The mandate of art.21 Treaty on European Union (TEU) attributes a central role to the European Unions' (EUs') constitutional values as guiding principles for external action. This marks an important aspect of "external constitutional law" and puts the EU into the role of an "exporter" of values. Yet, the systematic conceptualisation and operationalisation of these values remain underdeveloped. A gap between rhetoric and practice undermines the EUs' coherence and effectiveness in promoting its values abroad. The dichotomy in the EUs' external competences complicates a consistent development of values and legal standards. For consistency and as a matter of identity of the Union, the substance of values by which the EU is guided externally should be the same as in the internal dimension. Recent strategies aimed at enhancing value-based external action suffer from inconsistencies in their implementation. Yet, consistency is both a legal obligation and a practical necessity for the legitimacy and effectiveness of EU external action. Both could be increased by learning from the lessons of the internal dimension of value protection.
Digitalisation has emerged as a transformative force within the European Union (EU), reshaping not only the substance of regulation but also the very techniques through which legislation is conceived, drafted and implemented. This contribution examines how the digital sphere operates as an endogenous factor of regulatory innovation, influencing both legislative and non-legislative acts. It focuses on the progressive integration of digital instruments within the EUs' law-making process, from the "Have Your Say" portal and "Call for Evidence" mechanisms to the Better Regulation Toolbox and the Legislation Editing Open Software (LEOS) project. Together with the Interoperable Europe Act, these initiatives constitute the structural framework of an emerging digital legislative infrastructure. The analysis explores how these tools enhance transparency, accountability and evidence-based governance, while simultaneously generating new tensions concerning flexibility, legal certainty and algorithmic opacity. Particular attention is given to the delegation of normative functions to private actors and to inequalities in access to digital participation channels. The article concludes by proposing methodological criteria for ensuring the "digital quality" of EU law-making-centred on intelligibility by design, independent algorithmic scrutiny, and supervised regulatory sandboxes-arguing that digitalisation must remain compatible with the principles of the rule of law and democratic legitimacy.
Tartisai marks the first application of the test developed in the landmark KS and KD judgment to assess the establishment of the Courts' jurisdiction in the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), which is an integral part of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). In the case under analysis, the Court held that it is competent to answer questions on the interpretation of a CFSP Council decision concerning a CSDP civilian mission in the context of a reference for a preliminary ruling. This case note aims at examining how the approach purported by the Court in the KS and KD judgment finds its application in Tartisai, and its potential implications for further defining the scope of the Courts' jurisdiction in CFSP matters in the future.
Due to technological progress, many workers are able to remain connected to their employer and their colleagues as well as continue working outside the working place and working hours. This can have positive but also negative effects on workers' lives. The European Parliament has adopted a resolution, calling on the European Commission to legislate a "right to disconnect". A few Member States have introduced such a right; in many other countries the added value of such new legislation is still debated. One of the main arguments is that the European Union (EU) already has strong working time legislation, which sufficiently protects workers' free time. Arguably, better enforcement of the existing rights would be more beneficial than introducing new norms, which may only call into question the existing minimum rest periods prescribed by law. This article examines the existing working time legislation and evaluates how far its protection of workers' free time reaches and whether we need a "right to disconnect". It shows how the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) deals with the concept of "rest time" pursuant to the EU Working Time Directive. It concludes that the legal concept of "rest time" does not always include workers' complete freedom to manage their own time in the meaning of complete absence of any work-related obligations as is usually assumed. Even though a right to disconnect would not solve all problems related to the "always-on"culture, the author concludes that legislating such a right would be a step in the right direction.
In SCHUFA, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) recognised solely automated credit scoring as a form of automated individual decision-making within the meaning of art.22(1) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and classified automatically generated credit scores as "decisions" under this provision. This conclusion is crucial for all European consumers and businesses, as it means that for the generation of credit scores by credit agencies based on solely automated processing of personal data to be lawful, there must be a legal ground for such a scoring-both at the EU and Member State level-and a number of procedural safeguards for a scored individual must be ensured, which can be referred to as an algorithmic due process. The judgment of the ECJ has even more profound ramifications: the present case note argues that it applies to the profiling of individuals in general, also outside the financial sector. Consequently, every profiling of individuals, both on and offline, which ends up with the creation of a profile must be compliant with the requirements laid down in art.22 GDPR, including the human intervention or verification.
