The Directive 2004/25/EC on takeover bids was enacted on 21 April 2004 as a framework directive. The Member States transposed the mandatory bid rule with little variation in the definition of control, with thresholds varying narrowly in nearly all Member States, between 30 per cent and a third. Also concerning the supervisory authority and squeeze-out and sell-out rights, the transposition of the Directive had a harmonizing effect. Therefore, the occasionally encountered opinion that the Takeover Directive was a failure is plainly incorrect. However, Member States vary not only in their legislative approach concerning the offeree’s defence measures, but also in respect of derogations and deviations from the mandatory bid rule. While in the late 1990s the board neutrality rule was dominant on the continent, Germany, France and Italy altered their takeover regimes and now favour a more flexible approach. A growing number of Member States later changed their initial transposition of the Takeover Directive’s breakthrough rule. In a future reform of the Takeover Directive it should be taken into account that the markets for corporate control have changed dramatically since the 2010s.

The project of constitutional democracy and the rule of law concept served as a powerful unifying platform for political compromise during the liberal democratic transformation after 1989. Today’s challenge to the liberal rule of law calls for re-evaluating our understanding of that period. To provide a deeper historical perspective, this chapter offers a tentative historical typology of the various rule of law understandings of the period of ‘liberal consensus’. First, it outlines the historical roots of the 1989 democratic and constitutional revolutions in ECE, pointing out their major sources, namely the import of Western constitutional theory, dissident human rights activism and the mostly neglected yet critical authoritarian socialist constitutionalism. Second, the chapter analyses the politics of liberal constitutionalism, in the 1990s, from the point of view of its internal diversity, depending on the different political ideas and ideologies behind it. The variety of constitutional imagination sets the stage for the final step, which is the exploration of different rule of law conceptions, namely neoliberal, substantive, positivist and non-liberal. Although transnational in its perspective, the last section, for the sake of concision and clarity, focuses primarily on the Czech context.

This chapter explores how, after signing United Nations-sponsored peace agreements to end protracted civil wars, post-authoritarian El Salvador and Guatemala followed different trajectories of peace and violence. It first traces the development of El Salvador’s counterinsurgent state under military rule and its transformation during the civil war. It analyzes how the civil war military establishment, special military forces, and clandestine death squads capitalized on their repressive power to fight guerrillas through brutal force and on de facto impunity to engage in multiple illicit economies. The peace agreement led to an influential truth commission, but an amnesty neutralized it, preserving impunity and the counterinsurgent state. Right- and left-wing governments used counterinsurgent forces to launch Wars on Gangs, and state-gang and inter-gang warfare turned El Salvador into the world’s murder capital. It then discusses the rise of the counterinsurgent state during Guatemala’s civil war and the institutional transformations that empowered the military, elite and paramilitary forces, and death squads to lead a genocidal campaign against the Mayan people while becoming intimately involved in criminal markets. Two truth commissions exposed war atrocities and subsequently a reformed Guatemalan law enforcement, assisted by the International Commission against Impunity, dismantled criminal structures linked to the military establishment, deflating criminal markets, and driving down the murder rate.

In this chapter the aim is to undertake something of a guided analysis of a problem and apply the principles discussed so far. To that end, let’s now return to the problem set out in Appendix A. For this exercise, it is useful to begin by making notes, both of the information within the hypothetical and of the law. Using the steps explored in the last chapter as a guide, simply begin by reading the hypothetical in Appendix A. Note the people involved, the event(s), and especially the question you have been asked. Make some notes on your initial thoughts, before looking back over the Chapter 5 context. Then begin a systematic examination of the information.

This chapter, which is divided into four sections, examines the personal scope of IHL during NIAC by identifying the principal bearers of obligations and beneficiaries of protection. The first section analyses the conventional ratione personae architecture of both CA3 and APII to identify areas of convergence and divergence between the two and determine whether a single ratione personae framework exists for NIAC. The second section identifies the principal bearers of IHL obligations and explores how and when IHL creates obligations for both entities and individuals. The third section determines the primary beneficiaries of protections, with an exclusive focus on the concept of civilian during NIAC. The fourth section explores the relationship between obligations and protections by examining the phenomenon of intra-Party violence to determine whether and, if so under what conditions, IHL provides legal protection to non-opposing forces during NIAC.

This chapter focuses on the collaborative and participatory methodologies of the Surviving Memory in Postwar El Salvador research initiative, an international, cross-sector partnership of survivors, scholars, artists, lawyers, museums, architects, community organisers, civil society organisations, and mental health professionals who are committed to documenting the history of the Salvadoran Civil War (1979–1992), accompanying bottom-up commemoration and healing processes, and preventing future violence. Using Experiences and Memories of Arcatao (2024) as a case study, this chapter explores the collaborative documentation of victim names and the co-creation of local community history books as an alternative form of justice that meets the recommendations of the United Nations Commission on the Truth for El Salvador in a context of enduring impunity. The authors emphasise the long tradition of local community organizing and popular education in Chalatenango, as well as the role of international solidarity actors who contribute significant resources and technical support.

Chapter 10 offers a summary of the structure, methodology, and findings of the book. It highlights the interdisciplinary nature of the investigation, in particular how a philosophically grounded argument can bear upon the reasoning of the Court while simultaneously addressing a pressing societal challenge.

By understanding participation in transitional justice as the capacity of victims to exercise agency in addressing their needs, this chapter shows how victim mobilisation is a form of participation that can advance victims’ agendas independent of any formal process. Using the lens of critical victimology to both highlight and privilege the agency of victims of violations, we show how relatives of persons missing in Nepal’s armed conflict have successfully renegotiated their relationships with their families, community, and even local government, in ways that impact how they experience victimhood. This shows how collective action and empowerment can serve to drive social change in the everyday spaces that victims occupy in ways that can transform their lives, even though impunity remains institutionalised by the authorities. This reframes participation in transitional justice as something that can be realised largely independent of a formal process.

