27 June 2025
Private Wealth, Public Doubt
Public officials having to disclose their private wealth is a powerful anti-corruption tool that led to the imprisonment or dismissal of hundreds of corrupt public officials across Europe. In Romania, this included ministers and a Parliamentary President. Despite this success, the Romanian Constitutional Court now substantially undermined the effectiveness of asset declarations: it declared the online publication of declarations unconstitutional and invalidated the provision on declaring wealth of adult family members of public officials. There are two reasons for other governance-reforming countries not to follow this case law. Continue reading >>
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10 June 2025
What Nawrocki’s Victory Means for Europe
On June 1st, Polish voters rendered a fateful decision in the presidential election. Karol Nawrocki narrowly defeated Rafał Trzaskowski, the pro-European mayor of Warsaw. Nawrocki’s victory carries profound implications for Poland’s domestic trajectory. Moreover, despite what some commentators have argued, the new president might also well pose a threat for the European Union. Continue reading >>05 June 2025
Populism over Principle
As EU officials arrive in Sofia to celebrate Bulgaria’s readiness for euro adoption, nationalist-fueled protests erupt in the streets. The tensions were triggered by President Rumen Radev’s unexpected call for a referendum on whether the country should join the euro on 1 January 2026 – despite Bulgaria having met all convergence criteria after years of effort. Far from a genuine democratic impulse, the move appears to be a populist gamble, trading legal commitments and European credibility for short-term political gain. Continue reading >>15 May 2025
Safe for whom?
The EU’s notion of “safe countries of origin” is on increasingly shaky ground. In a recent Opinion, Advocate General de la Tour suggests that a country can still be deemed safe even when specific groups face serious threats there. This reinterpretation breaks with established case law and risks hollowing out core procedural protections for asylum seekers across Europe. It remains to be seen how this stance will influence the delicate balance between efficient processing and safeguarding fundamental rights. Continue reading >>
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15 May 2025
Law and Political Economy Beyond the State
The study of European Union Law from the perspective of Law and Political Economy (LPE) offers valuable insights from two perspectives. This post shows that on the one hand, LPE as a scholarly movement provides a critical framework for analysing fundamental legal aspects of the EU’s political economy and brings to the debate a much needed renewal of the importance of the critique of the political economy. On the other hand, investigating the EU from a perspective sensitive to LPE analysis is also a potentially enriching challenge for the scholarly movement itself. Continue reading >>
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14 May 2025
Academic Vertigo
What is therefore needed is a much thicker description of the current phase of semantic destabilization. This implies to build a new questionnaire able to grasp the dynamics of contemporary legal controversies allowing to bring historical depth and socio-legal […] While there is certainly a large variety of methodologies able to address this questionnaire, […] I contend however that a socio-genetic approach is better equipped when it comes to unpack the notion of “context” and reconstitute the complex “hermeneutic space” of legal concepts that continuously move back and forth from the legal and the political fields. Continue reading >>
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12 May 2025
Glancing Beyond Europe
On 9 May 1831, a young French aristocrat trained as lawyer arrived in Rhode Island for a nine-months visit to the United States. Officially tasked by the French government with studying the American prison system, his ambition and desire for political and literary fame propelled him to conduct a much broader study of the character of the American Republic. Based on his observations, the young lawyer wrote Democracy in America; a book that holds as much insight about the European Union today as it did about the early American Republic back then. Continue reading >>
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08 May 2025
The Human Factor in EU Law
This post emphasizes the human factor as a critical method of analysis for legal scholars specializing in European Union law. The aim is to critically analyse the evolution of the rules governing the CJEU, shedding light on its composition, organization, and functioning, while also proposing reform initiatives. Some of these reforms prioritize greater transparency within the CJEU. Furthermore, by focusing on the human factor in EU law, this method reveals how individuals are positioned within the institution, helping to identify potential phenomena of invisibility or exclusion in decision-making processes. Continue reading >>
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27 March 2025
Weniger Spielraum als behauptet
Im Januar 2025 versuchte die CDU/CSU-Fraktion mit Stimmen der AfD, FDP und BSW, ihr sogenanntes „Zustrombegrenzungsgesetz“ zu beschließen. Der Gesetzentwurf sah unter anderem vor, den Familiennachzug zu subsidiär Schutzberechtigten vollständig und unbefristet auszusetzen. Zwar scheiterte das Vorhaben, doch nun planen CDU/CSU und SPD laut Sondierungspapier den Familiennachzug zu subsidiär Schutzberechtigten befristet auszusetzen. Wer eine erneute Aussetzung als rechtlich haltbare und politisch sinnvolle Maßnahme darstellt, verkennt die tatsächliche Lage der Betroffenen und ignoriert, dass Visa ohnehin regelmäßig nach § 22 Satz 1 AufenthG zu erteilen wären. Continue reading >>
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21 March 2025
“A Catalyst for European Identity”
Five Questions to Aurore Gaillet Continue reading >>
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