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The Community Court of Justice of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS Court) is an increasingly active and bold adjudicator of human rights. Since acquiring jurisdiction over human rights complaints in 2005, the ECOWAS Court has issued numerous decisions condemning human rights violations by the member states of the Economic Community of West African States (Community). Among this Court’s path-breaking cases are judgments against Niger for condoning modern forms of slavery and against Nigeria for impeding the right to free basic education for all children. The ECOWAS Court also has broad access and standing rules that permit individuals and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to bypass national courts and file suits directly with the Court. Although the Court is generally careful in the proof that it requires of complainants and in the remedies that it demands of governments, it has not shied away from politically courageous decisions, such as rulings against the Gambia for the torture of journalists and against Nigeria for failing to regulate multinational companies that have degraded the environment of the oil-rich Niger Delta.

The EU and the Western Balkans in 2020 launched a regional economic integration initiative entitled ‘The Western Balkans Common Regional Market’, aimed at economically integrating the Western Balkans based on the EU Single Market rules by 2025. The economic integration initiative has been met with challenges, and this contribution provides an assessment of EU-led initiatives to promote economic integration within the Western Balkans between 2014 and 2021, analysing some of the challenges to ensuring that the Western Balkans Common Regional Market is operational by 2025. The contribution conceptualises the mode of governance approach used by the EU in engaging with the Western Balkans since 2014 and suggests that it is largely based on soft law. The contribution finds that the action plan for establishing a regional common market is flawed, as it has not taken on board the high level of corruption and the lack of rule of law in the Western Balkans. The contribution provides new insights into the nature of corruption taking place in the Western Balkans and argues that corruption and the lack of the rule of law could be a major barrier for the proper function of the regional common market. Western Balkans, Berlin Process, Common Market, Open Balkan, Corruption, Rule of Law, Economic Integration, European Neighbourhood and Enlargement Policy

The ASEAN+6 Single Window (ASW+6) in this study refers to the geographic expansion of the ASEAN Single Window (ASW) to enable cross-border electronic exchange of trade-related data and documents among ASEAN member states and six FTA partners, namely, Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea. The ASW is part of ASEAN's trade facilitation reform to reduce intraregional trade costs and time.This study considers cross-border paperless trade measures to represent the implementation of ASW+6, using data from the UN Global Survey on Digital and Sustainable Trade Facilitation in 2019. The simulation analyses reveal that the ASW+6 has significant potential to reduce times required to export and import, and to boost trade in ASEAN and its FTA partners.Partial implementation of cross-border paperless trade measures would imply an increase in ASEAN's exports of US102 billion annually. Under a more ambitious scenario of full implementation of cross-border paperless trade, the export gain for ASEAN would be US199 billion annually. At the same time, the time required to export would fall by anything between 19 to 98 per cent, depending on the reform scenario considered.Trade gains from a full-fledged ASW+6 have not yet been reaped: even strong performers such as Singapore, Australia and New Zealand have areas for improvements, and weaker performers such as Cambodia and Laos need to make significant progress to catch up with the rest of the region, and deepen their mutual trade integration.The sequence of expanding the ASW to FTA partners may begin with countries that are major sources of ASEAN's export gains identified in this study and those that have expressed their political will to move in that direction. These are Japan and South Korea. The ASW should then be enlarged to remaining FTA partners, especially China and India.While trade gains from ASW+6 are substantial, the implementation costs can also be significant due to different regulatory requirements across ASEAN+6 countries. Aid for trade and capacity-building to support the reform process have to be an integral part for the design of ASW+6.

South Korea’s unrealized proposals in the 1960s remind us that the tension between bilateral dominance and fragile regionalism remains one of the central dilemmas of Asia’s order today. Yet scholarship has largely overlooked South Korea’s Cold War multilateral initiatives. This article investigates Seoul’s efforts to reshape regional economic and security arrangements amid escalating Cold War tensions, focusing on proposals for the Asian Common Market, the Asian and Pacific Council, and the Asia–Pacific Treaty Organization. Using archival documents, presidential speeches, and declassified U.S. records, and interpreted through a constructivist and a historical context lens, the analysis shows how South Korea sought to reframe its identity from a peripheral Cold War state to a regional leader by advocating economic integration and multilateral security. These proposals encountered significant resistance, especially from the United States and Japan, underscoring the limits of middle-power diplomacy in Cold War Asia. The article demonstrates that these unrealized initiatives not only highlight the constraints of U.S.-led bilateralism but also illuminate enduring tensions that continue to shape Asia’s regional order in the Indo-Pacific today.

