Child protection practice has undergone major changes in the last decades. While traditionally welfare institutions as well as the law itself were mainly concerned with orphans and children of unmarried mothers, nowadays the practice focuses on children in need of protection because they have been neglected or abused by their parents. And yet, child protection measures have not been the focus of research, discussion and reform like other areas of the law concerned with children, for example parental custody after divorce. Recent reforms – or plans for reform – in some continental European states are not to be expected to bring substantive changes.

Diane Pretty died of natural causes on 11 May 2002 from motor neurone disease, a paralysing, degenerative and incurable illness. Her fight to choose the time and manner of her death assisted by her husband was a resounding legal failure. A unanimous body of judicial opinion in both the English Divisional Court and the House of Lords, followed by the European Court of Human Rights, denied that her rights under the European Convention on Human Rights had been infringed. Thus, the refusal of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) to exempt Mrs. Pretty's husband from prosecution were he to undertake efforts to assist Mrs. Pretty in taking her own life was ultimately held to be lawful. At the same time, the domestic legal prohibition on assisting suicide, found in Section 2.1 of the Suicide Act of 1961 was found to be in conformity with the Convention.

The Untersuchungsausschuss-Fall (Parliamentary Committee Case) 2 BvE 2/01, decided by the Bundesverfassungsgericht (BVerfG – Federal Constitutional Court) on 8 April 2002, concerns the so-called right of enquête, a central function of Parliament under the parliamentary system designed by the German Basic Law. The right of enquête, the investigation by Parliament by taking evidence complete with the subpoena powers normally reserved to criminal investigations, has been an integral part of both the Weimar and the Bonn Constitutions. Max Weber, in the era of the Bismarck-Constitution for the German state founded in 1871, made a forceful pitch for the equality of the Parliament and Executive. He argued that members of Parliament needed to be professionals and to have full access to the information that, traditionally, was the source of power of the executive. Instituting committees of investigation with the power to take evidence was the means to do so. In fact, Weber went further, arguing that the right to call for an investigative parliamentary committee needed to be vested in a (qualified) minority of the members of Parliament. There is no equivalent of this specific aspect in the other European parliamentary systems. Article 34 of the Weimar Constitution provided that one fifth of the members of Parliament could ask for the institution of a committee of investigation. The same quorum had the right to move for the hearing of specific evidence by the committee.

There was a principle, which read: \“All persons are equal before the law.\” It is this achievement of the French revolution with its quest for \“egalité,\” which is today enshrined in international human rights treaties and national constitutional law, including the American Constitution. This principle no longer seems to apply since the passage of Security Council Resolution 1422 (2002) of July 12th, at least not in international criminal law. It now reads: \“All persons are equal before the law, with the exception of those that are citizens of the United States of America.\” That the principle was set aside at the same time for other non-treaty parties of the International Criminal Court (ICC), above all China, Russia and India, does not improve the matter. They are joyful beneficiaries of the US initiative.

During Germany's recent general elections the Freien Demokratischen Partei (Free Democratic Party – FDP) sought to position itself as the focal point of the heated political race between the Christian Democratic Union / Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU), led by Bavarian Governor Edmund Stoiber, and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), led by incumbent Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. By staking out the ideological middle ground and employing a well-packaged campaign, the FDP hoped to assure itself the role of coalition partner in any government formed after the September 22nd general election. The FDP, in a first for one of the smaller political parties, ran its photogenic Chairman, Guido Westerwelle, as an independent candidate for Chancellor. The party also set for itself the goal of obtaining 18% of the popular vote (a target nearly triple its performance in the 1998 general election), making “18/2002” the party's campaign slogan. Had the FDP succeeded in obtaining only 9% of the popular vote (half its goal), it would have indeed played the controlling role in post-election negotiations over a coalition government. As it turned out, however, the FDP stumbled through debilitating controversy up to the last minute of the election and ended with a mere 7.4 percent of the vote. Incumbent Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder was able to turn to the Green Party (which charged to a surprising 8.6% of the vote), his coalition partner of the last four years, to break his party's deadlock with the CDU/CSU and remain in power.

The Pfizer and Alpharma judgments, both delivered by the Court of First Instance (hereinafter “the Court”) on 11 September 2002, provide us with interesting precisions on the interpretation and scope, within the European Communities’ legal order, of the much discussed precautionary principle. In particular, they attest to the Court's willingness to leave the Community institutions a certain margin of appreciation in this field, while ensuring that the judicial review of such decisions is thorough enough to prevent abusive reliance on the precautionary principle.