Understanding EU legal integration/disintegration: in search of new perspectives

This report summarises the UACES/ James Madison Trust EUFutures Research Network Launch Workshop entitled ‘Understanding legal integration/disintegration: in search of new perspectives’. The event consisted of four panels on ‘Interdisciplinary research on EU law’, ‘Research Methods and EU law’, ‘Understanding the EU’s integration processes’ and ‘Understanding EU law through soft law, discourse, ideas & beliefs’, respectively. The future of EU legal integration is at a significant juncture with the departure of the UK, substantial rule of law challenges, internal and external crises, and an increasingly apathetic multilateral legal order. There is increased recognition amongst EU lawyers, who have historically limited themselves to doctrinal analysis and legal hermeneutics, that methodology plays an essential role in order to understand EU integration and shape its future. The question remains though how to connect interdisciplinary approaches to EU law, policy and politics. How should EU law (as an object) be studied? What are the respective merits of each discipline (political science, sociology, economy, history) in explaining the way EU law is created, applied, used, transformed in the process of EU integration? What is the added value of bringing together different approaches to law? In particular, how can EU law (as an academic discipline) open itself up to the methods of the social sciences and what, in return, can law offer to our understanding of EU studies more widely? In order to answer these questions, EUFutures brings together scholars for this workshop to: reflect on the future methodological direction(s) of EU law and EU integration and consider both how law could open itself up to methodologies from other disciplines, and what legal analysis could offer political, economic and historical approaches

Torn between institutionalisation and judicialisation: the demise of the EU-US privacy shield

This paper articulates the relationship between institutionalisation and judicialisation in a core area of EU global action - transatlantic data transfer and protection in the Privacy Shield. In the case of an emerging legal regime, like the EU-US regime of data transfer, only a strong process of institutionalisation can lead to “positive” judicialisation – enhancing the regime by guaranteeing its proper implementation – while a weak process of institutionalisation has the potential to challenge the new legal regime, though conflicts of law and jurisdictions, and thus lead to “negative” judicialisation. The institutionalisation of the Privacy Shield has been created through (negative) judicialisation initially of the Safe Harbour Agreement. We argue overall that the Safe Harbour can be seen as a weak institutionalisation giving rise to negative judicialisation (invalidation) and leading to the Privacy Shield. Institutionalisation has not put an end to judicialisation, quite the contrary: the Privacy Shield was even more subjected to legal attacks, indirectly but also directly through annulment procedures. The Privacy Shield was consistently threatened by invalidation at the CJEU, while institutionalisation was weak. Therefore, it was unlikely that a weak institutionalisation of the EU-US framework could prevent negative judicialisation

The Council of Europe's Approach towards Ageism

In this chapter, I examine the degree of interest in ageism among Council of Europe members, and the degree of interest in its elimination through the Council of Europe forum. I also examine the interpretation of the concept of ageism by various Council of Europe institutions. Finally, I explore the Council’s willingness and ability to eliminate or at least mitigate ageism effect

The state of EU sports law: lessons from UEFA’s ‘Financial Fair Play’ regulations

The EU’s sporting competence derives from the legal norm, established by the European Court of Justice, that requires that ‘sporting rules’ of sports governing bodies which have an economic impact and which breach the fundamental freedoms or competition law can only be justified if shown to be a proportionate response to an inherent need in the sport. However, the certainty of this norm is undermined by the EU’s subsequent Treaty competence for sport, a political compromise, which is ambiguous, and which in due course generated the European Commission’s sports policy, with its emphasis on governance and social dialogue. Consequently, EU sports law has evolved into ‘soft law’ which is far from coherent. This is demonstrated in the tolerance shown for certain of UEFA’s ‘sporting rules’, notably its Financial Fair Play Regulations, which restrict competition and lack proportionality yet have not attracted sanction from the European Commission (a sports law policy which could be characterised as not even constituting soft law but delegalisation)

Financing Common Security and Defence Policy operations: explaining change and inertia in a fragmented and flexible structure

International audienceThe financing of Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) operations questions the capacity of the European Union (EU) to contribute to crisis management. Instead of a single mechanism that would be used for all kinds of missions, different mechanisms are applied, depending on the objective and nature of the operation. The aim of this article is to explain change and inertia in the way these operations are funded. The first section is dedicated to the presentation of the legal framework and its characterization as a fragmented and flexible structure. It allows for identifying the changes that have affected the financing of EU operational activities abroad. The main problems and challenges in financing CSDP operations are dealt with in the second section. The third section explains: (1) why changes have occurred in some areas and (2) why inertia has prevailed in other areas in spite of the problems previously identified. Three main explanations are tested. Rules and practices in financing CSDP operations (1) result from operational needs, (2) are influenced by proactive supranational institutions and (3) are triggered by the Member States. These three explanations are not mutually exclusive. They all contribute to the understanding of CSDP operations, but the relative importance of each factor depends on the operations at hand. Generally, the second factor is at play in the case of civilian operations, while the third one prevails with regard to military operations. The first factor brings a complementary explanation to both kinds of operations

The Future of the EU-US Privacy Shield

The invalidation of the Privacy Shield has shown how serious the CJEU was with regards to the protection of EU citizens’ data. It may not have created a legal vacuum, the GDPR offering different alternative possibilities including standard contractual clauses and binding corporate rules. But it certainly has opened a phase of uncertainties and legal complexity which is not favourable to a smooth and continuous flow of data across the Atlantic. In this chapter we use soft law, defined as an act comprising a soft dimension with regard to either the obligation or the enforcement mechanism. We argued that the adequacy Decision of the Commission -a hard law act- suffers from a major weakness derived from the softness of the guarantees provided by the US government. Changes proposed resulting in the hardening of EU-US arrangements through a new Framework and with a Review Court, may dramatically evolve the partnership. Apart from the hardening of EU-US arrangements, the strengthening of US domestic rules on data protection could also contribute to the securing of transatlantic data flows through hard law legalisation line with the CJEU vision

The Court of Justice of the European Union, conflicts of sovereignty and the EMU crisis

International audienceThe aim of this article is to analyse the position of the Court of Justice of the EU with regard to the conflicts of sovereignty that emerged during and in the aftermath of the EMU crisis. The economic and financial crisis increased legal integration and therefore led to more rule of law. This context opened the possibility for plaintiffs to call upon the CJEU. The aim of this article is to analyse the Court rulings on this matter since the beginning of the economic and financial crisis in 2008: does the Court defend supranational sovereignty or does it take national sovereignty concerns into account? To what extent do the Court’s rulings reflect parliamentary and popular sovereignty? Based on a conceptual framework combining a legal and a political science approach, the aim is to analyse which type of sovereignty the Court defends and when