*** NATHALIE FERRAUD-CIANDET: Protection de la santé et sécurité alimentaire en droit international. Editions Larcier (Groupe De Boeck, 39 rue des Minimes, B-1000 Brussels. Tel: (32-2) 5480713 - Fax: 5480714 - email: commande@deboeckservices.com - Internet: http://www.larcier.com ). "Droit international" series. 2009, 325 pp, €62. ISBN 978-2-8044-2140-3.
H1N1-A flu has been constantly in the news for the past few weeks so this book comes at the right time. The author is professor of law at a business school and an independent monitor of the European Commission. In the book, she reviews the legal instruments and organisations, be they universal or regional, intergovernmental or non-governmental, that make up international healthcare law. This is in fact a vast task because she has the courage to take on a "health Leviathan " in that this "law of cooperation rather than subordination" in which countries are both authors and actors is of similar scale to international environmental law but is found scattered in various sections of international law (public law, humanitarian law, social affairs, the environment, human rights, the right to development, business law, etc) and is therefore covered and influenced by a huge range of international organisations, each with its own agenda. Nathalie Ferraud-Ciandet naturally starts with the World Health Organisation but very soon moves on to analyse the impact of other international organisations' work on public health issues, for example the impact of international wars, freeing up international trade and intellectual property rights under the World Trade Organisation and the impact of working conditions related to the work of the International Labour Organisation. She makes use of these meanders to demonstrate at the end of the day that international healthcare law certainly exists, although it needs plenty of potions and lotions to build up its strength.
In the introduction, the author starts by explaining how healthcare law, which started off as a national affair, became international with the creation of the WHO in 1946 crystallising the "ideal of universality," despite being hindered by the sovereignty of WHO member states. Nathalie Ferraud-Ciandet goes on to describe the aims of the WHO, whereby it considers health as a "global public good" with the author listing laws and action that sets out the "human right to health". At the regional level this occurred, she explains, with the European Union which "allowed the development of a genuine European healthcare law" intervening in areas like access to healthcare, data protection, regulating the healthcare professions and regulating pharmaceutical products and clinical trials, not to mention its "genuine public health policies" on AIDS, mad cow disease and fighting cancer and smoking. In order to discern the international community's contribution to national healthcare policy and countries' domestic laws, the author starts by describing the clearest manifestations of international healthcare law in the law governing social affairs and human rights, where she distinguishes between the contributions of the Council of Europe and the contributions of the European Union, the Maastricht Treaty and the Lisbon Treaty and the Charter of Fundamental Rights and, of course, the International Labour Organisation's work on workers' health. The author ends the first chapter by considering the "necessary development of medical ethics" in the light of experiments on human beings and other issues. In the second chapter, she examines the WHO's regulatory powers in the light of the international code on the sale of substitutes for human milk, the fight against transmissible diseases and the convention on tackling smoking. She goes on to examine a series of questions, including issues relating to access to medicines and healthcare, against the backdrop of free world trade, where she points out that free trade is the norm and the WTO believes that restrictions on free trade should remain an exception, even for health reasons. In this connection, the author shows that protection of consumers' health through use of the precautionary principle is highly regulated. She then studies how protection of human health is organised from a legal point of view in connection with the fight against the destruction of the environment. Her final chapter provides food for thought about the healthcare of individuals in wartime.
At the end of this highly comprehensive research, Nathalie Ferraud-Ciandet notes that international healthcare law certainly exists but "there are startling limits to international health protection," with a clear paradox existing with the proliferation of international organisations working in this domain and, at the same time, a proliferation of failings in healthcare. She therefore calls for the WTO dispute settlement panel to include one or more scientific experts when deliberating on issues that impact on health, or for the panel to even be forced to base its decisions on opinions from the WHO in order to ensure that the logic of the law of the jungle (the promotion of trade) should be entirely absolute, and to enable public health concerns to be incorporated "in a more rational approach to sustainable globalisation". Pierre Bouvier
*** TAMARA PERISIN: Free Movement of Goods and Limits of Regulatory Autonomy in the EU and WTO. Editions TMV Asser Press (PO Box 16163, 2500 BD The Hague, The Netherlands. Internet: http://www.asserpress.nl - Distribution: Cambridge University Press, The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK. - Tel: (44-1223) 326050 - Fax: 326111 - email: directcustserve@cambridge.org). 2008,238 pp. ISBN 978-90-6704-290-1.
The World Trade Organisation and the European Union share the desire to free up trade as far as possible, and also share a common aversion to anything that might hinder economic activity in general. However, while having similar aims with regard to free trade, the two organisations approach the issue in a different way, and this is reflected in differences in their institutional structures. As far as the WTO is concerned, free trade is an aim, but for the European Union, free trade is a means to the end of greater economic and political integration. In both organisations, it is good to balance economic aims with other values, like protection of consumers' health, protection of the environment and human rights. It is crucial therefore to strike a balance between free trade in goods and countries' own regulations protecting these other values. This is the subject of this book edited by Tamara Perisin, professor of law at Zagreb University. She compares and contrasts regulations governing the free trade of goods in the EU and the WTO, pointing out that the EU's position is different from the WTO's in that the EU does not have the same integrationist ambitions, as can be seen from the membership, structure and homogeneity of the two bodies. In addition, she demonstrates that the EU's Common Market regulations have huge repercussions abroad, and are even felt within the WTO. (NDu)
*** VIVIANE DE BEAUFORT: Governance in the Age of Takeover Bids. Editions Economica (49 rue Héricart, F-75015 Paris. Tel. (33-1) 45781292 - Fax: 45750567 - Internet: http://www.economica.fr ). 2009, 372 pp, €69. ISBN 978-2-7178-5715-3.
