legal harmonization, the possible obstacles that can be faced, and suggests some hints for the drafting process of the possible future uniform act.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the viewpoints of key stakeholders on the European Commission’s proposal for a regulation for a mechanism to resolve legal and administrative obstacles in cross-border regions. The mechanism known as ECBM, or European Cross-border mechanism, was presented as part of the legislative package for EU Cohesion Policy 2021-2027. The regulation will allow one Member State to apply their legal provision in another Member State for a concretely defined case. This proposal is particularly interesting as it does not give further competence to the European level, but changes how Member States may interact with one another, yet, it raises critiques as regards to its compliance with constitutional, international and European law.

This paper outlines the main elements of contention, which are legal justification, state sovereignty, compliance with the subsidiarity and proportionality principle, thematic and territorial scope, voluntariness and the administrative burden.

The author concludes that the assessment of the voluntariness of the regulation will be crucial in examining the regulations compliance with EU principles and suggests that a more nuanced reading as to which parts of the regulation are voluntary is needed. The author further expects the legal text to change substantial during the legislative procedure, in particular in regard to the thematical scope and the bindingness.

This piece summarises the debate currently held in the European Council and the European Parliament in a structured way to an interested readership. Examining the proposed regulation and the arguments for and against it offers the opportunity to review the main arguments that will be raised in any future debate on legal proposals on territorial development initiatives.

As the Syrian civil war winds down, the massive reconstruction of the devastated cities has become a recurring subject of political and scientific discussions. A crucial question pervades all these debates: is the current legal framework adequate for confronting the reconstruction challenges in an effective way? With the purpose of understanding and informing the question, this study aims to analyze the most important legal instrument for the Syrian urban reconstruction, Law 10/2018.

A functional analysis of the legal text and of its effective implementation is provided. Following a doctrinal legal approach, internal inconsistencies are highlighted, as well as possible “legal gaps” that might allow and favor instances of disrespect of the rule of law and regulatory capture.

The main hypotheses discussed are, first, from a descriptive-analytical perspective, that the neoliberal trend in the Syrian political economy underpins the legal framework for the Syrian reconstruction. Second, from a design perspective, that, while offering a strong mechanism for disciplining the Syrian urban planning, Law 10/2018 does not warrant a scenario of respect of the rule of law and seems too easy prey for regulatory capture.

While the most recent and prominent legal instrument aimed to frame Syrian post-war reconstruction, Law 10/2018, has been subject to multiple policy analyzes and critiques, these have focused almost exclusively on its presumed warchitecture dimension, lacking contextual depth and, most worryingly, ignoring any kind of doctrinal legal analysis. Setting the Law 10/2018 in its legal context is something that has not been done yet, even if, according to their own ontology, legal provisions have to be understood within the context of the legal system they are inserted in. This paper delves into the subject, analyzing the legal text, its juridical context and the way it has been interpreted by the administrative decision-maker while looking at instances where the axiological goals constitutionally proclaimed and legally enshrined might be prevented by the very regulatory configuration.

This paper aims to demonstrate the specialty of the elderly issues and acknowledge the existence of their specific human rights that propose for a special treatment to be given or shown to them as priority as women or children, etc. Indubitably, the very issue is timely in all perspective. Because it is now axiomatic that the fastest growing elderly population becomes a challenge for the whole world for manifold reasons. They include, inter alia, the lack of a social security apparatus or if any, they are insufficient; the weakening of traditional family bonding; almost no explicit references to elderly people in existing international human right laws; and mere stand-by of soft law addressing the rights of the elderly over time. Consequently, these all have probably failed to meet the most urgent needs of this growing demographic.

This paper is an effort made to recognize the “particular vulnerability” of the older persons and with identification of “specific rights”, advocate for special treatment for them and, optimally, the realization of their rights with respect.

In addition, this treatise attempts to focus on the nature and constitutional importance of elderly rights with the aim of providing the elderly with social security and prioritization; and more particularly, scrutiny of the impending and timely imperative for formulation of new legal instrument so as to adequately address the issue globally.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the laws and legal concepts that form the basis for library book lending and how those concepts do or do not apply in the e‐book environment.

The author surveys relevant legal concepts as defined by international copyright treaties and regulations, and conducts a comparative analysis of how these concepts have been applied in the legal systems of Germany, the USA, and Canada.

The idea of “lending” books is a carryover from the analogue world and applies only to the distribution of tangible objects, i.e. printed books. The legal concept of “reproduction” more accurately applies to the transfer of e‐books from library to user.

