The thesis examines the conditions and limitations of mutual recognition and seeks to identify the lacunae in the governance mechanism and the regulatory framework applicable to undertakings in collective investment in transferable securities (‘UCITS'). It assesses the regulatory and supervisory mechanisms that may be applied to address the identified weaknesses. For this purpose, the thesis formulates a theoretical framework for effective mutual recognition based on quasi-maximum harmonisation, reflexive governance of financial supervision and a mechanism for the strengthening of mutual trust between national financial supervisors. The technique for financial regulation in the field of UCITS should create the right balance between implementing a policy designed to attain a high degree of harmonisation of investor protection regulation and making exceptions to address national differences. The picture that emerges is one where a model based on minimum harmonisation causes serious limitations to mutual recognition in the form of inconsistencies in the implementation of EU Law and the application of national discretions. Quasi-maximum harmonisation becomes the optimal technique for UCITS. However, the limitations of a model based on minimum harmonisation of regulation resurface, although to a lesser extent, even in a framework based on quasi-maximum harmonisation. The solution is not one where an even higher degree of harmonisation (the single rulebook mechanism) is required, but lies in reflexive governance of financial supervision combined with a framework for the strengthening of mutual trust between national financial supervisors. This framework can form the basis for overcoming the remaining obstacles to the cross-border activity of UCITS, including the barrier to the depositary passport which is the last major bastion that stands in the way of a complete internal market for UCITS.

Issuing soft law instruments on the enforcement of abuse of a dominant position in different competition law systems has never been a global trend in the last decade than before. In the European Union (EU), the European Commission published the “Guidance on the Commission's Enforcement Priorities in Applying Article 82 of the EC Treaty to Abusive Exclusionary Conduct by Dominant Undertakings” (the Guidance) in February 2009 as yet the final formal stage during the “modernisation” of Art.102 TFEU. As an official candidate for EU membership, Turkey is unlikely to distance itself from the developments in the EU. Within this context, “Guidelines on the Assessment of Abusive Exclusionary Conduct by Dominant Undertakings” (the Guidelines on Art.6) were published on April 7, 2014. Evident from their structure and substantive content, the Guidelines on Art.6 are closely modelled on the Guidance. Although the transposition of the Guidance into Turkish competition law seems prima facie desirable in terms of the harmonisation of Turkey's domestic competition law with the EU acquis, the question as to whether the Guidelines on Art.6 have suited to Turkey's own needs gains significance. Despite being the first secondary legislation on Art.6 of the Act on the Protection of Competition 1994 in Turkey, a lack of much-needed guidance on the problematic areas in the enforcement of Art.6 may well result in the Guidelines on Art.6 being a missed opportunity to establish a coherent policy on Art.6. This thesis explores whether there is a need for adopting Guidelines in relation to Art.6 in Turkish competition law, examines whether the Guidance can or should be used as a model, and finally gives reflections on how the legal regime and content of these Guidelines can be best tailored to the enforcement of Art.6 in Turkey.

This dissertation explores the role of the EU agency Frontex in the EU border regime. Contrary to the mainstream formulation in academic research which views that Frontex is a mere tool of EU member states and did not change the intergovernmental cooperation, this dissertation has pursued the agency's potential in bringing integrative effect on the regime. To this aim, this dissertation has used the sociological institutionalist approach as it provides a theoretical basis for defining the EU border regime and explaining the nature and mechanisms that Frontex has exercised to influence the regime. By looking at Frontex's activities in mobilisation of state border agencies, promotion of common standards and producing risk analysis at external borders, this research has found that Frontex has had integrative effects on the regime with certain limitations. Empirical analyses have shown that a set of procedures and mechanisms that Frontex has developed have increased the participation of state border agencies in EU's border guard activities, which implies the shift of the initial intergovernmental cooperation to a more structured form of cooperation. It has also found that, although the outcome has been unevenly spread in Europe, Frontex has acted as an agent of transfer in promoting common standards for border guard training curriculums and automated border control systems. Moreover, Frontex has effectively transformed the politically defined “risks” at the EU's external border to measureable terms at an operational level, which has enabled the classification of the EU member states. This dissertation has observed the effect of the agency's risk analysis in the policy makers' decisions. These findings conclude that, although it is still of a hybrid nature that has derived from contradicting elements between state-centric and supranational forces, Frontex has certainly changed the regime towards integration. In this context, this dissertation has enriched the understanding of institutional and organisational dynamics in a EU policy field and the role that EU agencies can play in it.

