Although the 'level playing field' argument has been used for a long time, it is now being exploited to a greater extent in a context of geopolitical recomposition. It accompanies a two-pronged approach to public action in the market economy promoted by the European Union. Internally, it is intended to justify corrective action in the internal market, whether in terms of respecting the competitive order or promoting positive integration. Externally, the 'level playing field' aims to protect the internal market by exploiting the Brussels effect to re-establish a balance between European and non-European enterprises.

The global debate on corporate purpose and new corporate forms includes a recent legislative reform proposal in Germany focusing on steward ownership. The proposal is part of a wider comparative trend towards the creation of long-term, purpose-driven enterprises and forms of social entrepreneurship across Europe. Steward ownership promotes the use of profits for a chosen purpose and can therefore contribute to sustainable value creation. The legislative proposal includes a permanent asset lock to ensure that profits are reinvested in the company. Shareholders can be remunerated for their work, but they cannot receive dividends or claim more than their capital in the event of liquidation. The asset lock has raised questions about its compatibility with EU law. The article argues that the asset lock is a valuable innovation in European company law and can be designed to meet the requirements of EU law. While the article concludes that the asset lock does not contradict EU law, possible restrictions may be justified. Nevertheless, the draft could be improved during the legislative process by providing for a distinct legal form, including a mission statement, and by allowing cross-border conversions into corporate forms with a comparable asset lock.

Crypto-currencies are not widely used as a means of payment in Colombia or the European Union. This observation leads us to question the compatibility of crypto-currencies with payment law, and in particular the conditions under which crypto-currencies can be admitted as having a power to discharge, from a Franco-Colombian perspective, which enables us to approach the issue through two civil law systems, albeit subject to different economic and political contexts. On analysis, French and Colombian payment law are ill-suited to crypto-currencies, admitting them only as a conventional means of payment, since they do not benefit from a universal power to discharge. Although the legislation applicable to crypto-currencies has recently been strengthened, notably with the MICA regulation in Europe, payment law still needs to be adapted to ensure that crypto-currencies are admitted as a genuine means of payment, even if this means enacting measures to protect certain users. How crypto-currencies are used will depend on the level of trust they can inspire.

The 1985 Product Liability Directive (PLD) is currently being revised, with a view to adapting European Union product liability rules to the digital economy and new technologies. The ongoing discussion focuses on technical issues and apparently takes it for granted that the PLD as it stands adequately achieves the policy goals that were initially assigned to it, namely the establishment of a common market and consumer protection. However, a closer analysis shows that harmonising product liability is not needed to create a truly common market and, more importantly, that the PLD is not an effective instrument for consumer protection. A particular cause for concern is that almost no cross- border claims seem to be brought under the Directive, meaning that those injured by defective products are in effect left without a remedy when the producer is not located in the same country as they are. If the new PLD is to be more than mere poster legislation and to contribute effectively to consumer protection, more drastic changes to the current regime are needed than those that are currently being contemplated. The range of potential defendants should be broadened to include suppliers and online marketing platforms as a matter of principle, and the development risk defence as well as the application of a long-stop period in case of bodily injuries should be reconsidered.

Some doctrinal works participate so significantly in the understanding of legal phenomena that they become unmissable. Others become essential on account of the reflection they develop or due to the originality of their approach and thought. The work reviewed here belongs to those two categories, both because the information it contains on the regional courts of human rights is precise, complete and invaluable, and because the approach which underlies it is fundamental and belongs to a necessary movement of renewal of the theory of international law in general and of international human rights law in particular…

The theme of rights is so absolutely central to legal-philosophical reflection that when the term 'age of rights' is being used to refer to the period coinciding with the consolidation of contemporary democratic regimes, it means that human rights, democracy, and peace are three necessary moments of the same historical movement: without recognised and effectively protected human rights, there is no democracy; without democracy, there are no minimal conditions for the peaceful resolution of conflicts…

By presenting the Swiss approach to statutory interpretation, ie the pragmatic pluralism of methodologies, this paper underlines that this is a good way for the judge to take into account a basic principle: different cultures, different languages produce different texts. Since the same idea cannot be expressed in the same way in different languages, one cannot stick to the wording in order to find the common meaning of all these various wordings. More visible in multilingual legal regimes, this principle applies, however, also to monolingual systems. It is not possible to stick to a 'clear' wording without a proto-interpretation of such wording through which the judge weighs all the approaches in order to get to a solution that reflects the underlying normative values.