Event overview
Talk on the future of EU citizenship by Professor Massimo La Torre, School of Law, Hull University
My paper is structured in three sections. In the first I will introduce a debate about the form of modern State along the lines of a “conditional” and “purposive” programme.
This debate was especially acute in the late Seventies and Eighties, and gave rise to an alternative, presented as “responsive” or “reflective”. However, and this is my point in this first section, this alternative, under conditions of globalisation and neo-liberal hegemony, has deviated from its previous aims and has been used to give new force to a reshaping of the political order that is indeed very far away from being “responsive”. This sort of development has been taking place especially within the discourse of EU legal doctrine.
In the second section, I will offer a view of the normative evolution of EU institutions. In particular, I will contend that we have assisted a strong “constitutionalization” of the EU Treaties, especially of its so called “four freedoms”.
This development has been dramatized in the emergency situation arising from the financial crisis around the European Monetary Union, and this new sort of (supranational) constitutionalism, by not being supported by an equivalent supranational projection of democratic deliberation, puts at risk the practice of member States as an arena of robust public discourse and as a locus for the re-allocation and re-distribution of resources wealth, and rights among citizens.
In my third and final section I will focus on the European Citizenship as layed down in the EU Treaties and as concretely shaped by European Courts. My contention here will be that this supranational citizenship is very much a creature of the Spirit of Time and its “liquidity”. It is, if you like, more like being the holder of a credit card, or a visitor to a shopping center, a traveller at a holiday resort, than a committed member of a civil society.
Dates & times
Date | Time | Add to calendar |
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17 Nov 2016 | 6:00pm - 8:00pm |
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