Why Is It So Important to Study EU Law? | Paul Craig

Summary

The significance of studying EU law has dramatically increased over the past decades as it plays a crucial role in shaping domestic legal frameworks across a broad spectrum of areas such as tax, competition, and discrimination law. Professor Paul Craig explains how the Lisbon Treaty has impacted the division of powers within EU institutions and the implications of the now legally binding EU Charter of Rights. This legal framework is essential for law students and practitioners as competitions, human rights, and legislative competencies grow ever more intertwined and complex. Understanding these dynamics is crucial for any aspiring lawyer working within or outside the European Union.

Highlights

• EU law is vital as it influences virtually all aspects of domestic law, making knowledge of it indispensable for legal professionals 📚.
• Profound changes in EU legal structures have occurred over the decades, requiring adaptation and understanding of EU institutions 🤝.
• The Lisbon Treaty has altered the power dynamics within EU institutions, impacting legislative processes within the EU 🌐.
• The EU Charter of Rights is now binding, which will likely result in a surge of rights-based legal challenges 🏛️.
• New competencies introduced by the Lisbon Treaty strive to ease member states' concerns over EU legal reach and competence creep 🧭.

Key Takeaways

• EU law significantly impacts almost all areas of domestic law, making it crucial for lawyers to understand 🌍.
• Understanding EU institutions and their unique structures and powers is essential for working in EU law 🏛️.
• The Lisbon Treaty and the EU Charter of Rights have introduced critical changes, influencing legal and human rights debates ⚖️.
• The binding nature of the EU Charter is expected to increase rights-based challenges in courts 🚀.
• Evolving interrelationships between EU law and human rights conventions will shape future legal landscapes ⚠️.

Overview

Studying EU law is more critical than ever due to its pervasive influence over domestic laws, spanning fields from tax to discrimination. Professor Paul Craig succinctly captures why understanding EU law's framework is indispensable for legal practitioners today. It provides the foundation for a vast array of legal proceedings and negotiations, demanding proficiency from any aspiring or practicing lawyer.

The complexities of EU institutions and their division of powers, especially post-Lisbon Treaty, require a deep dive into understanding how they operate distinctly from national systems. The Treaty itself has recalibrated the inter-institutional balance of power, making it a pivotal component of EU law studies.

Lastly, the EU Charter of Rights, now legally binding, is set to have a profound impact on the nature of legal challenges, particularly those involving human rights. These changes highlight the ongoing evolution of EU law and its ability to shape the future of both national and EU-level legislation, making it an exciting field for students and law professionals to engage with.