Following the Opinion of its Advocate General, in DYKA Plastics the Court of Justice (ECJ) severely curtailed the ability of public buyers to prefer more sustainable solutions. Pursuing the widest competition possible has been the sole concern of both the Advocate General and the Court. It is argued that the opinion and the judgment are based on a selective approach to the applicable public procurement rules which fails to engage with the relevant precedent in the case law. The policy choices embodied in DYKA Plastics are at odds with recent legislative developments relying on public procurement to achieve environmental goals.
This article argues that the European Union Recovery Instrument (EURI), the Macro-Financial Assistance (MFA) loans to Ukraine, and the Ukraine Facility have normalised European Union net long-term debt, turning a crisis exception into an ordinary instrument of the fiscal constitution. It conceptualises this shift as a constitutional mutation. The analysis unpacks the financial mechanics of borrowing and granting and maps the legal pathways under arts 122, 310, and 311 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) that sustain the new regime, including the accounting of assigned revenue and the treatment of own resources. It shows the strengthened role of the European Council as a constitutional guardian, underscoring the centrality of intergovernmental dynamics in constitutional politics that require advancing capacity-building policies. The result is a more flexible fiscal constitution in which long-term borrowing functions as a standing policy tool, while raising tensions for budgetary unity, legal certainty and accountability.
The purpose of this article is to explore how the role of mutual recognition has evolved in the development of European Union (EU) internal market law. The first section explains where the principle of mutual recognition comes from, its constitutional and institutional implications, and how it was warmly greeted as a means to develop the internal market project. The second section discusses the gap between the promise and the reality of mutual recognition and identifies a trend towards more emphasis on legislative harmonisation, less on free movement/mutual recognition. The article nonetheless insists on the need for a sector-specific account in which context matters. Accordingly, the third section offers case studies into the evolving balance between harmonisation and free movement and attempts to identify what factors explain the emerging pattern.
The phrase "ever closer union" has been present in what are now the European Union (EU) Treaties since 1957. This article presents a diagnosis of its role within the framework of those Treaties, highlighting key changes in relation to both the context and content of European integration, which could potentially affect the meaning ascribed to "ever closer union". In fact, it is a phrase without fixed meaning, which is often overlooked by those making or interpreting law and policy or involved in presenting proposals. Scholars have sometimes sought to elevate "ever closer union" in order to give it a "higher" and potentially constitutional significance within the framework of the European integration, but in practice the phrase retains more of a symbolic than a practical significance, with limited obligations on the part of Member States actively to pursue any given aspect of the putative "ever closer union".
The principle of primacy of European Union (EU) law has had a bumpy ride during the last decade. Even if previously never unreservedly accepted by the courts of most Member States, the modus vivendi between EU law and national constitutional orders before 2012 was one of pragmatic acceptance of EU law primacy in individual cases, conditional upon varieties of national reservations of "as long as". The last decade has seen the erosion of that understanding, with several national courts triggering either the ultra vires review of Union measures or asserting more robust reservations towards EU law with reference to their national constitutional identity. This article revisits not only the bifurcated narrative of EU normative ambition and national constitutional realities but equally speculates on what might the rise of judicial unilateralism mean for the principle of primacy of EU law.
This article seeks to present a vision of hope for the role of law in European integration by arguing that the limits of European Union (EU) integration have not been reached, but the new geo-political realities of the 21st century demonstrate that the limits of integration via a euro-centric approach to EU law have indeed been reached. It starts from the premise that European integration has historically been driven by a euro-centric worldview which was entrenched in the Treaty of Rome when the imperial founder states created the idea of associationism to collectively perpetuate colonialism. However, the global challenges facing Europe and the world cannot be tackled with these euro-centric norms. Using decolonial theory, the article then identifies ongoing coloniality in EU law before applying concepts from decolonial theory-in particular the concept of conviviality-to suggest how EU law can be re-imagined to overcome current limitations and propose a new worldview for EU integration. I conclude that decolonial theory can help the EU reimagine the use of law to furrow a different pathway in European integration that leads it closer to being the positive force in the world that it seeks to be.
