This panel seeks to initiate a socio-legal/interdisciplinary discourse on the question whether and in how far a Europe of Rights may enhance or destabilise the EU’s legitimacy. This debate links to several contestations of the European Union, including but not limited to the critique of the Court’s activism, the challenges related to a litigation culture and alleged overconstitutionalisation, contestations of the EU’s legitimacy in citizens’ perceptions and otherwise. We endeavour to add a new stream to these debates focusing on the relevance of rights for the legitimation of the European Union. While “integration through law” may have allowed theorising the role of law in the EU’s construction in the 1980s and beyond, we consider that recent challenges for the European Union and for the international order at large threaten the continued value of that discourse. Challenges such as socio-economic crises, resulting threats to liberal democracy, regional and global instability and increasing migration streams result in increasing polarisation of societies. At the same time, the very success of the EU’s integration endeavours also leads to heightened politicization of its activities. Shifting the focus from integration through law to integration through rights opens the debate in two new dimensions. First, rights discourses go beyond the disciplines of law and political science, as witnessed by paradigms such as a culture of rights, publications on the sociology of rights, and the role of rights in social movement studies. Second, theorising the contribution or lack thereof of rights to European integration opens new avenues of critique of the EU integration processes within and beyond its borders. The papers assembled for this panel explore the impossibility of integration through rights, the external dimension of the endeavour, the contrast in a Europe of Rights between the ECJ and the ECtHR when it comes to protecting the rights of non-EU citizens, and a socio-legal conception of legitimation through rights.

This paper aims to analyse the process of European integration within the wider European human rights system, adopting the ‘integration through rights’ lens. Through an analysis of the standard of protection of Third Country Nationals (TCNs) under EU law as compared to the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) regime, the paper explores the role that the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) play in the process of integration. The two European Courts belong to two different albeit overlapping families of European nations. The CJEU was not originally designed to protect human rights, which was the case of the ECtHR. Both Courts nevertheless significantly contribute to European integration. The article aims to extrapolate legal insights to bridge the gap that separates the market view from the human rights approach, contributing to the theoretical debate on how European rights of non-EU citizens relate to integration. Through a legalistic analysis of the CJEU and ECtHR case-law, the article addresses broader normative implications for EU law, questioning whether the human rights approach justifies ‘special treatment’ of EU nationals as compared to TCNs based on the ‘special legal order’ created by the EU. Although the two systems protect, to a certain extent, TCNs from differential treatment, there are divergences in scope, and this raises a number of questions in relation to the legitimacy of the EU integration process as a whole.

key words: Integration, Fundamental Rights, Equality, Third Country Nationals

Back in 2018 in an article on the resilience of rights and European integration we argued that the spill-over of rights was driven by the ‘Ever Closer Union’ clause, enshrined in Article 1(2) TEU. The observed spill-over of rights was seen as catalysator of European integration. The clause’s core values (Unity, Diversity and Transparency) were institutionalized by the Courts’ adjudication on individual rights supported by the principle of proportionality, standing at the apex of a complex network of EU legal principles. This interaction between principles and rights demonstrated the telos of the European integration as a symbiosis of unity and diversity. These are not mutually exclusive: effectiveness of EU law can give way to Member States’ interests, if needed. At the same time, the integrational process is not halted by spill-back of rights. Rights in the EU can be transmitted via other channels within the EU legal order such as the rule of law that in its turn underlines rights’ flexibility and resilience in the EU constitutional matrix. Since 2018, however, the EU has been experiencing several challenges, including the rule of law crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, a new economic recession, the war in Ukraine. Have the internal logic of the rights and the concomitant functional logic of the Court altered as a result of these? This contribution attempts to address this question by analyzing the recent ‘rights’-related developments in the case law of the Court in the fields of internal market, citizenship and EU fundamental rights.

This paper examines the role of legal mobilization in shaping EU foreign policy, and discusses normative questions attached to it. Legal mobilization refers to the use of legal strategies and tools to advance social or political goals. It can take place both in and outside courts, that is trough litigation and other means (such as lobbying, advocacy, or other kinds of campaigns). The focus will be on the uses of EU law (or, more precisely, EU rights) in third countries (excluding those covered by the European Neighbourhood Policy). The discussion will focus on the factors that enable or inhibit legal mobilization, as well as on the desirability of these strategies for the achievement of diverse goals (increasing the perception of the EU's legitimacy in third countries, protecting the objective interests of citizens in third countries, and so on). The element of socio-legal analysis resides in the examination of the social and political context in which legal mobilization takes place: who activates EU rights in third countries, under what conditions, and influenced by what factors (regime, knowledge of EU law, economic conditions, and so on).

The paper builds on the work carried out in the context of the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence on EU integration and citizens' rights at University College Cork, presenting, and expanding upon, key insights gained by collective exploration of the theme of legal mobilization in EU external affairs.

This paper examines the potential of EU-derived rights to enhance EU legitimacy by focusing on how citizens can engage with the EU and their fellow citizens by making use of rights created by the EU (EU-derived rights). EU-derived rights include Treaty rights, rights in the Charter of Fundamental Rights for the European Union (CFREU), and also rights created through harmonisation, for example through directives. With the doctrines of direct effect and primacy, EU-derived rights have the capacity to be activated through litigation. While litigation is essential to activating rights, this paper reflects on the link between political and legal opportunity structures in order to gage prospects created by EU-derived rights from a citizen’s perspective. Instead of focusing only on legalistic aspects such as judicial enforcement, it considers the relevance of EU-derived rights for interactions beyond the court room in societies in the European Union and beyond. Relying on a socio-legal perspective of legitimacy, this paper examines how EU-derived rights are perceived in practice via processes such as citizens’ interaction with each other and the EU, as well as by substantive gains of citizens from their effectuation in political and societal discourse. The discussion focuses on what effective activation of EU-derived rights can contribute to the EU’s legitimacy. This paper builds on the work of Jean Monnet Centre for Excellence for European Integration and citizens’ rights.