Why Is It So Important to Study EU Law? | Paul Craig Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 I'm poor create I'm one-half of Craig and a burqa on EU law text cases and materials and we just producing the new edition you when I first started teaching EU York which was intake of breath 1978 at that
• 00:30 - 01:00 time EU law was a little bit adventurous it was regarded a bit like international law that is an exceptional subject which a few practitioners knew about and nobody else really did things have changed really dramatically in the last 30 years the reason why it's so important to study EU law now is there
• 01:00 - 01:30 is almost no part of domestic law which is not affected in a fairly significant way by EU law so whether you're thinking of tax law well social welfare law whether you're thinking of the law contract or commercial law whether you're thinking of the law relating to trade and the movement of goods whether you're thinking about competition law or company law or discrimination law all these areas of law now have an EU
• 01:30 - 02:00 component in that since it's impossible to be a purely domestic lawyer if such a creature existed then they need to be put in the ark or in a museum or something of that kind it's not possible to be a purely domestic lawyer whatever your specialty is you need to know something about EU law so for a student when you're going out there if you want to practice law or move something about law in your later life you have to know
• 02:00 - 02:30 about you law because it's the framework which produces the law relating to all of these different areas any student who comes to EU law for the first time will find a number of things that they have to get used to they have to get use of the idea that there are a set of institutions out there at the EU level which is different from those in their nation-state they have different
• 02:30 - 03:00 names Commission council European Council European Parliament and the division of powers between those institutions is not always as clear as it might be in some nation states and that's something you have to get used to - but that is something which students actually become accustomed to pretty quickly because most of you out there pretty bright and therefore you're gonna get used to this stuff pretty quickly but equally you have to get used to the fact that the European Court of Justice
• 03:00 - 03:30 and the General Court had their own style of reasoning then we're framing decisions and you had to get used to reading decisions given by the European courts and the style of those decisions isn't actually quite the same as that given in domestic court's a further difference which you'll get used to and again it's something actually which is just something that most student get used to really quite quickly is the fact
• 03:30 - 04:00 that the legislation produced by the European communities or the European Union as it now is is often framed slightly differently from domestic statutes so all of these things are just part of the learning curve when you take on this new subject but don't worry about it because you the students are actually going to get to graff are going to be able to grasp these issues rather more quickly than you might initially think
• 04:00 - 04:30 you'll oil is a very large subject so at any one point in time there are always multiple debates going on in EU law and indeed because of you laws a big topic then you'll have debates going on between EU corporate lawyers you'll have debates going on between EU environmental lawyers you'll have debates going on between EU administrative lawyers etc having said
• 04:30 - 05:00 that standing back from where we are now I think that some of the major debates which are going on are these on the one hand you do have debates about what the implications of the Lisbon treaty are going to be how's the Lisbon treaty going to affect the disposition of power both between the EU institutions as it were that the EU level the inter institutional division of power is going
• 05:00 - 05:30 to be affected by Lisbon in a number of ways precisely how it's going to be affected is still being worked out so for example the balance of power between the European Council and the Commission the balance of power between the council and European Council these matters have been worked out and debated another issue which is being debated is the impact of the new provisions about competence on the vertical division of power between the EU and the Member
• 05:30 - 06:00 States one of the aims behind these provisions on competence was to try and quiet and member state fears about competence creep about the fact that the competence of the EU seemed to be expanding with no real limitation so the categories of confidence will put there in order to try and make clearer when the EU could act when it couldn't act and therefore what the reserve powers of the Member States were there are debates going forward about the precise
• 06:00 - 06:30 effectiveness of this new categorization of competence another debate yet again is going to be about the impact of folding the area of freedom security and justice into the main body of the treaty this is going to be really quite dramatic because there are many important provisions in these areas concerned with errors issues such as criminal law Criminal Procedure immigration asylum hot political topics
• 06:30 - 07:00 where the law is difficult and the politics or even more difficult if I can put it that way and the impact of making these legal provisions fully just disabled so that the European Court of Justice is going to have full authority over these areas going to be big changes and there are debates about precisely how those changes are gonna fall out what those changes are going to look
• 07:00 - 07:30 like one final example after 10 years the Charter of Rights of the EU level is now fully binding even before the Lisbon Treaty the Charter was referred to increasingly by litigants by advocates general by the General Court and equally even by the European Court of Justice but Lisbon is significant the Charter is now legally binding in its own right has the same status as the treaties
• 07:30 - 08:00 themselves this is likely to have a significant implication for the kind of cases going before both the European Court of Justice and national courts and there are big debates about the nature of those implications in my view is going to lead to a fairly significant change in the kinds of cases being dealt with both before national courts and the
• 08:00 - 08:30 European Court of Justice so just to link the point I made just a moment ago about the AFS Jay with the area of freedom security and justice with the Charter if you put the two together it's potentially quite explosive in the following sense the area of freedom security injustice is now fully justiciable many of the legal provisions made in those areas dealing with asylum dealing with immigration dealing with
• 08:30 - 09:00 data protection dealing with criminal law Criminal Procedure raise complex and controversial issues concerning human rights people are going to use the Charter both at national level and before the European Court of Justice in order to try and attack the relevant letter e u legislation and vindicate their rights based on the Charter so I think we're in for an exciting time and
• 09:00 - 09:30 there were debates going on about precisely what the concrete implications of this legal intervention will be so is difficult to guess the future a week is a long time in politics three years is even longer having said that it seems to me that one of the significant developments is going to come from the
• 09:30 - 10:00 Charter the EU charter EU Charter has been around for a long time a decade now it was signed and sealed in 2000 agreed to by the Member States but its legal status was unclear until the Lisbon Treaty well asleep the status will not act legally it was not formally binding but it we refer to by the advocates general by the Court of First Instance and by the European Court of Justice having said that the Charter is now a legally
• 10:00 - 10:30 binding under the Lisbon Treaty and it has the same legal status as the treaties now that is going to be significant now some people say won't make any difference because the Charter was merely declaratory of Rights which existed under EU law anyway I don't take that view yes the Charter is it's intended to be declaratory it's written and sold as being declaratory nonetheless the very fact that these
• 10:30 - 11:00 rights are brought together in concrete form in this document called the Charter is I think going to have a very significant impact and people are going to use and rely on charter rights in actions both against the EU institutions and against their Member States when implementing EU law and just to show the force and importance of this the implications of the Charter becoming fully binding are even more forceful if
• 11:00 - 11:30 you link that with one of the other developments made by the lisbon treaty and the development is the fact that the area of freedom security and justice is now fully legally binding and becomes a normal part of EU law so what's the connection between this of the Charter or the connection is this many of the kinds of legal measure which are enacted in that area concerning with asylum or immigration with date protection or
• 11:30 - 12:00 criminal law or Criminal Procedure many of these issues are controversial in human rights terms and people are going to make various kinds of rights based challenge either an EU level or national level against these measures they couldn't do that before they couldn't do that before at all well not in the way that they can now I think therefore you're going to get an explosion if
• 12:00 - 12:30 that's not too big a word but I think it's not I think you're going to get an explosion in right space challenges brought before the European Court of Justice or national courts based on charter rights and if I can add one further point here I think related to this is the fact that under the Lisbon Treaty there's not a power but a duty for the EU to sign up to the European Convention on Human Rights negotiations
• 12:30 - 13:00 to that end already started they've already begun and I think that therefore one of the key issues moving forward over the next three years it's not only the legal implications of the EU Charter itself but the legal implications of the interrelationship between the EU and the European Convention on Human Rights