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.

8. Mai 2025

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It’s solidarity, stupid!

Few cases have triggered as stark reactions as Commission v Malta. In the ruling’s aftermath, many legal scholars and practitioners were quick to discard the decision. While the ruling is bold, innovative, and goes far beyond established precedent, the Court’s reasoning remains brief, ambiguous, in some parts even obscure and sibylline. Yet, most of the Court’s “great” judgments have left room for interpretation. No doubt, Commission v Malta will be subject to many, very different, affirmative or critical interpretations. In the following, I will provide one – of several possible! – readings, which seeks to square the ruling with constitutional reasoning.

7. Mai 2025

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Longing for Safety before the European Court of Justice

On 10 April 2025, Advocate General de la Tour delivered his Advisory Opinion in the joined cases Alace and Canpelli dealing with the powers of Italy – and, by extension, other EU Member States – to legislate on what constitutes a “safe third country” and a “safe country of origin”. The AG confirmed that Italy can list a third country as “safe” when it is “generally” deemed as such, provided that this designation is compliant with EU law. This piece discusses how the human rights of applicants seeking international protection are likely to be hindered by this approach.

7. Mai 2025

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The Silent Engine of European Citizenship

In its ruling on 29 April 2025 in Case C-181/23 Commission v Malta, the Grand Chamber held that Malta’s investor citizenship scheme, which grants Maltese nationality in exchange for predetermined payments or investments, was contrary to EU law. Although the judgment has been criticised (perhaps not without reason) for its lack of doctrinal foundation, it does demonstrate that the EU principle of mutual trust has constitutional character and is normatively capable of challenging national administrative mechanisms, such as the Maltese naturalisation scheme, that are incompatible with the values in Art. 2 TEU.

7. Mai 2025

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The »Crisis of Critique« in EU Law

Critique has become one of the latest buzzwords in EU legal studies. Who, after all, would not want to be identified as a critical scholar if the danger is that one’s work might otherwise be labelled as reactionary, unsophisticated, naïve or whatever other signifier could be used to demolish the value of scholarly enterprise? But the down-side of this growing interest in being critical as an EU law scholar is that the idea of critique itself is in danger of becoming inflated.

7. Mai 2025

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Ongoing Controversies over Methods in EU Law

Since the publication of last year’s symposium “Controversies over Methods in EU Law”, methodological issues are still pervading contemporary debates in EU law. These ongoing controversies over methods in EU law reflect a broader rethinking of the discipline, influenced by multiple crises in the European Union. These crises have led scholars to question their relationship with the European institutions, which have been central to the development of the core concepts of EU law and of EU law as a disciplinary field.

7. Mai 2025

Zwischen Deutung und Hoheit

Bei der konstituierenden Sitzung des neu gewählten Bundestags trug die Abgeordnete Cansin Köktürk eine „Kufiya“ um den Hals geknotet. Dagegen haben sich drei Abgeordnete an Bundestagspräsidentin Julia Klöckner gewandt. Verletzt die Kufiya die Geschäftsordnung des Bundestages und die Würde des Hauses? Das Grundgesetz sagt dazu nichts. Deshalb werden entsprechende Fälle über einzelfallbezogene Ordnungsmaßnahmen gelöst. Dabei kann sich der Maßstab jedoch erheblich unterscheiden, je nachdem, welche Bedeutung dem Symbol zugeschrieben werden kann. Es bedarf deshalb einer grundlegenden Auseinandersetzung mit der juristischen Methodik der Symboldeutung.

6. Mai 2025

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Anatomy of a Fall

On 11 February 2025, the Commission published its 2025 work programme and revealed the likely withdrawal of the Proposal for an Artificial Intelligence Liability Directive (‘AILD proposal’), citing “no foreseeable agreement” among Member States. This blog post highlights the proposed AILD’s main merits and shortcomings and it explores the implications of its likely withdrawal for EU tech regulation by clarifying the interplay between AI liability rules, the AI Act, and the PLD.

6. Mai 2025

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What is Citizenship For?

Last week, the CJEU declared Malta’s citizenship for investment scheme incompatible with EU law. Setting aside the evidently highly questionable quality and defensibility of the Court’s legal reasoning, the decision clearly casts Union citizenship as a status constituted by meanings and norms specific to the European Union as a normative legal project. What are we to make of this conception of citizenship, and its use by the Court to strike down citizenship for investment schemes?

6. Mai 2025

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Trump 2.0 as ›Dual State‘?

Donald Trump’s radicalized efforts to transform US constitutional democracy into personalized executive-centered rule have again generated a predictable avalanche of invocations of Carl Schmitt. Less predictably, recent political commentators have turned to one of Schmitt’s contemporary critics, the mid-century socialist jurist and political scientist, Ernst Fraenkel, claiming that his account of the Nazi “dual state,” in which rule-based normative and discretionary prerogative legal spheres uneasily coexisted, provides a useful template for making sense of Trump 2.0’s highly selective rendition of legal fidelity.

6. Mai 2025

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