Mutual trust is an indispensable component of the European Union (EU) legal order. It manifests as both a generative principle moulding the nature of and obligations produced by the EU legal order and a functional principle allowing and organising cross-border flow and cooperation in the absence of harmonisation at Union level. In that light, mutual trust is usually discussed in terms of the horizonal relations between EU Member States themselves. Differently, this paper highlights the conception and incremental importance of vertical mutual trust in EU law. It considers what both mutual and trust mean for how the vertical relationship between the Union and its Member States is structured. It is shown that, in some respects, the vertical and horizontal dimensions of mutual trust work together in complementary ways. In other instances, the vertical dimension has sharper edges and sets obligations in a more hierarchical way that challenges more intuitive conceptions of both trust and mutuality. Overall, it is shown that, like horizontal mutual trust, vertical mutual trust propels the functioning of the Union in situations of gap or ambiguity. It has generative properties too. Grounded in the reality of interdependency, it expresses the voluntarily assumed obligations of Union membership and illuminates the institutional trustworthiness flowing from the Member States to the Union and from the Union to the Member States so that agreed objectives can indeed be achieved.
Direct effect is considered an essential characteristic of European Union (EU) law, and its importance within the Unions' legal system is undeniable. Like EU law itself, it is constantly evolving. In terms of its content, the concept has evolved from the rather narrow notion of "conferring rights" to the broader notion of "invocability" for a wide range of purposes, including controlling the use of discretion by Member States. It is a context-related concept. Examining the conditions for direct effect, which have become less strict over time, clarifies that direct effect is a matter of the justiciability of the provisions in question. While individuals often benefit from direct effect, Union law provisions may also impose obligations on them. The most significant exception in this regard is the denial of the horizontal direct effect of directives. In order to overcome this limitation of the effective application of directives, the Court has developed various techniques which, however, pose difficulties for non-specialised legal practice. This article discusses the most important aspects of the evolution of the doctrine of direct effect, including recent developments and ongoing or emerging issues.
The view proposed in this contribution is that autonomy does not fit well with primacy and direct effect in the category of "foundational doctrines" of the European Union (EU) legal order. Its role as a distinct legal norm is almost non-existent at the internal level, that is, in constructing the legal relationship between the EU legal order and the national legal orders of the Member States. By contrast, autonomy is an important doctrine in EU external relations law, informing the European Court of Justices' (ECJs') case law that deals with the conditions under which the European Union can enter international law obligations or is bound by them. Also there, however, it usually operates in the background, as a generic norm that provides the Court with arguments in the defence of the essential characteristics of the EU legal order against threats that originate from the EUs' action on the international scene.
This article argues that, despite the Treaty assertion that democracy is a foundational value of the European Union (EU), the EU has had a complex and somewhat ambivalent relationship with liberal democracy since its inception. Democracy was absent from the founding Treaties and was for quite some time treated as a matter for member states rather than for the Union itself. And although references to democracy were gradually introduced from the ]990s onward, EU action at that stage was focused primarily on rights protection, and on democratisation in the context of external policy and accession, rather than on strengthening democratic practices within the Union. The article traces several phases in the EUs' democratic trajectory, culminating in the current period which has been marked by a steep rise in illiberal and authoritarian movements within the EU, and by external interference into EU democratic practices. While the EU has recently adopted an array of new initiatives to defend democracy, these efforts remain constrained and shaped by various legal, political and competence limitations. To act as a credible defender of liberal democracy, the EU needs to develop a more coherent and integrated democratic strategy that strengthens institutions, safeguards national democratic processes, and counters authoritarian threats from within.
