In the regulation of private law relationships, the concept of informed choice-making is an important point of departure for policymakers. As a result, professionals and traders are often under a legal duty to offer certain information to the public in order to inform, persuade or warn against dangers. Policymakers and academics alike tend to refer to findings from purely experimental studies to underpin the effects and overall effectiveness of such information duties. This contribution argues that such studies have limited value as a basis for policymaking. Moreover, it is argued here that policymakers may in fact benefit from practice-oriented research which lacks significant findings.

Within the context of a recent call for the strengthening of the legal position of grandparents with regards to visitation rights, this article presents a brief review of major conceptual notions and empirical findings within the literature on grandparent-grandchild relationships. Three major topics for understanding the intergenerational relationship are addressed: the historical context, the importance of the relationship, and changes over individual time.

The Dutch National Police deploys video technology, for instance body-worn video camera (bodycams), drones, helicopters with cameras, and mobile units for surveillance. Four types of video technology are discussed: CCTV, bodycams, smart cameras and automatic number plate recognition (ANPR). These four types will be the most prominent applications of visual technology in the coming years, according to ‘Vision on sensing’, published in 2015 by the National Police. The potential benefits of video images for prosecution and in the courtroom are discussed in a separate paragraph, followed by a survey of recent changes in the laws regulating this technology.

In the context of the most recent European policy initiatives towards putting a halt on illegal immigration from Africa, this article discusses the transnational environment of West African migrants and the dynamics of their migration routes. By following one migration story more closely and by relating this route with the experiences of other migrants the article gives a clear insight into the aspirations of migrants, the often intangible way their journeys are facilitated, as well as into the various results of asylum procedures in Europe. The author argues that a European migration policy should go beyond the securitizing of migration through strategies aiming at immobilizing African migrants. This policy will prove to be ineffective since the aspirations of African migrants are constantly fed by political instability and the transnational reality of globalization.

The arrival of asylum seekers has become a major political and social issue in Europe recently, although not for the first time in history. This article describes and analyses the reasons why growing numbers of undocumented migrants come to Europe, many of them as asylum seekers. One important reason is growing political instability in a ring of countries that surround the EU. The article also describes the different routes undocumented migrants take to the EU, the rapid changes that occur in the choice of routes, and the backgrounds of these changes. Although most attention goes to the risky transit in the Central Mediterranean area, and the number of migrants taking this route is growing, a majority of asylum seekers has reached the EU via other routes. Finally, this article also indicates roads towards finding solutions to the issue; this can only be achieved in the context of the EU.

As an EU agency operating at the external borders of the EU, Frontex is actively involved in combating illegal migration. Since a rising number of migrants drown in the Mediterranean Sea or are pushed back to unsafe third countries, Frontex is being accused by human rights organizations for violating the fundamental rights of the EU. The Agency however maintains that it can’t be held accountable for human rights violations, as it is only assisting Member States, and not taking over their responsibility. This article analyses if this position is correct in the light of the growing tasks and mandate Frontex is granted by the EU.

In light of the high numbers of persons entering the EU via the southern borders and the current uneven distribution of asylum seekers (five Member States of the EU currently received in 2014 more than 70% of the total amount of refugees), there is a clear and urgent need for the EU ministers to ensure a fairer distribution of asylum seekers within the EU. The Dublin Regulation’s system of allocating the responsibility for an asylum request does not offer a solution for this challenge, also because Member States cannot have a blind faith in the standards of a number of states for processing asylum requests. There are significant differences in the application of the law and the procedures.

The advent of the Dutch National Police in 2012 is the culmination of a much longer process of centralization and scaling up of the regular police organization. Partly as a result of this process of increased scale, municipalities have introduced their own surveillance officers to patrol the streets. Thus, the contours of a dual police system have arisen. This raises various questions, and in this article we focus on two of them. First, which background factors have contributed to the emergence of new municipal enforcement organizations and to what extent developments within the police have contributed to this development? Second, what are the consequences of this dual police system and what problems and risks are involved?

