This book contains a collection of economic and legal essays written by academics and practitioners who contributed to the elective Master's course 'State Aid and Public Procurement in the European Union' at Maastricht University, and to two conferences on State aid and public procurement organised in Maastricht in 2013 and 2014. The course, the conferences and this book aim to provide stakeholders - students, but also academics, practitioners, civil servants, and consumers - with a better knowledge of the EU rules on public procurement and State aid. By treating these two legal fields in one volume, the book also intends to draw attention to the largely unexplored links and interfaces between public procurement and State aid rules, which both aim to complete the internal market and to prevent the distortion of competition. Both fields also share common concepts, and furthermore observance of public procurement rules may limit the risk of individual transactions being qualified as State aid (as the Altmark case law and related Commission packages illustrate). In 2011, the European Commission's Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency EACEA recognised the course 'State Aid and Public Procurement in the European Union' as a Jean Monnet European Module (Lifelong Learning Programme).

Many legal experts no longer share an unbounded trust in the potential of law to govern society efficiently and responsibly. They often experience the 'limits of the law', as they are confronted with striking inadequacies in their legal toolbox, with inner inconsistencies of the law, with problems of enforcement and obedience, and with undesired side-effects, and so on.

The contributors to this book engage in the challenging task of making sense of this experience. Against the background of broader cultural transformations (such as globalisation, new technologies, individualism and cultural diversity), they revisit a wide range of areas of the law and map different types of limits in relation to some basic functions and characteristics of the law. Additionally, they offer a set of strategies to manage justifiably law's limits, such as dedramatising law's limits, conceptual refinement ('constructivism'), striking the right balance between different functions of the law, seeking for complementarity between law and other social practices.

Many legal experts no longer share an unbounded trust in the potential of law to govern society efficiently and responsibly. They often experience the 'limits of the law', as they are confronted with striking inadequacies in their legal toolbox, with inner inconsistencies of the law, with problems of enforcement and obedience, and with undesired side-effects, and so on.

The contributors to this book engage in the challenging task of making sense of this experience. Against the background of broader cultural transformations (such as globalisation, new technologies, individualism and cultural diversity), they revisit a wide range of areas of the law and map different types of limits in relation to some basic functions and characteristics of the law. Additionally, they offer a set of strategies to manage justifiably law's limits, such as dedramatising law's limits, conceptual refinement ('constructivism'), striking the right balance between different functions of the law, seeking for complementarity between law and other social practices.

This Casebook deals with the horizontal effects of EU law, which is to say its effects on relationships between individuals. To a large extent, these effects have been created by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) on the basis of the European Treaties. The main focus of the Casebook is on the developments relating to primary EU law and their influence on national private law. It studies instances where EU primary law has already directly or indirectly influenced the case law in the Member States, or where it is expected to do so soon. Compared to the well-known impact of EU directives on private law, these developments concerning primary EU law are hardly noted by private lawyers and perhaps not sufficiently explained by scholars of EU law. Therefore the book makes an important contribution to scholarship and education. This book highlights developments in the areas of competition law, fundamental freedoms, non-discrimination, general principles of EU law, ex officio application of provisions of EU law and implementation of directives, including harmonious interpretation and Francovich liability. In its analysis of the ways in which EU law interacts with private law, the book will be an invaluable resource to students, practitioners and academics of EU private law.