New Enforcement: Putting EU Law into Practice (LAW-DS-NEWENF-24)

LAW-DS-NEWENF-24

Description

This course focuses on the evolution of EU law and policy enforcement vis-à-vis the current challenges the European Union is facing. In the last few years, the EU has been shaken by existential crises, such as Brexit, the migration crisis, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the Russian aggression on Ukraine. At the same time, the green and digital transitions are gradually transforming the European economic and social model. These historical challenges required innovative policy solutions that in turn brought about the need for adequate forms of enforcement.

In this course we will focus on these forms. What are their characteristics? Have they been newly developed or are they established tools that are being used in new ways?

Enforcement is about putting EU law and policies into practice. One may perceive EU law as an abstract body of principles and rules implemented exclusively in European and national courts. In fact, the EU's legal and institutional order relies on a complex panoply of instruments and governance structures to pursue its principles and policy objectives. The dimension of enforcement makes it possible to grasp the reality of EU law and raises crucial questions regarding the effectiveness, accountability, and coherence of EU public action.

Throughout three sessions, the course will focus on the enforcement in the EU and its main evolutions vis-à-vis these recent challenges. In the first session, we will approach enforcement in a conceptual dimension before focusing on selected enforcement instruments. Three core issues will be analysed:

1. Digital: Enforcement in the digital sphere is particularly problematic. The unprecedented power imbalance between private and public actors and fast-paced innovation require original solutions to implement EU law and policies. In the last few years, the EU developed an advanced regulatory framework capable of facing these challenges, whose benefits and pitfalls will be analysed throughout this session.
2. Security: In the last few years, the EU turned out to face existential challenges vis-à-vis climate deterioration, rising geopolitical tensions, and the pandemic. Security has become a crucial objective across several areas of EU law and policy-making, such as trade, industrial policy, and emergency response. In this session, we will analyse the new forms of enforcement related to security and the legal challenges they bring about in terms of efficiency, accountability, and legitimacy of EU action.
3. Money: In a new development, the EU increasingly uses money to enforce its law and policy priorities. By linking the disbursement of funds to behavior, a system has been developed that rewards compliance while sanctioning non-compliance. The session will ask whether we witness a new mode of “enforcement through money”. To this end, we will delve into the legal framework of this phenomenon using different examples from a range of areas of EU law.