Volume 13 (2013): Edizione 2 (December 2013)

Presented article evaluates ICC's case-law rendered in 2013, or more precisely, analyzes and evaluates some challenges the ICC faced in 2013. Scrutiny of the latest decisions has its obvious advantage, since it opens the door for better understanding of previous case-law. Vice versa, it is obvious that current ICC's practice cannot be comprehended without the knowledge of legal background it emanates from. To put it differently, an analysis of the case-law from 2013 presupposes to reveal its roots which are embedded in previous years. Th is holds true with respect to all considered and selected issues covered in this article - cooperation with the Court, complementarity, witness proofing, or presence at trial.

The Parliamentary Assembly and the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe have been promoting the recognition of conscientious objection, mainly for military service but also in other domains, since the 1960s. However, for more than fifty years the precedents of the European Commission and the European Court of Human Rights repeatedly denied that conscientious objection could be found implicit in article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights. In 2011 the Court changed its standpoint and energetically affirmed that conscientious objection, at least for military service, is a derivation of freedom of conscience and religion, and that European states are thus bound to incorporate it to their internal legislations.

Within the structure of public administration there exist administrative authorities with a relatively standardized external and internal organizational arrangement but also administrative authorities which, with regard to their specific competences and other aspects, important during the adoption of the establishing Act by the Parliament, are attributed an exceptional position. In the Czech Republic such case is represented by the Council for Radio and Television Broadcasting. The paper focuses on those problematic aspects of the decision-making process of the Council for Radio and Television Broadcasting that ensue from its organizational arrangement. A certain specific organizational system of an administrative authority may become a source of shortcomings and cause that a decision of an administrative body will fail the judicial review and eventually bring about additional expenses for both the participating addressees of public administration as well as the public administration itself.

The lively debate about European cross-border donations and the European philanthropic landscape that has been started has seemingly reached a slight standstill since the global financial crisis and austerity plans are dominating the every day discussion. However, the European non-profit sector remains an area that is of crucial importance for the European labour market, the European Research Area, and most importantly, the participation of European civil society which directly influences questions of citizenship and European identity. The paper will compare the origin and legal framework of the English and the German charitable foundations and link it to the EU’s third sector where the European Foundation Centre (EFC) as a key representative for civil society actors in the non-profit area and the Commission play a pivotal role in the establishment of a European Foundation Statute (FE) that is meant to facilitate cross-border donations and non-profit activities throughout the EU. In the concluding part, the wider meaning of a strong third sector in the EU will be analysed.

Hungarian family law is regulated primarily in the Family Act today. This Act was accepted in 1952 but as it has been modified several times it serves the legal interests of family and family members in harmony with European standards. Nevertheless, the idea of codifying a new Civil Code in 1998 raised the question whether family law should have been included in a new Civil Code. The scientific opinions were diverging on this issue at that time, but later on it became accepted that family law should get back into the corpus of a Civil Code. The article gives an analysis of the developments and most recent changes.

In sports environment there is a whole range of different types of wrongful conduct sanctioned not only by disciplinary bodies using specific rules accepted by the executive authorities of sports organizations but also more serious cases that have to be judged in accordance with criminal law. There has been a long debate whether criminal law should intervene into the area of sport, i.e. whether sport and its environment is in itself such an autonomous system that it could deal with all the matters of criminal nature on its own. The area of sport environment involves a whole range of illegal acts, ranging from criminal liability of sportsmen responsible for injuries inflicted upon others in the area of sport, the issues of hooliganism in sporting events, breach of the public peace as far as the issue of match-fixing including the crimes of bribery and illegal betting. Generally speaking, we are of the opinion that there is no good reason why the criminal law should not be allowed to intervene into the area of sport in certain cases. The basic argument to be used is the fact that every social activity must be carried out in accordance with the legal order of the country, the area of sport being no exception. The area of sport or to be more precise the specific types of sports activities are regulated by special internal and statutory rules introducing certain sanctioning mechanisms in the form of disciplinary rules which can be enforced by different disciplinary bodies.

Legal requirements for protection of the natural environment are continually being strengthened because of increased human damage to environmental resources. The applicable regulations of the Polish Penal Code towards protection of the environment were considerably amended in 2011 also to ensure implementation of European Parliament and European Council directives 2008 / 99 / EC, issued on the 19th November 2008. In addition, these changes also involve cross-border infringements, so that perpetrators cannot avoid retribution for actions committed under different provisions in individual Member States.

The subject of this article is the Th e “Deal-of-the-day” operators (discount website operators, such as Slevomat in the Czech Republic, or Groupon at the international level) and their practices, which can be unknown territory for most of their consumers. “Deal-of-the-day” websites (discount websites) are websites offering consumers a service to buy discounted (oft en gift ) certificates (coupons or vouchers) which can be used at local or national companies. When examining the issue deeply, we realise that there are many potential threats for the consumers who are not as well protected by consumer law as they should be. The article covers these problematic areas.