This thesis critically analyses the procurement rules of international organisations or agencies performing collaborative defence procurement in the European Union (EU). In collaborative defence procurement, States agree to procure equipment or services for their armed forces in common, thereby sharing development costs and looking for economies of scale. The management of collaborative defence procurement programmes is often entrusted to an international organisation or agency acting on behalf of the participating States. After setting out the political, economic and legal context of collaborative defence procurement in the EU, we analyse the applicability of domestic and EU law to international organisations, in particular public procurement law in the field of defence. The conclusion of this first part is that, whilst domestic and EU law apply in general terms to international organisations or agencies, this is subject to the substantive provisions of the relevant laws and to international law, such as the privileges and immunities of the organisations. Specifically, international organisations or agencies in the EU most likely would not have to comply with domestic procurement law or with the EU public procurement directives, but they would still have to comply with the procurement principles flowing from the EU Treaties, except if non-EU Member States control their decision-making. We then move on to an analysis of the procurement rules of three international organisations or agencies performing collaborative defence procurement in the EU: the Joint Organisation for Armaments Cooperation (OCCAR), the NATO Maintenance and Supply Organisation (NAMSO) and the European Defence Agency (EDA). For these organisations we analyse to what extent their procurement rules should comply with EU law, to what extent they are an efficient set of rules, and what measures could be taken to remedy any detrimental issue or incoherence identified. We conclude with recommendations aiming to improve the applicable law.

The enforcement of EC procurement law relies heavily on legal action brought by aggrieved bidders for public contracts before the national courts. National remedies for bidders have been harmonised by two EC directives. The study considers the extent to which a system of bidder remedies is an effective mechanism for enforcing the procurement rules, through text-based research of the public sector procurement remedies and an empirical study in the construction sector, based on interviews with bidders, awarding authorities and procurement lawyers, in two Member States, Greece and the United Kingdom. The findings of the research indicate that remedies are not in principle incapable of assisting enforcement but that the use that is made of them and their capacity to enforce the law depend on their features, in terms, particularly, of legal costs as well as of the likelihood of a case being won at trial. Before this project was undertaken, there was no empirical research work on procurement remedies. It is hoped that this study will interest everyone involved in contracts awards (namely, firms, public bodies and lawyers) as well as scholars of EC law studying the national enforcement of EC rules, either in the area of procurement or in other areas regulated by EC law. It is also hoped that the findings of the studywill be of some use to policy and law makers, at European and national level.