Dutch policies concerning the illegal stay of aliens are characterized by regular tensions between central and local governments. This article describes various concrete (proposals for) policy changes in the last twenty years and examines the reasons for these tensions while using the distinction between policy strategies based on denial versus strategies based on adaptation (Garland). When it comes to refugee policies, the central government works in the denial mode while local governments adapt and try to find solutions in order to bring problems under control. This attitude can be explained by the local governments’ duty to provide for in the case of humanitarian emergency situations.

Tensions between the central national level and the local level become clearly visible in coffee shop policies, which have to fit within the international VN and EU treaties and strategies, national drug policy principles and local interests of public order. Three cases, all concerning long-term problems of drug tourism, nuisance and crime around coffee shops, illustrate these tensions. In the case of coffee shop Checkpoint near the Belgian border the Public Prosecutor aimed at solving the problem by prosecuting the coffee shop as a criminal network, while the mayor tried to minimize the negative effects by facilitating visitor flows. In the case of the private club and residence criterion in 2012 not all the mayors actually enforced these national criteria. This leads to a bigger emphasis on local tailoring. Thirdly, several mayors have opted for a regulation of cannabis production for coffee shops, while the stance of the national government is that international treaties banning this practice should be respected. The influence of local policies may be small, but in the end the local communities seem crucial when it comes to finding new ways of managing drug problems.

All EU Member States developed anti-money laundering policies based on EU directives and FATF recommendations. While uniformity in this policy area is needed for international cooperation, the different countries are facing different money laundering challenges and interpret the goal of anti-money laundering policy quite differently. This article analyses the money laundering threat in each EU Member State and the effectiveness of the corresponding policy reaction. Furthermore, the authors identify four types of anti-money laundering policy in the EU and classify each country in one of the four types by using the statistical method of cluster analysis.

This article provides an overview of the current socio-economic and political situation of the Roma in Europe, the continent's largest and most marginalized minority. While a host of new regulations and initiatives on different levels of government have been issued in order to foster the social inclusion of the Roma in various areas of life, the situation on the ground remains far from hopeful. Poverty and discrimination continue to be huge problems in most of the countries where Roma live. New avenues for political and social mobilization have become available to Roma activists and politicians. Yet also in this area important challenges remain. The recent popularity of extreme right-wing populist responses to Roma mobilization and migration has created important obstacles to the full participation and equal citizenship of Roma in our contemporary societies.

This article critically evaluates the recent developments in Dutch policy formation regarding Roma minorities from the perspective of the increased attention paid to their position at European level. First, the author discusses the so-called ‘Europeanization of Roma representation’, that is the post-1989 representation of the Roma as a European minority and the simultaneous large-scale, Europe-wide devising of development, inclusion, and empowerment programs meant for them. Thereafter, the author argues that some of the risks of the Roma’s Europeanization – such as the isolation and culturalization of policy formation and the diminishing of democratic accountability – have also and ambiguously affected Dutch policies meant for Roma, Sinti and caravan dwellers. By means of a brief analysis of recent policy developments, the author demonstrates that the Dutch shift towards a policy that, at least in name, encourages social participation, has actually tended to result into a one-sided focus on the Roma as a ‘problem group’ and ‘security threat’.

The central thesis of this article is that the structure of the present financial system, its culture, and its collective practices and policies are fundamentally criminal and criminogenic. The harms emanating from this financial system are exponentially greater than those emanating from the disadvantaged environments that generate a disproportionate percentage of conventional crime. Accordingly, on various levels, there is much at stake in more fully and directly recognizing and identifying many core policies and practices of the financial system for what they are: crimes on a very large scale.

Have recent food fraud cases, combined with a lack of priority and regulatory framework for combating food fraud and increased involvement of organized crime, caused a crisis of the European food chain? To what extent does this necessitate a European response? This article argues that the crisis in consumer confidence caused by cross-border fraud must be urgently addressed at national and EU level and that combating food fraud should be a priority next to the enforcement of food safety rules. Necessary changes of EU rules applicable to the sector and its controls should be made through the EU decision-making process. The European Parliament recommends an approach that should define food fraud to enable the development of EU policy, facilitate cross-border cooperation and information-sharing between member states and encourage sector initiatives, whereas its enforcement should focus on altering the type of controls by public authorities and installing tougher penalties.