Law of the European Union
Full course description
The Law of the European Union is a mandatory course in the second year European Law School bachelor programme. It builds upon and complements the International and European law course of the first year. It also links back to the EU law elements discussed in the Constitutional Law course and further lays the foundation for the third-year elective courses European law of the programme.
The objective is to provide students with an in-depth understanding of the main features of the law of the European Union. The course builds on and intends to deepen and broaden the knowledge of EU institutional law that students have acquired in the course International and European Law in the first year. It furthermore introduces the students to EU policies and herewith focuses on EU substantive law. The course adopts an integrated approach to EU law by connecting institutional and substantive issues of EU law in lectures and tutorials. The course is structured around the European Union objectives laid down in Article 3 TEU and examines how the EU as a legal and regulatory entity can achieve the Union’s economic objectives to create an internal market as well as its broader, more political and economic objectives of an area of freedom, security and justice and an economic and monetary union. It further will reflect on the values of the EU and EU policies towards the wider world.
Course objectives
By the end of the course students will be able to:
- identify, analyse, and use the sources of European Union law;
- analyse and assess the role of different actors (institutions, individuals, companies, etc) in the EU legal system;
- critically evaluate EU law law-making rules and processes, including examining the Union’s intergovernmental facets and compare them with the EU’s supranational features;
- examine and appraise how EU law operates in selected substantive areas, how law-making powers have been used in those areas, and which are the legal implications of the main EU rules and principles in those policy fields;
- compare and connect the institutional and substantive elements of EU law and analyse how those components interact;
- examine critically and apply the fundamental principles on the effect of EU law in domestic legal systems and evaluate the rules on judicial remedies for violations of EU law at national or EU level and whether they strike the appropriate balance between the protection of individuals and the balance of powers in the multilevel legal system;
- analyse and assess the main objectives of the EU legal and political order in their historical and societal context, considering the evolution of the EU from a market-based construction that is developing into a political Union through the expansion of the EU’s competences and of the scope of EU law.
Prerequisites
Course Introduction to International and European Law (IER1201)
Recommended reading
Paul Craig and Grainne De Burca, EU law, Oxford University, 8th edition 2024.