With the development of cyberspace, mankind’s ability to exchange tremendous amounts of information reached astonishing and praise-worthy levels. Unfortunately, such information also includes digital content infringing a variety of legitimate interests, such as copyright, trademarks, privacy, and reputation. Despite the increased regulatory activity of governments from all over the world, aimed at developing adequate legal frameworks governing the removal of access to such content, there are still significant concerns over the performance of this particular branch of online enforcement policy; concerns such as lack of effectiveness, or the impact of the endorsed solutions on the human rights framework. The following thesis is aimed at responding to those concerns, from the perspective of the European Union’s law. The work’s overarching aim is to devise the most adequate, pan-European legal framework governing the removal of access to online content which infringes copyright, trademarks, privacy or is defamatory in nature. While those four content types differ from one another, this project delivers additional value by discovering such differences (as well as similarities) in the enforcement context, and taking them into account in its analysis and recommendations. The path towards attaining the thesis’ research objective is drawn through the following five chapters. The first chapter begins by gathering and organising the legal provisions which, if broken, can mark a piece of digital content as one infringing copyright, trademarks, privacy or reputation. The said provisions are then applied to a wide array of factual scenarios in which the described types of infringing content appear in cyberspace. It should be noted that the thesis draws in this context primarily on the EU law; where this is not possible, the UK law is relied on. This is justifiable by the project’s focus on the enforcement schemes, not on the definitions of infringing content. The second chapter lays out the vast landscape of enforcement schemes endorsed within the EU for the purpose of removing access to the four chosen types of infringing content, both directly and indirectly. Such schemes are divided on those focused on the infringers themselves, and those focused on the intermediaries whose services are used for facilitating the transfer of infringing content. The chapter can be seen as laying out all the tools from the (regulatory) toolbox before deciding which ones to use - or alterate - for the task at hand. The third chapter is the first of the two key, critically analytical chapters; it seeks to uncover and analyse the main challenges tied to the enforcement schemes’ effectiveness. To this end, it begins by analysing three primary concerns of this kind; the renewal of access to infringing content (on a single platform), movements towards the alternative sources of infringing content, and circumvention of the enforcement schemes’ technological aspects. This is followed by the analysis of the deeper effectiveness-related concerns (which often underlie the primary ones). They include the lack of deterrence, the notion of diminishing returns and the issue of social acceptance of infringing activities. The fourth chapter explores the human rights implications of the enforcement schemes, with attention given to the balance struck within the EU law between the human rights protected by the said schemes, and those impaired by them. This is attained through two subchapters; the first one introduces the human rights involved and defines their scope, while the second discusses the enforcement schemes’ impact on the three most affected human rights – the right to privacy, the freedom of expression and the freedom to conduct a business. The conclusive, fifth chapter builds on its predecessors and proposes a fundamental upheaval of the approach to intermediary liability within the EU law, an upheaval aimed at responding to the concerns identified in chapters three and four and improving the degree of legal certainty within this branch of online enforcement. The chapter contains a corresponding proposal for a major reform of the EU legal framework.

When choosing and applying the award criteria in the context of public procurement procedures, contracting authorities exercise their discretionary powers with a view to selecting the most economically advantageous tender. The importance of the use that contracting authorities make of their margin of discretion is directly related to the result of any public procurement procedure: the level of satisfaction of the contracting authorities’ needs provided by the works/supply/service contract concluded with the winning tenderer. Despite the tendency for public procurement regulation to focus on procedural rules (‘how to buy’), rather than the actual outcome of the procurement activity itself (‘what to buy’), there are substantive requirements derived from legislative sources, as well as soft law and jurisprudence, that somehow structure the contracting authorities’ decision making freedom. Although there is no standard unit that allows for the measurement of contracting authorities’ margin of discretion and its variation, this thesis aims to identify factors which contribute either to increase or to reduce the said margin. In other words, it is proposed to highlight the elements which determine the expansion or the limitation of the referred discretionary powers. The thesis concludes that despite the different national regulatory approaches to this topic under the common EU legal framework, the practice in the Member States covered by this thesis seems to indicate that contracting authorities exercise their discretionary powers in a (unknowingly) similar way.

