Thema: Europarecht

EU-Verfassungsrecht, verfassungsrechtlicher Rahmen der europäischen Integration und Mehrebenenverfassungsrecht. Umfasst EU-Institutionenrecht, Grundfreiheiten, EU-Grundrechte, verfassungsrechtliche Aspekte der EU-Mitgliedschaft und das Verhältnis zwischen EU-Recht und nationalen Verfassungsordnungen.

Animal Law Jurisprudence in the EU and Beyond

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Animals have largely been left out in EU law scholarship and environmental law studies. The role of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights has not been discussed to any greater extent. In this symposium, we discuss the pros and cons of the EU Charter for securing sufficient animal protection in the Member States. More specifically, the contributions in this symposium explore a number of questions such as that of the legal standing of animals and animal rights in the context of the EU, and reflecting on the relationship between animal rights and the EU.

30. Juni 2025

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In the End… Who Cares?

On 3 June 2025, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Justice delivered its judgment on the Kinsa-Case. At the core of the matter were the criminal charges of a third-country national for the facilitation of unauthorized entry of two minors in the territory of an EU Member State. With this ruling, the Court takes an important step towards the de-criminalization of care for migrant children who are seeking international protection. However, the Grand Chamber’s reasoning offers limited considerations on the relevant links between “actual care”, humanitarian assistance, and migrant children’s rights. This shortcoming may ultimately curb protection standards of migrant children in future cases

30. Juni 2025

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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.

27. Juni 2025

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The European Union’s Fantastical Constitution

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Recently, von Bogdandy and Spieker decided to boldly go where not even they had dared to go before. To overcome the possible Hungarian veto on prolonging EU sanctions against Russia, they propose that the explicit requirement in Article 31(1) TEU for such decisions to be taken by the Council acting unanimously should be overcome on the basis of Article 2 TEU. In their view, a Hungarian veto against further sanctions would violate the value of solidarity and the Hungarian vote should therefore not count. We argue that this would launch us into a whole new, and in our view, dangerous galaxy.

27. Juni 2025

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The Return of Golden Shares and Global Politics

The Trump Administration just announced that the Japanese steel giant Nippon Steel has granted it a powerful “golden share” in U.S. Steel as a condition for its acquisition of this major US-American steel manufacturer. While the EU has largely constrained the use of such instruments under internal market law, the US now appears willing to deploy them as symbols of industrial revival and national strength. In its response to the increasing global (geo)economic competition, the EU and its member states should resist this trend and instead refine targeted FDI screening mechanisms to reconcile national security with internal market integrity.

26. Juni 2025

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Rethinking Article 2 TEU

The recent Opinion of Advocate General (AG) Ćapeta in Case C 769/22 European Commission v Hungary marks a key moment in the evolving case law on Article 2 TEU. The case concerns Hungary’s controversial 2021 legislation restricting access to content portraying or promoting LGBTI identities. This analysis traces how recent ECJ rulings have prepared the ground for this development and examines the Opinion’s implications for the future enforcement of the EU’s constitutional identity.

20. Juni 2025

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When Failure Succeeds and Success Fails

Despite its modest uptake since its inception in 2012, the European Citizens' Initiative (ECI) has become the subject of several cases before the Court of Justice of the EU. The ECI is the world's first and only instrument of direct transnational democracy, allowing a group of at least seven European citizens from seven different EU member states to request that the Union take new action. The growing legal challenges around successful but ineffective ECIs reflect a fundamental mismatch between constitutional recognition of participatory democracy and institutional realities.

19. Juni 2025

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Beyond Legal Restoration

A recently published proposal by former Constitutional Court judge Béla Pokol suggests introducing a new emergency regime designed to defend Hungary’s illiberal system against potential re-democratization efforts by a future government. Together with international criticism of Poland’s judicial reform in its process of democratic renewal, this provokes a profound reckoning: traditional legal formalism may no longer serve the needs of constitutional recovery. It is time for a post-formalist approach to democratic reconstruction.

17. Juni 2025

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Whose Values?

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Value-based reasoning features prominently in CJEU case law, most recently in AG Ćapeta’s opinion in Commission v. Hungary. However, what is treated as absolute within the Union turns flexible and conditional in cases concerning asylum, integration, as well as anti-discrimination. A closer look at the “feminist” cases (WS, K and L, and AH and FN) reveals how “Western values”-centred reasoning is deployed at the Member State level and re-elaborated by the CJEU as the fundamental value of gender equality – opening the door to ideological reinterpretations.

16. Juni 2025

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Somewhere Over The Rainbow

On 5 June 2025, Advocate General Ćapeta issued her Opinion in Commission v. Hungary, a landmark ECJ case on Hungary’s “anti-LGBTIQ” law. While the law is overtly discriminatory, the Commission framed its case around internal market rules, Charter rights, and Article 2 TEU values. While this might seem curious, I argue this reflects a strategic “camouflaging” of non-discrimination claims to better protect LGBTIQ rights within the limits of current EU anti-discrimination and equality law.

11. Juni 2025

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