Virtual currencies pose a serious threat to be used for money laundering, weakening the European Union's financial system. Directive (EU) 2018/843 (the fifth anti-money laundering Directive) intends to mitigate these risks by introducing a definition of virtual currencies within Union law. Some...

This articles examines 2 meanings of the term “rule of law;” the first being absence of lawlessness, and the second being the full range of laws, enforcement, that is described in the World Justice Project. Using those concepts, the article then looks at whether the rule of law, based upon...

In the last two decades prolonged instances of corporate wrongdoing in Europe have been un-covered: from Siemens’ systemic bribery to HSBC and other major bank’s money laundering issues, Dieselgate, LIBOR price-rigging, and the recent Wirecard debacle. What has driven European firms to...

This paper describes the methodology used to build the WJP Rule of Law Index – a new quantitative assessment tool designed to offer a comprehensive picture of the extent to which countries adhere to the rule of law in practice. The WJP Rule of Law Index provides new data on nine dimensions of...

State regulation of lawyers has failed to keep pace with the increased complexity and geographic scope of law practice. A particular problem is that lawyers in the branch office of a multi-jurisdictional firm are subject to the ethical rules of the state in which the branch office is located....

OECD indicators of structural policy show that policy changes in Italy since 1998 should have improved the environment for entrepreneurship significantly, but in the same period its economic performance has deteriorated noticeably. This may be partly because there is a difference between policy...

Economic growth is below what would be needed to resume rapid convergence to average OECD living standards. On-going efforts to improve the business climate are laudable, but need to be widened and strengthened. Much progress has been achieved in reducing red tape, but it is only recently that...