A prevalent assumption in German Constitutional Law and Community Law reads as follows: »If Europe wants to have a future it needs to become a community of history«. But there is a snag in it: Just as it is difficult, if not impossible, to identify national communities of history, it is unlikely that one European community of history will emerge.

How to reform the American health care system, now dominated by a decreasing number of multi-billion dollar managed care corporations, has occupied the public debate for many years. Recent news reports hefty increases in managed care premiums, benefit reductions, and an ever-growing number of managed care organizations refusing to treat Medicare patients. Numerous “patients’ bills” have been submitted in Congress, attempting to rein in some of the managed care cost containment practices. None have been adopted so far. At best, such bills would superficially treat some of the symptoms of an ill-functioning health care delivery system, poorly serving the population, insured and uninsured, and creating a plethora of ethical conflicts for providers battling to preserve an acceptable standard of care. Since the Clinton health care reform efforts failed in 1994, no one has proposed a fundamental revision of the system, and the United States remains the only industrialized nation without a universal health care system. The literature mainly reports on those – English-language – countries whose cost containment measures have resulted in overburdening the public health care system. There are, however, numerous European governments which succeed in stabilizing health care expenditures by mandating some sacrifices by all participants in the health care system while preserving universal access, comprehensive coverage, and the standard of care.

On July 1st, 2005, the 7th Amendment to the Law against Restraints of Competition (Gesetz gegen Wettbewerbsbeschränkungen – GWB) became effective. The modernization of the GWB was indispensable in bringing German law in line with Regulation (EC) No. 1/2003. Regulation 1/2003 decentralized the enforcement of EC competition rules and aimed to pave the way for effective private antitrust litigation in Europe. Thus far, private parties have invoked Art. 81 and 82 EC Treaty primarily as shield by arguing that certain agreements were void. Only in very few instances were those rules used as sword to sue infringers for injunctive relief or damages. To stimulate private enforcement, Regulation 1/2003 inter alia abolished the European Commission's exclusive power to exempt practices which are prohibited pursuant to Art. 81 (1) EC Treaty and entitled national competition authorities and courts to apply Art. 81 (3) EC Treaty. Moreover, it empowered the European Commission to make written submissions in antitrust cases pending before national courts. In line with the new European approach, the German legislature has overhauled the hitherto existing rules of German competition law considerably. This article will briefly describe the general changes brought by the reform and take a closer look at the amended rules relating to private antitrust litigation before German courts.

In this journal, Buchheim and Beiersdorf discussed recent changes in the regulation of the management report (Lagebericht) in Germany. The German Commercial Code (HGB – Handelsgesetzbuch) requires a management report by individual entities classified as companies with limited liability in § 289 and by groups in § 315. The reporting requirements of the latter are specified by the German Accounting Standard GAS 15 on Management Reporting. The authors award the German regulation to potentially lead the way internationally.

“The existing federal system is obsolete”, said Federal President Horst Köhler, announcing his decision, in a television address of 21 July 2005, to dissolve the German Bundestag (Parliament) and to call new elections. The following day, the German Law Journal hosted its third international workshop on theory and developments in German Federalism at the Max Planck Institute for the Research on Collective Goods, Bonn. The setting was appropriate, since the Institute is located between two former permanent representations of the federal states (Länder). The building itself once housed the Egyptian embassy, and so presented “neutral ground” for a discussion on federalism.

The recent European Society of International Law Research Forum – only the Society's second conference following the inaugural event in Florence last year – took place from the 24-26th May 2005 in stunning surroundings on the shores of Lac Lemain in the buildings of the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva. Quite apart from the obvious importance of a high-level international conference under the auspices of one of the most important international law societies in the world, and the attendant quality of the speakers and other participants, the event was of real significance in that it allowed for an insight into how the new Society itself is developing, and the manner in which it will go about the task of fulfilling the objectives that it has set itself.