The Hungarian Parliament voted a law on December 21st, 2010, which came into force on January 1st, 2011, according to which indirect governmental control over the media became very tight. This intervenes at the exact same time as Hungary overtakes the rotating Presidency of the European Council. Hungary now has two weeks to put the law in conformity with European standards, otherwise, the European Commission will start legal proceedings against the country.

This article traces the development of the regulatory state in China through the case of coal mine safety and tries to find out the logic of regulatory state building in China as well as its fundamental dilemmas embodied during the process. Based on the change of the coal mine market and governmental agencies responsible for managing coal mines, the article divides the history of regulatory state building into three periods: one of totalitarian command control when production was priority; then under rapid marketization when profits became priority, government regulation began to take shape, and currently safety regulation has become the focus, the government resorts to merging and reorganization of coal mines. The track of regulatory state building embodies the following characteristics: firstly, regulatory reform lacks a clear strategy; secondly, admission control based on licensing is still the primary way of regulation; thirdly, the idea of social regulation, instead of economic regulation based on price and entrance regulation, has gradually appeared; fourthly, gradual reliance on local government on daily regulation; finally, coal mine workers did not have a say in the regulation to defend their own rights. Key words: Regulatory State; Coal mine; market; government.

In order to properly conceive the role of law in the economic sphere, a problem that is usually designated as “good regulation”, it can be instructive to confront what such a concept denotes to one of the most prominent theories of the rule of law in modern societies, the theory of F. A. Hayek.

Germany adopted a law modifying its investment legal framework in application of the UCITS IV Directive (Directive 2009/65/EC) on December 15th, 2010. This law introduces three main changes, in taxation, in the framework of micro finance funds and in the supervisory regime for investments.