A Német Szövetség váltójogi jogalkotása és annak hatása az Osztrák Császárságra és a Magyar Királyságra

Among the 19th century’s European legislative and codification processes nowadays’ jurisprudence is happy to highlight the creation of civil codes as a milestone in the development of civil law, however, we must not forget the flourishing of another, at least as important branch of private law: the commercial law. In parallel with the growth of overland and sea trade, with increasingly diversified commercial relations, commercial transactions developed, which may have served as a good basis for the development of private law. This study is the first in a series of commercial law history studies and presents the sources of different laws on bills of exchange in the German territories and the harmonizing legislation of the thousand-faced German Confederation, as well as its impact on the Austrian Empire, such as the Austrian law on bills of exchange and the Hungarian Kingdom's vicious, but ultimately rewarding independent legislative aspirations.

Transposition of European Guidelines for Energy Communities into Austrian Law: A Comparison and Discussion of Issues and Positive Aspects

The Renewable Energy Directive and the Electricity Market Directive, both parts of the Clean Energy for all Europeans Package (issued in 2019), provide supranational rules for renewable energy communities and citizen energy communities. Since national transpositions need to be completed within two years, Austria has already drafted corresponding legislation. This article aims at providing a detailed comparison of the European guidelines and the transposition into Austrian law. The comparison not only shows how, and to what extent, the European guidelines are transposed into Austrian law, but also helps to identify loopholes and barriers. The subsequent discussion of these issues as well as positive aspects of the Austrian transposition may be advantageous for legislators and policy makers worldwide in their process of designing a coherent regulatory framework. It is concluded that experts from different areas (i.e., project developers, scientists concerned with energy communities, energy suppliers and grid operators) should be closely involved in the law-making process in order to introduce different perspectives so that a consistent and supportive regulatory framework for energy communities is created.

The Effect of Enforceability

In this paper, the author focuses on the effect of enforceability, in particular in relation to Austrian law. However, insights into German and European law are also provided. Enforceability is an effect of a judgment which is basically only granted to performance judgments. Declaratory and constitutive decisions (with the exception of the decision on costs) are not enforceable as such. As a result, the order for performance contained in the judgment can be enforced by state coercive measures. Enforceability occurs upon termination of the performance period. Enforceability is neither a consequence of, nor necessarily coincides with, res judicata. The introduction of the Brussels Ia Regulation has fundamentally changed the system of enforcement of foreign decisions. Decisions given in the EU Member State and enforceable in that State are now enforceable in another Member States without the need for a declaration of enforceability.

Structured, Transitional and Unstructured Civil Societies: An Institutional Approach

This paper seeks to introduce an alternative conceptual taxonomy of civil society as an input to Austrian law and economics and neo-institutional economics. The conceptual framework of the paper develops three categories: unstructured, transitional, and structured civil societies. This categorization was, in part, inspired by Parsons’ (1966, p. 33) contribution to functional sociology: «Society is an intelligent structure, rationally structured to integrate its com-plex parts into a coherent whole (...) A social system consists of a plurality of social agents interacting with each other in a situation which has at least a physical or environmental aspect, agents moti-vated by a tendency towards the “optimization of satisfaction” whose interactions with their own circumstances, are defined and influenced by a culturally shared system of structured symbols.» However, our proposal does not focus on the associative system as a «set» of aggregates (Parsons, 1968).1 In contrast, following a previous academic paper (Mendez, 2013), the individuality of the agents is assumed. This differs from Parsons’ approach (1978), where agents become secondary receivers in the process of so-cialization. In addition, it has been assumed in this paper that the permanent display of individualism (economic subjectivism) in civil society occurs through the interaction of associative agents (Garcia-Guadilla et al., 1997). These individuals acting as «creative or entrepreneurial agents» (Kirzner, 1978a) help to maintain asso-ciative cohesion through productive entrepreneurship (Baumol, 1990).

The Laws of Moses and the Laws of the Emperor

This chapter focuses on marriage and divorce, which symbolizes the Galician Jewry’s failure to internalize Austrian legal and civil norms. It talks about Galician Jews that married clandestinely in accordance with Jewish law but in violation of Austrian law, causing children of such marriages that carried their mother’s last name to be considered illegitimate. It also examines how the application of Austrian marriage and divorce laws to Habsburg Jewry developed and illustrates the impact of these laws on Galician Jewry. The chapter focuses on the two division of the marriage and divorce laws: legislation that applied throughout the Habsburg empire and political laws or local ordinances that applied to Galician Jews. It talks about how the division affected the way many Galician Jews viewed the law of the land.