Egypt faced three central pressures to introduce its own competition law in 2005: first, EU/Egypt trade relations, second, introduction of the 1991 privatisation programme and third, its long-term desire by virtue of its Constitution to follow Islamic principles that condemn monopoly. However, Egypt was not forced to transplant EU rules as a result of EU/Egypt trade relations, although it is implicit that the EU deems it desirable to do so. By employing the functional method of comparative law for the purposes of the study on EU, Islamic, and Egyptian laws, the central argument of this thesis is that the Egyptian treatment of abuse of dominance is distinctive in three ways. First, Egyptian rules do not prohibit the practice of excessive pricing. Although in jurisdictions that prohibit it, most notably the EU system, competition authorities do not contemplate it as an investigation priority, it is argued that the lack of its prohibition raises Islamic law concerns and may lead to potential effects on the Egyptian economy. However, the difficulties which investigators face in settling such practice (as the South African Mittal case demonstrates) suggest that the Egyptian legislator may have adopted the right approach not to prohibit it; otherwise, this may have increased the likelihood of committing type II errors and, as a result, violate Islamic law principles of injustice. Second, in contrast with EU law, Egyptian rules do not cover the practice of below-cost margin squeeze. Although it is argued that its omission does not pose potential effects to the economy, it is suggested that it raises Islamic law concerns on the basis of fairness and intentions principles. Given that it is relatively easier to investigate, compared to excessive pricing, it is suggested that the Egyptian legislator should re-consider encompassing it in the future while drawing on the approach adopted in EU law. Third, the Egyptian Competition Law reflects the EU Commission‘s initiative of employing an effects-based approach to abuse of dominance. However, the Egyptian system, arguably influenced by the Islamic principles on market intervention, goes a little further to require an actual effects standard. Despite an effects-based analysis being difficult to employ in emerging economies with inadequate economic expertise like Egypt, it is argued in its favour for two reasons. First, it increases the chances of avoiding type II errors, which, similar to excessive pricing and margin squeeze, violate Islamic law and; second, the Egyptian Competition Authority‘s analysis in the Steel study shows that it is capable of employing this approach at this stage. For the purposes of re-considering the foregoing (gaps) in the future, the Egyptian Competition Authority should focus on increasing economic expertise and seek technical assistance from competition authorities of the developed world.

This thesis addresses the complicated relationship between sovereign debt and the realisation of economic and social rights (ESR) and applicable international human rights law (IHRL). The central research questions to be addressed by this work include the following: How can sovereign debt threaten the realisation of ESR? What guidance does IHRL provide in relation to the sovereign debt issue? Why have human rights and IHRL been so irrelevant in the design and implementation of responses to the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis, as the Greek case has dramatically revealed? This thesis advances two main arguments. Firstly, the ‘marketisation’ of sovereign financing can be problematic for the realisation of ESR for reasons that go beyond the negative social impacts of austerity or other fiscal consolidation measures. Secondly, this thesis will argue that IHRL has been ineffective in preventing or mitigating the negative ESR impacts of responses to the crisis, not only because of the normative shortcomings of the existing legal framework, but also, and more fundamentally, because of the hegemony of neoliberal morality and its influence upon international law. The ascendancy of neoliberal assumptions, also in legal and human rights reasoning—which, as I will argue, appears to have been confirmed and reinforced rather than reversed, by some of the legal developments that have occurred since the crisis—limits the possibility of international law to constitute an instrument for the affirmation and protection of ESR. This thesis has two main theoretical objectives. Firstly, to provide a more holistic picture of the relationship between sovereign debt (and sovereign financing more generally) and ESR, that is not limited to the ESR impacts of austerity. Secondly, to review and critically analyse the existing international law on ESR—particularly relating to the use of State resources—and on sovereign debt and ESR, in order to assess its current status and post-crisis developments, explore the possible reasons of its irrelevance in the context of the Eurozone debt crisis, and speculate on its future directions.

The central focus of the research conducted is the European Neighbourhood Policy aimed at developing the relations of the European Union with its neighbours in the East and South. The European Neighbourhood Policy has an extensive nature: it covers a wide-stretching geopolitical area including sixteen countries. The policy is also extensive in terms of its all-encompassing substance: it envisages cooperation between the parties on issues ranging from trade to border control. The research question contextualises the policy in geographical and substantive terms. The region of the South Caucasus was chosen to limit the research question to certain geographical framework. This is motivated by the complexities inherent in this geographical area. The nominal region of South Caucasus comprises Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. The peculiarities of these states derive from complexities inherent within these states, complexities between the states, as well as between various geopolitical actors whose interests come across here. In substantive terms the research question is limited to the framework of promoting the European Union's democratic values. The main questions addressed in this relation are: what the Union's democratic values are and whether the policy in question offers sufficient mechanisms for their transposition to the South Caucasian countries. For this purposes the instruments and methodologies of the policy have been analysed. The democratic values of the Union have also been considered. Within this narrative, a comparative analysis of the process of the ENP implementation in three states has been undertaken to evaluate its effectiveness in promoting the democratic values of the European Union. The research is finalised with a summary of findings.