In this book that opens with a preface by Pascal Lamy, Viviane de Beaufort takes a highly detailed look at company governance and how it impacts on takeover bids. The current economic environment encourages wide-scale restructuring by means of takeover bids, which are often seen as hostile by most of the staff of the companies involved. The often devastating social impact of such bids raises increasingly persistent questions about governance and the world of business. Takeover bids are seen by some as control mechanisms to punish bad management, but the bids are also very often felt as a way of shareholders washing their hands of a company, being more interested in their own personal gain than in the interests of the company itself. Control mechanisms in this field are in the hands of the Member States, partly due to the strategic nature of some state companies, which means that no EU legislation exists that takes account of the multi-national nature of such takeover bids. The author, a professor of economics and legal science at ESSEC, explores the Anglo-Saxon and German models with the aim of detecting convergence that could be applied at EU level. She starts by studying the essence of company law at EU27 level, focussing on the European Commission's recent guidelines designed to stimulate debate on the issue. She goes on to take a country-by-country look at the regulations in force in this area. The final part of the book examines three case studies of company buy-ups, namely Mittal/Arcelor, Vodafone/Mannesman mad Gucci/LVMH. (NDu)
*** PAUL NIHOUL, CHRISTOPHE VERDURE: Droit européen de la concurrence 2009 - European Competition Law 2009. Editions Larcier (see above). "Les Codes Thématiques Larcier - Larcier Thematic Code" series. 2009, 590 pp, €85. ISBN 978-2-8044-3196-9 (French) and 978-2-8044-3197-6 (English).
At a time when competition law has become omnipresent and unavoidable in the European panorama, the authors of this collection of essays point out the European panorama is often misunderstood, perhaps due to its Anglo-Saxon origins. Given that competition rules influence all levels of company life these days, they also influence other areas of law. Paul Nihoul, a professor at the 'Université Catholique de Louvain' in Belgium and editor-in-chief of the "Journal de Droit Européen," and Christophe Verdure, a researcher at the 'Facultés Saint Louis' in Belgium and Law Clerk at the European Court of Justice's Court of First Instance, have therefore gathered together the rules passed by the European institutions in this domain. The book is available in either French or English and covers rules directly applicable in the Member States. It will be therefore be of use to a wider audience that legal experts alone. The decidedly technical nature of the book, however, means that it will mainly be of interest to academia and people active in the legal domain. (NDu)
*** JEAN-FRANCOIS BELLIS (Ed.): Concurrence en droit belge et européen. Editions Larcier (see above). "Conférence du Jeune Barreau de Bruxelles" series. 2009, 173 pp, €59. ISBN 978-2-8044-3356-7.
In February 2009, the Brussels young barristers' association (Conférence du Jeune Barreau de Bruxelles) organised a conference on competition law, "Actualités en Droit de la Concurrence," to examine recent developments in Belgian and European competition law. This book contains the reports presented at the conference and address the issue from three different angles. How is competition law applied by the EU and by Belgian courts? What is the future of cases seeking damages for violation of competition law? The third issue is 'vertical' restrictions (the relationship between the manufacturer of consumer goods and the seller of the goods, for example) compared with 'horizontal' restrictions (the relationship between competitors) and query the point of these vertical restrictions given that ever fewer stakeholders are concerned about them. (NDu)
*** DAVID G. MAYES (Ed.): Microfoundations of Economic Success. Edward Elgar Publishing (The Lypiatts, 15 Lansdown Road, Cheltenham, Glos GL50 2JA, UK. Tel. (44-1242) 226934 - Fax: 262111 - email: info@e-elgar.co.uk - Internet: http://www.e-elgar.com ). 2009, 310 pp. ISBN 978-1-84720-929-0.
Estonia is one of the EU Member States in central and Eastern Europe experiencing the greatest economic problems at the moment but is also the country that experienced the fastest economic growth in the EU over the past decade. A microeconomic study on the country was therefore unavoidable and this has now been achieved with this collection of essays edited by David G. Mayes. Combining information about Estonian society and households, it studies the country's rapid economic success story and the origins of its remarkable growth, which the book puts down to extraordinary flexibility. Despite a passive monetary policy, factors like control of inflation, pay calculations, productivity, household savings and a fixed income tax fed into this flexibility due, Mayes argues, to "companies' and households' ability to react to changing market conditions, to innovate, to take advantage of new ideas and opportunities, and to survive strong economic pressures". After reviewing all these areas in the book's eight chapters, the authors go on to examine the impact of the current economic crisis on the Estonian economy, concluding that Estonia should recover quicker than other countries. Armed with this flexibility, Estonia clearly sets an example for other economies that want to converge with the economies of the West. The book sheds light on some of Estonia's most closely guarded secrets. (TBa)
*** Revue politique et parlementaire. Société d'Edition Académique et Diplomatique (3 rue Bellini, F-92800 Puteaux. Tel: (33-1) 46981374 - Fax: 47730148 - Internet: http://www.revuepolitique.fr ). 2009, No. 1050, 250 pp, €24. Annual subscription: €61 (France), €75 (elsewhere in the world).
This issue of this ever-interesting review is particularly useful in that it contains a special dossier of some thirty high calibre essays, including one on bioethics by Belgian minister Roselyne Bachelot. There is also an analysis of the foreign policy approach and direction taken by the new US administration in which former rector Charles Zorgbibe rehabilitates the ideas of Samuel Huntington, author of "The Clash of Civilisations," who died on 24 December 2008. (MT)