Trenz introduces a sociological perspective on European integration by looking at different accounts of Europeanization as society building. He observes how Europeanization unfolds in ongoing practices and discourses through which social relations among the Europeans are redefined and re-embedded. The chapters describe how the project of European integration has been powerfully launched in postwar Europe as a normative venture that comprises polity and society building, how this project became ingrained in every-day life histories and experiences of the Europeans, how this project became contested and confronted resistances and, ultimately, how it went through its most severe crisis. A sociology of European integration is thus outlined along four main themes or narratives: first, the elite processes of identity construction and the framework of norms and ideas that carries such a construction (together with notions of European identity, EU citizenship, etc.); second, the socialization of European citizens, processes of banal Europeanism, and social transnationalism through everyday cross-border exchanges; third, the mobilization of resistance and Euroskepticism as a fundamental and collectively mobilized opposition to processes of Europeanization; and fourth, the political sociology of crisis, linked not only to financial turmoil but also, more fundamentally, to a legitimation crisis that affects Europe and the democratic nation-state.

This book discusses the role of private law as an instrument to produce financial and social inclusion in a context characterised by the redefinition of the role of the State and by the financialisation of society. By depicting the political and economic developments behind the popular idea of financial inclusion, the book deconstructs that notion, illustrating the existence and interaction of different discourses surrounding it. The book further traces the evolution of inclusion, specifically in the European context, and thus moves on to analyse the legal rules which are most relevant for the purposes of bringing about the financialisation of the citizen. Hence, the author focuses more on four highly topical areas: access to a bank account, access to credit, overindebtedness, and financial education. Adopting a critical and inter-disciplinary approach, The Financialisation of the Citizen takes the reader through a top-down journey starting from the political economy of financialisation, to the law and policy of the European Union, and finally to more specific private law rules. Hart Studies in Commercial and Financial Law: Volume 1

This book collects contributions by Richard T. Griffiths on the history of European integration, some published for the first time in English. The essays range in chronology from the early experiences with the Marshall Plan to the difficulties and opportunities for the EFTA countries afforded by association with the EEC in the 1970s and 80s. The book interprets European integration far wider than simply the current European Union and its forerunners. Thus, it devotes chapters to EFTA, the OECD, and to issues as agriculture, cartels and monetary problems. The volume also contains the essay in the title which poses the question of what would have happened had there been no Schuman Plan back in 1950. This book should appeal to students of contemporary history, especially those interested in EU history, and to political scientists who will discover a rich palette of case studies upon which to test their theories. Its constructively critical slant on developments provides interesting perspectives to those general readers seeking a nuanced approach between the extremes of the current pro- or anti- in the debates on Europe.

Over the past decade, a new and intriguing phenomenon developed in Israel: close to 60,000 Israelis applied for citizenship in the Central and Eastern European countries from which their families immigrated. Typically, these new dual citizens have no plans to \"return\" to Germany or Poland, nor do they feel any identification with their countries of origin. Instead, they are mainly interested in obtaining a \"European Union passport\" and in gaining potential access to the European common market. The paper presents statistics on this unconventional case of dual citizenship, surveys the historical and legal circumstances that produced it and uses material from interviews to explore the meanings and uses that European-Israeli dual citizens attribute to their European passports. Dual citizenship, the findings show, is used by Israelis in various and sometimes unexpected ways: as enhancer of economic opportunities, \"insurance policy,\" intergenerational gift, and even as an elitist status symbol. This modality of state belonging can be termed \"passport citizenship\": Non-resident citizenship here is stripped of its national meaning and treated as an individual piece of property, which is embodied by the passport and obtained for pragmatic reasons.

The claim that open trade promotes peace has sparked heated debate among scholars and policymakers for centuries. Until recently, however, this claim remained untested and largely unexplored. Economic Interdependence and International Conflict clarifies the state of current knowledge about the effects of foreign commerce on political-military relations and identifies the avenues of new research needed to improve our understanding of this relationship. The contributions to this volume offer crucial insights into the political economy of national security, the causes of war, and the politics of global economic relations.

Law and Practice of the Common Commercial Policy provides a comprehensive analysis of the salient features of the European Union's trade law and policy since the Treaty of Lisbon: legislation, case law, treaty making and institutional practice.