This article examines the principle of solidarity in the European Union (EU) legal order by tracing the evolving contours of its meaning and operation in recent and emerging jurisprudence. It argues that interpreting solidarity through the lens of its underlying drivers (functional, axiological and identity based) offers a conceptually coherent account of its normative scope and boundaries. Solidarity has largely assumed an instrumental character, oriented towards securing the effective operation and systemic stability of the Union and its legal architecture. Yet the principle now stands at a transformative juncture, where a functional rationale no longer suffices to explain how it takes effect. Through instances that defy a purely instrumental logic, the article reconceptualises solidarity as a bearer of shared values and collective identity. This reframing is not only a matter of candour but indispensable for conceptual clarity and for engaging more directly with the constitutional stakes of sovereignty and belonging.
The present article focuses on the scope of protection afforded by art.49(1) of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, as interpreted by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in the Taricco line of cases, in relation to limitation rules for criminal liability. It argues that the ECJs' reasoning in those cases leaves room for further critical analysis, in particular as regards its coherence with the ECJs' case law concerning the nature and function of rules on limitation periods and their interaction with the fundamental principle of legal certainty.
In IK v KfH (C-184/22 and C-185/22) the European Court of Justice (ECJ) was faced with a seemingly novel scenario as to whether they could find indirect sex discrimination when women were the majority in both the advantaged and disadvantaged groups. While the Court and Advocate General (AG) agreed on their answer to the question, their reasoning differed substantially. Notably, the Court declined the opportunity to clarify and progress European Union anti-discrimination law. This analysis considers three points in particular. First, the Courts' reasoning, which was regrettable for its failure to give clear guidance on statistical evidence in cases of indirect discrimination. Second, the AGs' radical approach to seeing particular disadvantage based on segmenting the protected group. Third, the Courts' guidance on VL, which restricts its scope of application and makes it harder to reconcile with WABE. The analysis concludes that there is more work for the Court to do to see complex disadvantage.
The European Parliament possesses strong powers of scrutiny in the conclusion of international agreements, including the right to be fully informed at all stages of the procedure. Since 2016, the European Commission and the Council of the European Union (EU) have concluded several non-binding readmission arrangements not subject to the same legal guarantees. This article empirically examines an underexplored aspect of informalisation: its practical effects on the Parliaments' scrutiny and power of control over readmission policy. The article shows that informalisation has weakened the Parliaments' scrutiny and control over readmission policy but not as strongly as the Parliaments' formal exclusion from the conclusion of readmission arrangements suggests. The article further demonstrates that the Parliaments' access to information under informal arrangements does not dramatically differ from its already rather limited role in formal agreements. More broadly, the article demonstrates the importance of examining how inter-institutional practices have shaped actual powers in a policy field.
Using legal geography, as well as insights from socio-legal studies, we want to consider how the European Union (EU) legal regime on free movement in art.45 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), and specifically the Workers' Regulation 492/2011, operates in practice in the case of low paid EU migrant workers. We argue that while the rules on free movement facilitate (and in the case of movement to the United Kingdom (UK) facilitated) the movement, the actual impact of those rules on the day-to-day experience of EU migrant workers is relatively small and, for what may be structural reasons, fail to deliver on the expectations of the drafters, namely that free movement be exercised in "freedom and dignity", and that "equality of treatment be ensured in fact and in law in respect of all matters relating to the actual pursuit of activities as employed persons". We argue that this is because the type of free movement the drafters had in mind-by the migrant worker travelling alone or with a family to seek a job or to take up one already offered-does not reflect the reality of low skilled EU migration where (often unregulated) agents in the home state recruit large numbers of people, often for a fee, to work in factories in the host state, offering poor quality accommodation as part of the employment package. We wish to argue that aspects of Regulation 492/2011 need to be reconsidered in the light of the realities experienced by (low paid) EU migrant workers, drawing on concepts of dignity in the Charter of Fundamental Rights and the broader principles in the Pillar of Social Rights to create an active duty on the part of local authorities to be more interventionist.
