European Law Journal最新文献

The EU's Common Foreign, Security and Defence Policy found its way into the Treaty 30 years ago, but it is still confronted with ‘specific rules and procedures’ that seem to stand in the way of its effectiveness. Against the background of the Conference on the Future of Europe, this contribution aims to identify ways to improve the CFSP's functionality, on the basis of both existing scholarly work and an empirical assessment of the last 10 years of the Union's foreign policy. By focusing on legal rather than political solutions, it aims to contribute to ongoing debates on the effectiveness of CFSP. Making use of the gradually accepted “normalisation” of CFSP, we have identified a number of legal tools that could be used to improve CFSP and to allow it to meet its Treaty brief to ‘cover all areas of foreign policy and all questions relating to the Union's security’.

This article seeks to contribute to The Conference on the Future of Europe by arguing that its debates on substantive policies and democratic foundations cannot be detached from consideration being given to the configuration of the Union's normative spaces in which those policies will be developed and implemented. In its current stage of development, we can find in the Union legal system two competing conceptions for the configuration of its different normative spaces, one that relies on the Member States for resources and legitimacy and another that intends to free itself from those constraints. This article will argue that a uniquely European model of governance will benefit from the integration of both conceptions in the configuration of its normative spaces, not only where they are provided for by the Union Treaties but also where they have developed in the shadow of those official spaces, which they complement and increasingly supplant.

It is often argued that the European Union needs legitimation by its Member State democracies. However, there is also a reverse dependence in which Member State democracies need some kind of European Union if they are to manage externalities between themselves in ways that are needed to deliver their most fundamental obligations to their own publics to secure rights, justice, freedom from arbitrary domination and democracy itself. I argue that reverse dependence provides an additional justification for a directly elected European Parliament: namely, as an aid to national democracies in their oversight of Union decisions. The future of Europe debates should consider a directly elected Parliament as a means of connecting national democracies to the Union and not just of building representative institutions at the European level.

The rule of law is a check on power, requiring equal subjection of everyone to the law, irrespective of wealth or status. Power is not the exclusive preserve of the state, however, especially where rivalled by private entities that rise, in effect, above the law. Today’s tech giants throw the rule of law out of kilter by assuming the trappings of the state— one even has its own “supreme court”— while shunning its accountability. They seek to dissuade, capture and evade any attempt by the state to mitigate the harms arising from their business models. Policy makers scrambling for innovative legislative techniques are unlikely to repair the consequences of extreme concentration of corporate power so long as underlying social injustices and over-deference in democratic institutions go unchallenged. Leviathan, whether in the form of govern mentor corporation, cannot coexist with the rule of law.

How do we best defend the rule of law against its attackers, both within the European Union and outside of it? Often, the rule of law has been perceived as a domain belonging to jurists, lawyers, bureaucrats, or politicians. Yet at its most fundamental, the rule of law needs to be thought of from a citizen's perspective. When enforced, it guarantees freedoms and liberties for citizens and enables us to live peacefully. In this article, we propose a citizen-centric rule of law agenda based on a deep conviction that it is if and when it becomes a citizen-based societal principle that its many attackers are best countered. We discuss the challenges and necessities of rule of law promotion and propose an assessment approach called the “living list”. We close with a call for citizen-scholars to fight for the rule of law, the most precious human invention of all time.

The article examines the Conference on the Future of Europe, discussing the process set in motion by the Joint Declaration adopted by the EU institutions in March 2021, and reflecting on its prospects. Drawing from precedents such as the Conference of Messina and the Convention on the Future of Europe, the article shows that the Conference on the Future of Europe is an out-of-the-box initiative originally combining bottom-up participatory features and top-down elite decision-making mechanisms. Nevertheless, the Joint Declaration launching the Conference leaves its constitutional mission unsettled, and its institutional organisation uncertain. As such, the article suggests that the prospects for the Conference will depend on political leadership and legal inventiveness, and discusses what may be the options ahead.

Over the past three decades, cyberspace has gradually become an engine of unsustainable outcomes from an economic, social and environmental perspective. The European Commission has launched several new initiatives, in the attempt to restore public control over cyberspace, remedy the distributional imbalances generated by the rise of large-scale digital platforms, and promote Europe's digital sovereignty. The paper argues that only by embedding rules and values in “code” and preserving openness towards the rest of the world will the EU manage to achieve its desired goals. Current initiatives such as the data strategy, the AI regulation, the Digital Services Act and the European Cloud Federation appear still too sparse and uncoordinated to really deliver on Europe's ambition to lead the world in the sustainable use of technology.