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The study focusses on the legal issues surrounding artificial intelligence (AI), which are being investigated and debated about several European Union initiatives to manage and regulate Information and Communication Technologies. The goal is to discuss the benefits and drawbacks of adopting AI technology and the ramifications for the articulations of law and politics in democratic constitutional countries. Thus, the study aims to identify socio-legal concerns and possible solutions to protect individuals’ interests. The exploratory study is based on statutes, rules, and committee reports. The study has used news pieces, reports issued by organisations and legal websites. The study revealed computer security vulnerabilities, unfairness, bias and discrimination, and legal personhood and intellectual property issues. Issues with privacy and data protection, liability for harm, and lack of accountability will all be discussed. The vulnerability framework is utilised in this chapter to strengthen comprehension of key areas of concern and to motivate risk and impact mitigation solutions to safeguard human welfare. Given the importance of AI’s effects on weak individuals and groups as well as their legal rights, this chapter contributes to the discourse, which is essential. The chapter advances the conversation while appreciating the legal work done in AI and the fact that this sector needs constant review and flexibility. As AI technology advances, new legal challenges, vulnerabilities, and implications for data privacy will inevitably arise, necessitating increased monitoring and research.

This paper aims to analyse the evolution of European anti-money laundering discipline passing from the First Money Laundering Directive 91/308/EEC, that was only referred to banks and financial intermediaries, that has been furthermore extended to some activities and professions outside the financial sector. The research examines the different steps done buy Italian Legislation in the field of economic crime: at first Law n. 14/2003 of 3 February 2003 (Community Law 2002), they transposed the 2001 Directive 2001/97/EC and then the Law n. 56/2004 of 20 February 2004, that has implemented Directive 2001/97/EC. Now it is urgent to implement Directive 2005/60/EC that has extended the scope of the legislation, including the fight against the financing of terrorism and modified anti-money laundering obligations.

This paper deals with the Legislations of some European States (in particular UK and Italy) interpreting them by a comparative method.

This paper has put in clear some differences and some analogies between national legislations of different countries.

In Italy, at first Law n. 14/2003 of 3 February 2003 (Community Law 2002), has transposed the 2001 Directive 2001/97/EC and then the Law n. 56/2004 of 20 February 2004, has implemented Directive 2001/97/EC. In 2005, Directive 2005/60/EC has extended the scope of the legislation, including the fight against the financing of terrorism and modified anti-money laundering obligations.

In the context of economic crime, capital investigations represent one of the most effective tools to fight the activities of organized crime in the phase of managing wealth illicitly produced and its immission in the circuit of the legal economy.

The need of fighting economic crime must always be harmonized with the protection of right to privacy that has been acknowledged by Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights of 1950 as a fundamental right.

This paper develops the need to balance the right to privacy of every European citizen (Article 8 CEDU) with investigative power exercised by Public or Private Authorities, considering the possibility to comprise the first – if necessary – to allow the regular exercise of the second.

This paper aims to explains how the Dutch unions evolved in the post war period and the reasons why they committed such significant resources to developing strong links and assisting the new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe complete the “Transition Process”.

The author draws on his first‐hand experience as the president of the Dutch graphical union, and for many years president and vice president of the sector's international trade union federations – to give an insight as to the rationale behind international trade union cooperation and solidarity.

The paper suggests that the help and assistance provided by the West European workers organisations, although costly has brought added value to the enlarged European Trade Union movement in so much as it has ensured that the Central and Eastern European trade unions have been able to complete the transition period.

The paper provides a first hand account of the difficulties that trade unions in the former soviet block countries had to deal with during the transition period, and how trade unions in the West had to overcome ideological and historical prejudices in order to provide help and assistance to their sister unions in Central and Eastern Europe.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the period for which a public procurement notice remains open for bidding (Δt) affects the number of bids.

The authors investigated data for 2.404 open procurement tenders in Greece for the years 2018–2021. Using Δt as the grouping factor, the authors defined two samples based on the European Union time limits for the receipt of tenders. Group 1 (Δt ≤ 35) contains all tenders for which the contracting authorities (CAs) have chosen to limit themselves to the minimum number of days allowed by law. Group 2 (Δt>35) includes the remaining tenders where CAs have chosen to keep their notices open for periods beyond the existing minimum time limits, as they are encouraged to do by law.

A Mann–Whitney U test, in combination with graphical analysis, revealed that CAs from Group 2 tend to enjoy more bids per tender, that is, more intense competition.

The paper allows decision-makers and legislators to understand the relationship between the time CAs choose to keep their notices open for bidding and the number of bidders in each tender, that is, competition, which according to other authors, affects the outcomes of public procurement procedures.

The paper fills the research gap regarding the relationship between time for preparation and the number of bids in each tender.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the legal problems connected with using the systems of technological interoperability in the society.

In the paper, the compared-legal method was applied. The legislation of Russia and that of European Union (EU) have been compared.

Generalizing about the problems identified in both Russia and the EU, it is possible to conclude that: States have to develop a coordinated, uniform security policy. Public administrations have to implement interoperable services for business and citizens. States have to introduce the required standards. It is necessary to forbid development or creation of any departmental technical specifications by public institutions or departments which are not coordinated with the larger transnational goals.

In the paper, the problems that arise in the states (Russia and EU) if they did not take into account the principle of interoperability are revealed. Legal mechanisms directed on permission of arising problems are described.

The cultural heritage of a nation is an important part of its identity. Its works of art, its records and archives and its archaeological remains contribute to its past and its present. Many nations are legitimately concerned to retain this cultural legacy, even where the objects are being sold to recognised galleries or museums in other countries. The export ban imposed by the British Government on the ‘Three Graces’ was a prominent example of the importance attached to certain works of art.