The EU Takeover Directive (TOD) has significantly shaped the landscape of mergers and acquisitions within the EU. The process of reaching an agreement on its text was exceptionally challenging, spanning over a decade. The ultimate version is an incomplete harmonization effort, leaving numerous areas and options for the Member States. Its 20th anniversary gives the occasion to take a closer look at how the TOD has been implemented by different Member States, shedding light on how the Directive has influenced corporate behaviour, market dynamics and the overall European economy.

Chapter 3 focuses on Hong Kong, where there were 261 death sentences but no executions after 1966. Chinese hostility to democratic reforms prevented the constitutional advances that occurred in other colonies in this period and left the British government vulnerable to parliamentary scrutiny in the wake of an execution. Previous studies argued that Britain required Hong Kong’s governors to commute death sentences from the mid 1960s, but colonial correspondence shows that clemency was not automatic until a decade later. Clemency appeals were judged on a case by case basis, even after Governor Murray MacLehose’s decision to uphold Tsoi Kwok-cheung’s death sentence was overruled by the British government in 1973. MacLehose thereafter played a central role in negotiating the Hong Kong Executive Council’s support for reprieves and eventually oversaw de facto abolition, as he strived to prevent capital punishment compromising his administration’s reform agenda. MacLehose also set a precedent for future governors by opposing reforms to the death penalty in other British Dependent Territories, which he feared would draw unwanted attention to Hong Kong’s anomalous position.

Thirty years after the European Commission requested Robert Pennington to produce a draft directive, Directive 2004/25/EC on Takeover Bids was published. This chapter examines the Commission’s various proposals during this time and the manner in which both the nature of the Directive and its provisions changed. It analyses the Commission’s 1989 and 1997 proposals and Council’s 2000 Common Position focusing on the provisions that dealt with the General Principles, the supervisory authorities, board neutrality and the mandatory bid. It describes the subsequent conciliation process and the compromises reached in order to arrive in June 2001 at an approved text. Having recounted the dramatic rejection of this proposal by a tied vote in Parliament in July 2001, the chapter examines the role of the High Level Group of Company Law Experts in restarting the process and its introduction of the ‘breakthrough rule’. It then explores the Commission’s 2002 Proposal and the intense negotiations, lobbying and political manoeuvring in 2003 that led to a further compromise text in November 2003. The chapter concludes by noting the unenthusiastic reception from Member States and commentators and the obvious disappointment of the Commission at what it perceived as a watered-down proposal.

This Chapter seeks to address the legal and factual challenges resulting from the proliferation of battlefield actors through a framework for the  classification of battlefield actors during NIAC. This framework is predicated on the factual and legal distinction between the concept of a ‘Party’ to a NIAC, actors that ‘belong’ to a Party to a NIAC, and actors ‘supporting’ a Party to a NIAC. The Chapter is comprised of four sections. The first section introduces the rationale that underpins and informs the proposed framework, and outlines its practical application. The second section explores the concept of a Party to a NIAC, and in particular the distinction between a Party and the ‘armed forces‘ of a Party. The third section seeks to define the external parameters of a Party to a NIAC by way of the concept of ‘belonging’ under IHL. The fourth section will explore the concept of ‘supporting’ a Party to a NIAC to determine if and when the arrival of new actors on the battlefields of existing NIACs are bound by and subject to IHL, and in doing so, will interrogate the concepts of associated forces and co-belligerents, both of which are contrasted against the support-based approach advanced by the ICRC.

The ownership landscape of European companies has fundamentally changed in the twenty years that have passed since the adoption of the Takeover Directive. The growth of institutional investors and asset managers and the shift from active fund management to passive index funds affect the likelihood of takeover bids succeeding. Hedge fund activism was virtually unheard of in Europe twenty years ago, but there are now cases of M&A activism across various Member States. Foreign investment in European companies can also potentially facilitate cross-border mergers and acquisitions. The willingness of shareholders to tender their shares to a hostile bidder can differ significantly depending on the type of shareholder involved. These major changes to the shareholder landscape in European companies can therefore impact how active the European market for corporate control ultimately is. Overall, the interplay between (foreign) institutional investors, activist hedge funds and merger arbitrageurs can potentially alter the market for corporate control in ways that were not envisaged when the Takeover Directive was adopted.

This chapter introduces the questions and puzzles that drive the book’s research, outlines the theoretical argument, explains the research design and multimethod approach, and summarizes the main empirical findings. By examining the contrasting experiences of post-authoritarian development in Mexico and Peru, it establishes two paths that Third Wave democracies followed: criminal wars and large-scale criminal violence or relatively peaceful development. Existing explanations focusing on poverty and inequality, state capacity, and history of political instability, predict that Peru would experience significant violence in democracy while Mexico would follow a path of relatively peaceful development. Yet by adopting an ambitious transitional justice (TJ) process to reckon with its repressive history, Peru prevented the outbreak of large-scale criminal violence and criminal wars while Mexico did not. The chapter presents the building blocks of the theoretical explanation. It discusses why we need a new definition of organized crime and large-scale criminal violence that places violent states and authoritarian specialists in violence at the center. It then explains why developing peaceful democracies requires dismantling the violent state and why TJ mechanisms are uniquely suited to this task. It concludes with a discussion of the multimethod strategy for theory-testing and the findings and their implications for the study of peaceful democracies.