The impact of European law on the regional and local levels In the Member States is important. As local markets open up for competition, the scope of EU law is extended and competition and state aid rules become applicable.

At the end of last year, the Hungarian parliament adopted a new media law. It was met by strong reactions and believed – among other things - to constitute a threat to the freedom of the press and being incompatible with EU law.

Despite the financial crisis and the subsequent euro crisis, the Swedish public opinion is increasingly in favour of the EU. In the 2010 survey, 53 percent are in favour of the Swedish membership while 23 percent are against.

The Commission’s Fifth Cohesion Report provides a wealth of new data on social, economic and territorial trends in Europe. This gives an excellent basis for discussing the future of cohesion policy, but the questions asked by the Commission in its consultation are too narrow.

The Euro Plus Pact was developed as a complementary mechanism to support the economic governance reform program at the national level, particularly with regard to sectors, which are prerogatives of Member States. Already early on, however, it gained a rather controversial reputation.

When markets are liberalized and open for competition, the scope of EU law is widening simultaneously. Even though EU law permits considerations other than free competition, the member states must themselves use the space available.

The European Sovereign Debt Crisis has dominated the EU Member States’ agenda since May 2010. One of the main issues that EU policy makers need to address is the structure of a future fiscal framework.

Europe´s population live longer live and the workforce´s share of the population is shrinking. This constitutes a big challenge for the EU´s Member States and within the EU there is now a debate on future European pension systems.

The Swedish wolf-hunting policy is today an issue high on the EU agenda. The European Commission has questioned the Swedish management plan for wolves and the Swedish government has replied by replacing the 2012 licensed hunting with extended protective hunting.

In this analysis, the authors scrutinizes the method of the Court of Justice of the European Union when balancing diverging or even opposing interests protected by EU law. The starting point is two joined cases, where the two authors are critical of the Court’s reasoning and argues that the Court sacrifices the fundamental interest of transparency in order to protect other interests, especially the protection of personal data.