The section on WTO law highlights the interface between international trade law and national risk regulation. It is meant to cover cases and other legal developments regarding the SPS, TBT and TRIPS Agreements and the general exceptions in both GATT 1994 and GATS as well as to inform about pertinent developments in recognized international standardization bodies and international law. Of recurrent interest in this area are questions of whether precautionary policies can be justified under WTO law, the standard of review with which panels and the Appellate Body assess scientific evidence and the extent to which policy can and should influence risk regulation.

Case C-255/09 Commission v Portugal

The Portuguese Republic has failed to fulfil its obligations under Article 49 EC (Article 56 TFEU) by making no provision for reimbursement of non-hospital medical care provided in another Member State which does not involve the use of major and costly equipment exhaustively listed in the national legislation, other than in the circumstances specified in Regulation (EEC) No 1408/71 […] or, to the extent that Decree-Law No 177/92 allows reimbursement in respect of such care, by making such reimbursement subject to prior authorization (official headnote).

The recently published 5th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders has incorporated significant changes. This report aims to outline the changes that are most relevant for readers with an interest in lifestyle risks.

The literature on the regulation of drugs at the FDA and the European Union is substantial, yet little research has provided comparative analyses and robust empirical data on the regulation of medical devices in the United States and the European Union. As medical and health markets become increasingly globalized, and the U.S. and the EU compete for leadership and recognition, salient domestic regulatory issues are becoming increasingly international and transnational policy issues. Building on Carpenter's (2010) work on drug regulation at the FDA, but taking a slightly narrower yet at the same time a broader approach by drawing on interdisciplinary studies instead of limiting ourselves to only the Political Science literature, this comparison focuses on key aspects of risk regulation and governance of medical devices in the U.S. and the EU, and shows how and why individual and organizational learning is imperative in each case.

Two recently published volumes on the concept of precaution as it is variously understood and applied across the United States and in Europe make for a fascinating comparative analysis. They also respectively offer some undoubted and invaluable insights into the subject. Sadly neither really addresses how precaution came of age or why.

Setting a minimum unit price for the sale of alcoholic beverages has been on the agenda of the Scottish government for many years. As far back as 1999 the then newly formed Scottish Government decided to review data on the use of alcohol that revealed trends in Scottish alcohol consumption such as the fact that in the two decades following 1994 alcohol sales went from being split equally between the on-trade and off-trade to the off-trade comprising around 70 per cent of sales. Further studies reveal that the affordability of alcohol throughout the whole United Kingdom increased steadily between 1987 and 2007, with duty increases frequently short of inflation, and with supermarkets continuing to use alcohol as a loss leader. The result has been an increase in the affordability of wines and beers by 129% and 153% respectively.

This section updates readers on the latest developments in pharmaceutical law, giving information on legislation and case law on various matters (such as clinical and pre-clinical trials, drug approval and marketing authorisation, the role of regulatory agencies) and providing analysis on how and to what extent they might affect health and security of the individual as well as in industry.

In this article, we present some major lessons drawn from a recently completed research project. Our research dealt with ex ante evaluation, mainly impact assessment (IA).We shed new light on research questions about the control of bureaucracy, the role of IA in decisionmaking, economics and policy learning, and the narrative dimension of appraisal.We identify how our findings stand in relation to conventional arguments about these issues, and reflect on their normative implications. We finally reason on the possible extensions of our arguments to the wider field of policy evaluation, connecting IA and ex post evaluation.

The test of EU antidumping expiry review is the likely continuation or recurrence of the dumping. In this case, the General Court (Second Chamber) of the Court of Justice of the European Union found that the European Council made manifest assessment errors of facts in using the continuation test to extend antidumping duties on the non-dumping applicant. However, due to the high discretion of the Council and the Court in making antidumping decisions, it is not a rigid rule that the non-dumping producers shall be exempt from the duties in the expiry review.

“When EU Heads of States and Governments unanimously gave the European Commission a mandate to negotiate the EU–US Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership on 17 June 2013, they understood that these talks would become the leitmotiv of a new era in EU trade policy. However, few people would have guessed that it would primarily be because of transparency.”

The public demands for more transparent EU negotiations have significantly increased, especially with regard to the EU–US negotiations of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. For many pundits transparency in negotiations comes as a surprise, as the candid statement by the Commissioner's Malmström cabinet member illustrates, since traditionally EU negotiations almost exclusively take place behind closed doors and with almost no public disclosure of documents. Scholars have also noted how ‘remarkable’ the TTIP negotiations are for the fact that the negotiating directives were publically released, which was not a common practice before, leading someMembers of European Parliament to initiate adjudication for public disclosure of documents.

This article aims to analyse liability issues as a further means to regulate risks, in case the precautionary measures of the delivered safety system fail. Through liability, the risk that cannot be prevented can be transferred onto those parties who are in the best position to spread them. The allocation of liability thus works as an incentive to the correct functioning of the preventive measures. Liability rules appear to be a key legal remedy which can ensure both tort reparation and a fair and efficient distribution of burdens in a legal order. In this vein, air traffic management (ATM) is addressed as a case study, which shows the main issues and the gaps that liability rules face when dealing with the trade off between risk and safety as conveyed by technology.

After having clarified the nature of the relations between risk and liability on the one hand, and automation and liability on the other hand, this article analyses liability issues in the framework of ATM by approaching this topic in a comparative way between the National Airspace System (NAS) of the United States of America (USA) and the Single European Sky (SES) of the European Union (EU).