In light of the 20th anniversary of the ruling in Francovich, Michael Haba analyzes the principle of Member State Liability, which provides a right to damages whenever EU law is breached by Member States. His research ascertains that the doctrine evolved through three stages before becoming the unified approach that it is today. The author emphasizes that the principle’s base lay at the outset of the EEC, when the ECJ sought means to foster the enforcement of EC law. He shows that although State Liability was introduced in Francovich, there was not enough guidance on its application. He highlights that these matters were resolved in Brasserie/Factortame III, which refined the assessment of culpability, but was inconsistent and had to be further clarified in case law. He illustrates that the doctrine was expanded to breaches of EC law by last instance courts in Köbler. Finally, the author examines if breaches of European competition rules could lead to a right to damages under the principle, but concludes that no fourth stage of State Liability can be established.

Bert Van Roosebeke analyses non-contractual state liability in the European Union. He explains differences in member states’ breaching behaviour and presents the state liability doctrine as developed by the European Court of Justice in a number of cases. He shows that compliance is the true economic aim of state liability legislation and presents a comparative analysis of the effectiveness of both private and public law enforcement mechanisms. He finally formulates improvements to the rules of state liability.

This book explores the historical foundations of holding public authorities accountable for their acts, and discusses how and why the idea that the state should or should not be held liable became established in three significant jurisdictions. The issue of state liability for legislative acts is considered one of the most difficult and controversial problems in jurisprudence. This book analyses the development of concepts and institutions of liability for the acts of legislator pertaining to the general principles of state liability until the mid-20th century in the leading European legal systems: Germany, France and Great Britain. It is shown that, in contrast to the prevailing conviction, the lack of liability for law-making instruments was not an unassailable dogma, and that questions as to whether such liability was possible were being asked from the Middle Ages onwards. The book will be a valuable resource for academics and researchers in the areas of Constitutional Law, Public Law, History of Law, History of Legal and Political Thought, Philosophy of Law, and Comparative Legal Studies.

On-going deterioration of the state of the environment and the continuous risk of an environmental disaster has forced society to reconsider its environmental and developmental objectives. For economic and environmental reasons, the costs of prevention and reparation of environmental harm should be channelled to the polluter. However, such channelling may run counter to legal principles. This work scrutinizes this field of tension between economic and legal principles at state level. It provides a unique analysis of traditional thinking on state liability for transboundary harm and the theories which have challenged it since the proliferation of hazardous activities in the 1960s. The author favours a return to traditional thinking, but has an eye for the theories that challenged it with the aim of safeguarding the compensation of victims of transboundary harm.

This book examines the topical sphere of governmental liability in damages arguing that that there has been an important shift in the traditional English law approach as illustrated in a series of recent House of Lords decisions. A detailed analysis is made of the torts applying to publicbodies, including negligence, misfeasance in public office, nuisance and breach of statutory duty, as well as the influence of European human rights law and community law, with discussion of the availability of damages under the Human Rights Act 1998 and the impact of the controversial decision ofthe European Court of Human Rights in Osman v UK and the subsequent retreat in Z v UK. The discussion of state liability is also placed within the context of the evolving attitude of the courts to public law remedies, with a detailed reconsideration of the relationship between ultra vires andliability in damages. From a comparative law perspective, it is argued that contrary to orthodox doctrinal opinion there are many similarities in the English and French law of administrative liability, with parallels in the treatment of different types of loss, causation, finding of fault, andunderlying policy concerns. The author discusses the direction in which English law might now move, as well as analysing less orthodox sources of compensation such as the practice of the ombudsmen and statutory funds including the new French medical negligence compensation scheme.

Should states be liable towards individuals for failure to provide justice, good roads or timely administrative decisions? In this paper, we show that state liability can serve three different purposes, none of which implies that the state should be liable in tort, unless other specific conditions are met. One purpose is to provide incentives for state agencies and private individuals to act efficiently. Here, the effectiveness of liability depends on the channeling of incentives down the chain of command to the acting state employee. The second purpose of state liability is to remove incentives for private parties, when these incentives are distorted, as when compensating for wrongful conviction. The third aim of state liability is to allow a higher level of the administration to monitor the behavior of a lower level. In this case, the judicial system and private parties are means towards the end of generating information about wrongful behavior by public bodies and agencies. Within this framework, we discuss substantive and procedural aspects of state liability in torts. We provide an economic argument for court specialization in administrative law and explain why the different solutions around the world could be appropriate under local determinants.

Over the last two decades public law liability for breach of European Union law has been subject to remarkable developments. This book examines the convergence between its two constituent systems: the damages liability of the EU and that of its Member States for failing to comply with EU rules. Member State liability, based as it is on the Francovich case (1991) and Brasserie du Pêcheur and Factortame (1996) judgments of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) is well established. But it is yet to be closely scrutinised by reference to the detailed rules on the liability of the European Union. The focus of the book is on the two key legal criteria that are common to both systems, namely the grant of rights to individuals by EU law and the notion of sufficiently serious breach of such rights. The analysis concentrates on developments in the case law of the ECJ and the General Court since the Bergaderm judgment (2000), which consolidated the convergence of the two liability systems that was first indicated in Brasserie du Pêcheur and Factortame. These two criteria are set side by side to evaluate the extent, in real terms, of the convergence of Member State and EU institutional damages liability, and to determine the extent to which one has influenced the other. This book shows that although full convergence between the two liability systems is not likely, each stream of case law should look to the other more actively as this important element of EU remedial law develops. Convergence in EU law public liability is supported by developments in adjacent areas, most notably European tort law and European administrative law. This study also illustrates how convergence in the EU liability systems to date has had spill-over effects into national public liability law.