The aim of my thesis on the topic „Regional and structural EU policy – economic and legislative aspect“ is a description of all important aspects of Regional policy EU and the performance of regional policy in the context of a specific project.

There have been three main sets of trends in the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union in the field of the internal market after 2004. The first set of trends concerned the criteria of legal analysis, i.e. the scope of EU rules on free movement, the concept of the restriction of free movement and the justification of such restrictions. The second set of trends in the case law is related to the fact that the Court completes its legal analysis by considerations linked to its value orientation of the Court, i.e. its liberalism, social tendencies, protection of fundamental rights, pragmatism and proactivity. The third trend in the case law of the internal market consisted in changing the focus of case law in the sense that the Court has begun to deal with more and more cases from sectoral fields, i.e. fields covered by secondary law.

The absence of a relevant legal basis between huge commercial partners such as the EU as a single entity and the Russian Federation promoted the emergence of a legal vacuum. The long term cooperation between Russia and the EU has only one bilateral agreement - the Agreement on Partnership and Cooperation signed in 1994, which is however obsolete, and does not meet the contemporary needs. The adequate legal basis for Russia-EU cooperation in the gas sector is still missing. The protection of investments in the gas sector is being realized by bilateral agreements between Russia and EU member states, soft law and general international agreements, without any specifications for those two partners. The only international instrument covering the energy relations of these two partners - Energy Charter Treaty cannot be considered as a reliable mechanism, as Russia withdrew from it more than 8 years ago. The reasons of the withdrawal and the Yukos case as an illustrative example are discussed in this paper. In order to avoid uncertainty in such strategic area as gas investment relations and unpredictable decisions between the states represented by the commercial entities, there is a need to design a substantive legal basis, and a need to consider on the adequate dispute resolution body. In this thesis, key...