Development of a Tool to Analyze the Economic Viability of Energy Communities

Energy Communities (EC) are an instrument to improve the efficiency and autarky of Smart Grids by increasing the local consume of the energy locally produced. Energetic (energy flows, CO2 emissions) and economic (operative costs, acquisition and maintenance of technologies) aspects of all components of the EC must be evaluated to quantify the participation of the EC to achieve the proposed goal. Effective analysis of EC must account for numerous complexities and uncertainties, requiring advanced computational tools. The main contribution of this paper is the introduction of a software package to analyze the viability of ECs focused on the particularities imposed by the new Austrian law for renewable energies, which optimizes the energy flows between all participants. The results of the test case show more than a 14.2% reduction of global cost. At the same time, all participants achieve better results operating inside of the EC than alone. The range of cost reductions varies between 2.75% and 51%. The spread of these reductions opens a question about a fair and optimal way to set trade prices inside of the EC for future works.

Economic Viability of Renewable Energy Communities under the Framework of the Renewable Energy Directive Transposed to Austrian Law

This study is concerned with the national transposition of the European Renewable Energy Directive into Austrian law. The objective is to estimate the economic viability for residential customers when participating in a renewable energy community (REC), focused on PV electricity sharing. The developed simulation model considers the omission of certain electricity levies as well as the obligatory proximity constraint being linked to grid levels, thus introducing a stepwise reduction of per-unit grid charges as an incentive to keep the inner-community electricity transfer as local as possible. Results show that cost savings in residential RECs cover a broad range from 9 EUR/yr to 172 EUR/yr. The lowest savings are gained by customers without in-house PV systems, while owners of a private PV system make the most profits due to the possibility of selling as well as buying electricity within the borders of the REC. Generally, cost savings increase when the source is closer to the sink, as well as when more renewable electricity is available for inner-community electricity transfer. The presence of a commercial customer impacts savings for households insignificantly, but increases local self-consumption approximately by 10%. Despite the margin for residential participants to break even being narrow, energy community operators will have to raise a certain participation fee. Such participation fee would need to be as low as 2.5 EUR/month for customers without in-house PV systems in a purely residential REC, while other customers could still achieve a break-even when paying 5 EUR/month to 6.7 EUR/month in addition. Those results should alert policy makers to find additional support mechanisms to enhance customers’ motivations to participate if RECs are meant as a concept that should be adopted on a large scale.

Compulsory Portion and Other Aspects of Family Protection in Austria

The Austrian law of succession boasts some rather strong mechanisms for overriding a will in the interest of surviving family members. Taken together, the law of compulsory portion, the various statutory legacies, and the maintenance claims significantly reduce a testator’s freedom to pass on his or her property as the testator deems appropriate. Yet, Austrian law does not necessarily ensure that all close family members obtain minimum levels of subsistence, as the group of individuals entitled to family protection benefits is small and more or less restricted to the surviving spouse or registered partner and descendants. The position of the surviving spouse or registered partner has been continuously strengthened over the years but there is still an unfortunate discrepancy between what a surviving spouse or partner is entitled to upon death as compared with the situation upon divorce. The existing patchwork of mechanisms does not seem to have created significant problems, but still it is fair to say that the Austrian law of family protection lacks a consistent approach. This is still true after major reform in 2015, which to some extent restricted entitlements under the law of compulsory portion but also introduced further compulsory benefits. Most conspicuously, the new ‘care legacy’ may entail sweeping changes for smaller estates, and it may well happen that the whole estate goes to one or several caring family members, with heirs possibly even having to pay out of their own pockets.

Google LLC v. Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL) and Eva Glawischnig-Piesczek v. Facebook Ireland Ltd. (C.J.E.U.)

During the fall of 2019, the European Court of Justice (hereinafter the ECJ or the Court) delivered judgments in two cases addressing the responsibility of internet platform companies for the personal information they control. In Google LLC v. Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL), the ECJ considered the geographic scope of its notable recent jurisprudence on the obligations of search engines to implement the “right to be forgotten” set forth in European Union (EU) data protection law. In Eva Glawischnig-Piesczek v. Facebook Ireland Limited, the Court examined whether Facebook was obliged under EU law to remove information available on the social network that previously had been found under Austrian law to defame an Austrian politician.

Continuation of security rights in movable assets in conflict of laws – Austrian approach reconsidered

In decision no. 3 Ob 249/18sOGH [2019] 3 Ob 249/18s. the Austrian Supreme Court (Oberster Gerichtshof, OGH) acknowledged a security right in a movable asset acquired abroad, although publicity requirements under Austrian law have not been observed before and after the movable asset crossed the Austrian border. Consequently, only the law of the country in which the movable asset is located upon the completion of the acquisition or loss shall be applicable to the acquisition or loss of a right in rem. Whether the transaction has been completed or not, is determined by the lex causae. No subsequent change in the applicable law occurs in relation to this question.The decision is analysed in this paper in the context of the former jurisprudence of the Austrian Supreme Court, which has been overturned by the present decision, and the positions published to date in legal literature. In addition, this paper provides an overview including aspects relating to EU law, the debate regarding overriding mandatory rules and fraus legis.