The civil society and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have become indispensable factors in political, economic, and legal decision-making, as well as in the advocacy of international interests, or litigation. The aim of this study is to comprehensively examine how NGOs are represented and what role they play in the enforcement of human rights within the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR)

While in the post-World War II period civil society organizations primarily provided direct legal representation to victims of state violations in domestic and international forums, today they also actively participate in monitoring the human rights performance of Council of Europe (CoE) member states.

Given that non-governmental organizations are typically grassroots organizations (with the exception of certain regions, such as the post-Soviet countries, South America, or parts of Asia and Africa, where state funding is significant for historical reasons), the research examines whether the activities of these organizations truly serve the public good or primarily the interests of their main donors in an era when the transparent funding of the civil sector has become a central issue globally.

Within this framework, the study seeks answers to the following key questions: Do civil society organizations promote the general enforcement of human rights, or do they primarily focus on the protection of specific areas of law? What is the actual advocacy capacity or litigation activity of civil society organizations in the work of the ECtHR—is their participation merely formal, or do they have a substantive influence on decision-making? Furthermore, to what extent can the positions they represent be considered objective and of professional quality?

To answer these questions and gain a deeper understanding of these processes, this study employs a complex research methodology. In addition to analyzing relevant international literature and the normative legal framework, the research places great emphasis on empirical methods: qualitative document and literature analysis, submissions filed by civil society organizations, and an examination of these organizations’ participation practices based on case studies. Accordingly, after outlining international trends, the study narrows its focus to examine the role of the Hungarian civil society sector in proceedings before the ECtHR.

Link words: NGOs, civil society, ECtHR and NGOs, litigation, fundamental rights protection, Hungary and human rights, rule of law

The working paper is available for download here.

In June 2026, the Argentine government proposed a new corporate category — the non-human corporation — operated by AI agents or robots, endowed with limited liability, with human shareholders optional. Conceived as a deregulatory device for walling risk inside an autonomous entity, it poses a question EU competition law has not yet confronted: can such an entity be held liable for an antitrust infringement, and if so, who pays? This paper argues that the answer turns on the functional concept of the undertaking rather than on corporate form. Because Article 101 TFEU looks past legal status and national registration, a non-human corporation offering goods or services on a market is an undertaking like any other, and its Argentine pedigree affords no immunity — least of all given the extraterritorial reach of EU competition law. The decisive questions are ones of attribution. Where a human or corporate parent controls the entity, the Akzo presumption of decisive influence pierces the limited-liability wall and exposes the controllers. Where the entity is genuinely ownerless and run by non-deterministic autonomous agents, the paper identifies a real but bounded enforcement gap: true algorithmic autonomy may negate the concurrence of wills that Article 101 requires (the conscious-parallelism limit of Wood Pulp), while non-determinism defeats the human-awareness pivot on which attribution doctrines such as Eturas rest. Liability, if it attaches at all, then falls on a thinly capitalised and likely judgment-proof entity. EU competition law thus remains applicable to non-human corporations in principle; what strains is its anthropocentric attribution architecture — designed for human cartelists — at precisely the point where autonomy and ownerlessness coincide.

The working paper is available for download here or at SSRN.

Sustainability of the forest biomass energy: lessons learned from the CJEU’s Robin Wood judgment

Vivien Köböl-Benda

The European Union expressed its commitment to meet the Paris Agreement’s temperature goal – holding the increase in the global average temperature well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels while pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C – in several acts. The EU committed itself to achieving net climate neutrality by 2050 and introduced various legal and policy instruments serving this goal, such as the framework for sustainable finance with the Taxonomy Regulation. This instrument’s objective is to combat greenwashing by establishing the criteria for assessing an economic activity’s sustainability. In practice, the Commission’s delegated acts can elaborate on its technical background by defining screening criteria. In 2026, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) rejected the arguments of several NGOs, contesting the Commission’s technical screening criteria on the use of forest bioenergy. The applicants claimed that more stringent and forward-looking criteria are necessary regarding the sustainability of forest biomass to meet the Paris Agreement’s goals and realize effective mitigation. Even though several studies pointed out the declining state of the EU’s carbon sinks and confirmed that the use of forest bioenergy may, in certain cases, have harmful effects, the CJEU left a broad margin of appreciation to the Commission and rejected the applicant’s arguments. The judgment considered the technical aspects of the Taxonomy Regulation, but also addressed issues relating to NGO enforcement, the required standard of proof, and the possible direct effect of the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement goals.

Keywords: Paris Agreement, UNFCCC, EU climate policy, forest bioenergy activities, EU Taxonomy Regulation, EU climate targets, sustainable finance

The working paper is available for download here.

A jelen tanulmánynak a célja megállapítani, ha a nagyobb fokú gazdasági megközelítés megoldotta-e az Európai Unió működéséről szóló szerződés (a továbbiakban az „EUMSZ”) 101. cikke első bekezdésének sokáig vitatott elemeit, pontosabban azt, hogy mely magatartások minősíthetőek versenykorlátozónak és melyek nem, illetve tágabb értelemben mit véd a versenyjog e cikke és milyen célokat akar elérni. Mivel az EUMSZ nem tartalmazza ezek teljes körű meghatározását, a vállalkozások saját maguk kell eldöntsék, hogy mely megállapodások minősülnek versenyellenesnek és melyek megengedettek. Ez viszont nem bizonyult egyszerű feladatnak a gyakorlatban és nagyon sok vitára adott okot. A 2000-es évek végén megjelent, ún. nagyobb fokú gazdasági megközelítés („more economic approach”) célja éppen az volt, hogy tisztázza a versenyjogi fogalmakat és egységesítse ezeket egy koherens rendszer keretén belül. A jelen tanulmány következtetéseket fog levonni azzal kapcsolatosan, hogy kb. 20 év távlatából nézve elérte-e a célját a Bizottság által bevezetett reform, vagy csak további kérdések forrása lett.

A műhelytanulmány letölthető innen.