Tag Archives: enforcement

Regulating online safety and tackling online harms

When Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1990, he envisaged a decentralised environment of free exchange of ideas and information. Fast forward to 2019, almost 30 years later, and that online environment has been polluted by disinformation, manipulation, harassment and privacy breaches. The growth of online pollution has prompted various regulatory responses such as the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation1, Germany’s Network Enforcement Act2, Australia’s Abhorrent Violence Amendment Bill3 and California’s Consumer Privacy Act4, each one responding to an online safety problem. In a world first, however, the UK has signalled it will regulate online safety in a single and coherent way, including creating a statutory duty of care for online safety. This howtoregulate article will analyse the UK’s regulatory approach outlined in its April 2019 Online Harms White Paper, which is open for public consultation until July 2019, and propose ways to improve on regulatory enforcement of online safety. Continue reading Regulating online safety and tackling online harms

Three New Approaches to Enforcement of Product Legislation

Classic product legislation currently reaches its limits in several ways. One is 3D-printing which has been the topic of a separate article1. But the main issue is that the many control systems, be they pre-market or post-market oriented, tend to fail in front of an ever-increasing number of economic operators and products and rather decreasing resources of state authorities. This article explores three novel approaches. These approaches to the enforcement of product legislation can and should be used to complement the classic pre- and post-market verification. Some of them might even become alternatives thereto. Continue reading Three New Approaches to Enforcement of Product Legislation

Regulating Cross Border Services

In today’s globalised world, where markets are increasingly borderless, how does the domestic regulator enforce national objectives in consumer protection, professional standards, taxes and competition? Let’s be honest, it’s not easy to enforce these objectives within the border, imagine across borders, where the language and legal systems are different and, most importantly, there is no own state power of the jurisdiction setting up requirements. Cross-border product enforcement has matured in recent years in line with consumer demand for quality and stricter enforcement through customs and sometimes even postal services. Requirements for cross-border services, however, have been more difficult to enforce due to the variety of channels that services consumers and businesses currently use, particularly digital services. This howtoregulate article focuses on how the regulation of cross-border services could be better enforced so that compliance with service requirements by traders outside of the jurisdiction are similar, or at least not too dissimilar, to those within the regulator’s jurisdiction. Continue reading Regulating Cross Border Services

Empowerments (Part I): typology

To ensure the good application of law, authorities must have empowerments. However, we have not yet found any systematic presentation of types of empowerments. We aim at closing this gap by this article. We will see that the focus on empowerment permits a new, complementary view on what regulation should contain. This complementary view can be used to double-check whether draft regulation is complete. Continue reading Empowerments (Part I): typology

Model Law on Research and Technology Risks: Part IV – A Prototype Regulation

The following prototype regulation shows that it is possible to cover all kinds of research and technology risks in one piece of regulation, making the currently practiced piece-meal approach superfluous. Compared with the practice of developing particular pieces of regulation e.g. for biotechnology, nuclear science, geo-engineering and always running behind the new technologies popping-up, this regulatory approach permits an easy handling and a faster and more complete coverage of research and technology risks. Continue reading Model Law on Research and Technology Risks: Part IV – A Prototype Regulation

Promoting energy efficiency by regulation

Not only the International Energy Agency highlights the importance of rationalising energy consumption both for economic and environmental reasons. The environmental reasons have been recognised by the international community with the conclusion of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change in 2015.

National regulators are therefore called upon to adopt rigorous regulations. To facilitate their work, we briefly enumerate international reference documents. We also present a range of national regulations and regulatory techniques which can serve as a reference. Continue reading Promoting energy efficiency by regulation