Libraries must lobby their legislatures to create new legal instruments that will enable libraries to provide e‐book access to their users.

This article is a marginally shortened version of Supplement No. 15 to Women in Europe. The European Community answers a series of 50 questions relating to women and employment.

The increasing number of cyber attacks has transformed the “cyberspace” into a “battlefield”, bringing out “cyber warfare” as the “fifth dimension of war” and emphasizing the States’ need to effectively protect themselves against these attacks. The existing legal framework seem inadequate to deal effectively with cyber operations and, from a strictly legal standpoint, it indicates that addressing cyber attacks does not fall within the jurisdiction of just one legal branch. This is mainly because of the fact that the concept of cyber warfare itself is open to many different interpretations, ranging from cyber operations performed by the States within the context of armed conflict, under International Humanitarian Law, to illicit activities of all kinds performed by non-State actors including cybercriminals and terrorist groups. The paper initially presents major cyber-attack incidents and their impact on the States. On this basis, it examines the existing legal framework at the European and international levels. Furthermore, it approaches “cyber warfare” from the perspective of international law and focuses on two major issues relating to cyber operations, i.e. “jurisdiction” and “attribution”. The multi-layered process of attribution in combination with a variety of jurisdictional bases in international law makes the successful tackling of cyber attacks difficult. The paper aims to identify technical, legal and, last but not least, political difficulties and emphasize the complexity in applying international law rules in cyber operations.

The paper focuses on the globalization of the “cyber warfare phenomenon” by observing its evolutionary process from the early stages of its appearance until today. It examines the scope, duration and intensity of major cyber-attacks throughout the years in relation to the reactions of the States that were the victims. Having this as the base of discussion, it expands further by exemplifying “cyber warfare” from the perspective of the existing European and International legal framework. The main aim of this part is to identify and analyze major obstacles that arise, for instance in terms of “jurisdiction” and “attribution” in applying international law rules to “cyber warfare”.

The absence of a widely accepted legal framework to regulate jurisdictional issues of cyber warfare and the technical difficulties in identifying, with absolute certainty, the perpetrators of an attack, make the successful tackling of cyber attacks difficult.

The paper fulfills the need to identify difficulties in applying international law rules in cyber warfare and constitutes the basis for the creation of a method that will attempt to categorize and rank cyber operations in terms of their intensity and seriousness.

The purpose of this paper is to review and illustrate historical milestones and evolutionary stages of public sector reforms in such a typical transitional society as Kazakhstan through the prism of existing e-government development strategies, implementation models and institutional regulations.

The research is mostly based on a retrospective analysis of technology-driven public sector reforms and content analysis of various e-government strategies and platforms implemented by national and local executive authorities in Kazakhstan for the last two decades.

The results of the analysis has confirmed previously made assumptions that typical developing states tend to adopt different non-linear and multidimensional implementation strategies in advancing e-government reforms in comparison with developed countries. As it turns out, the continuity of actual stages or levels of such development not always corresponds in a consecutive manner to the formal phases of the most popular e-government maturity models proposed previously in academic literature.

One of the fundamental limitations of the case study is that its findings and recommendations could relate only to a limited number of countries that have similar political, socioeconomic and administrative contexts. Taking into account the fact that Kazakhstan is not only a typical developing economy but also a transitional post-communist and post-totalitarian society that has its own unique political and socioeconomic features of governance, the results of case study could not be generalized and extrapolated to all developing countries, presumably narrowing them only to a very limited number of similar states, mostly, in Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia.

The main practical contribution of the article is that it provides a close review of e-government politics in Kazakhstan that could be helpful for policy makers and practitioners in evaluating, learning and improving the work of various technology-driven public sector projects in the area, especially from a regulatory point of view.

This inherently ethnographic narrative, which is based on the analysis of e-government legislation and implementation strategies derived from diverse administrative practices, could be interesting for those who seek to understand an ever-changing truly evolutionary nature of technology-driven public sector reforms in a typical transitional society.

To explain the impacts of the class action, as recently amended by the Italian Parliament, and help financial institutions to develop a compliance approach in order to avoid and/or mitigate the relevant risks.

This article provides an overview on the Italian class action, as recently amended by the Italian Law No. 31/2019, examines the relevant impact for financial institutions (taking into account some recent case law) and identifies possible compliance solutions to avoid/mitigate the relevant risks.

The recent amendments to the Italian class action may increase risks for financial institutions.

Financial institutions should examine their relationships with stakeholders in the light of the new Italian class action in order to implement policies and procedures to prevent the relevant risks.

Practical guidance from an experienced lawyer in the litigation and compliance fields.