The purpose of this paper is to set out the policy guidelines and recommendations to harmonise the Serbian water legislation with European Union standards in the area of water system management as impacted by climate change.

The EU Water Framework Directive is analysed in the context of implementation of the integrated water management policy presented in the Serbian Water Law (2010), as well as the National Water Management Strategy (2016). It has been found that the water management legislation that deals with the impact of climate change on water resources is incomplete. Although there are numerous challenges related to research of climate change and water systems, water policy and legal aspects cannot be neglected. The so-called soft law instruments represented in a form of strategy documents could be a valuable response in terms of an adaptive and integrated water policy approach.

The research is applied to a case study of the Velika Morava River Basin, at Ljubicevski Most hydrological station. Long-term projections suggest a decrease in annual precipitation levels and annual flows up to the year 2100 for climatic scenarios A1B and A2, accompanied by a rapid increase in air temperatures.

This study proposes a water management policy and provides recommendations for the Velika Morava River Basin as impacted by climate change, according to the European Union legislation.

Since the 1980s, packaging has been increasingly included in the environmental agenda. Worries about packaging waste have led governments to introduce packaging legislation and formulate waste policies. Since 1994, the Regulation 94/62/20.12.94 on Packaging and Packaging Waste provides a framework for measures to be taken in every country of the European Union to diminish the volume of packaging waste. Reports on a survey of Greek manufacturing aiming at the registration of the recent changes and trends in packaging materials used by consumer goods industries and the investigation of the main problems and prerequisites to meet the new legislative environment.

The purpose of this paper is to raise awareness of the differences in European and American perspectives on privacy and to question whether most users of web services, such as Facebook, are equipped with the proper level of media literacy skills in order to manage the responsibility for their own privacy.

Discussion of theoretical concepts on privacy, from the perspectives of both law and social sciences.

Promoting government responsibility for the privacy of individual citizens seems problematic in an online context, as it threatens to open the door to censorship. One should wonder whether citizens need protection from what is perceived as infringement to the rights of privacy, while these citizens are actually consumers, using commercially provided services with policies that they have agreed to. The European Commission has been following closely what is happening to personal data online. Several forms of legislation have been brought into force aiming to enhance the protection of personal data of European citizens. This European protectionism often clashes with the privacy policies of, largely American, commercial organisations such as Facebook and Google.

Further research should be carried out on whether the general user is media literate enough to be able to mitigate their privacy online. Legislators are focussed on handing responsibilities to the users themselves, however users could benefit from a more paternalistic approach.

This paper combines perspectives on online privacy from the multi‐disciplinary perspectives of law and social sciences. These two viewpoints are not often combined in critical literature. This paper serves as a discussion piece for future research and media literacy programs in higher education.

This chapter attempts to answer some of the questions raised in this volume, in particular: (1) provide a concise but precise definition of multi-level governance; (2) prove that it is a theoretical and not just a descriptive concept and (3) dispel some of the misconceptions associated with it, for example, that (a) multi-level governance underplays and conceals the exercise of power or (b) it is incompatible with democracy.

The chapter is correspondingly organized in four sections, preceded and followed by short introductory and concluding sections. The four sections address, respectively: (1) the definition of multi-level governance (MLG) (‘Solving the dependent variable problem’); (2) the causes that explain the emergence and diffusion of MLG arrangements (‘The contextual causes of MLG’); (3) the changes that it triggers in the manner in which power is deployed (‘The institutional consequences of MLG’); (4) the democratic implications of the diffusion of MLG arrangements (‘Are MLG arrangements democratic?’).

The methodology employed is mainly that of ‘conceptual analysis’ (Sartori, 1984), which implies that the connotational features (those features which minimally allow us to identify cases of MLG) of the concept are identified so that we can delimit the denotational extension of the concept (the universe of phenomena which can be identified as cases of MLG). This chapter contains a highly abridged version of this conceptual analysis, which is fully developed in Piattoni (2010a).

MLG denotes a growing class of policymaking arrangements characterized by the simultaneous activation of governmental and non-governmental actors at various jurisdictional levels. These arrangements have identifiable contextual causes, even if the precise contours of MLG arrangements depend on the capacity of the actors to mobilize arguments and people on behalf of their specific ideas, values and interest. The precise shape that these arrangements will take, therefore, depends on the mobilization capacity of the actors (and on the capacity of other actors to contain or delimit such mobilization). The causes of mobilization are mainly contextual, having to do with the increased complexity and overload of state activities and with the growing request for direct involvement on the part of civil society organizations. Both these trends induce states to seek joint solutions to common problems, hence MLG dynamics occur on three axes: a centre-periphery axis, a state-society axis, and a national-international axis which challenge, respectively, the centrality, the distinctiveness and the sovereignty of the state.

This conceptualization of MLG allows us to analyse the extent to which different policymaking arrangements respond to MLG logics and to understand which actors and which levels are mostly responsible for the particular configuration that obtains. This conceptualization of MLG, although here deployed in a purely discursive manner, could enable us to ‘measure’ the degree of institutional and political empowerment of subjects, other than central state actors, in various policy realms.

The most important social implication is the impact that MLG arrangements have on how democratic decision-making occurs, on what we mean by democracy, and on the societal perception of how contemporary democracies work. The chapter argues that trying to apply to MLG arrangements democratic criteria and standards that were developed for the unitary, distinctive and sovereign state is misleading and that we must rather develop an updated notion of democracy appropriate for the interconnected, multi-level context in which we live. The concept of ‘transnational democracy’ is cursorily offered as a promising direction for further reflection.

The chapter is wholly based on the long-term work and reflection of the author on MLG and on the scholarly contributions of the other authors of the volume.