Does Europe's Constitution Stop at the Water's Edge? Law and Policy in the EU's External Relations

Author: Piet Eeckhout, Professor of European Law, Centre of European Law, King's College London, December 2005, 37p. Binding: brochure. ISBN: 9789076871554. Price: €15, $25. Series: Walter van Gerven Lectures (5). Language: English.

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About the Fifth Walter van Gerven Lecture

The lecture examines the external policies of the EU from a perspective of European constitutionalism. It offers an inquiry into the boundaries between law and policy in the diverse and ever expanding field of EU external relations. The main thesis is that, in a globalised world, EU external policies should be strongly predicated on constitutional orthodoxy, as the distinctions between the internal and the external are further collapsing. What is required is democratic and accountable government, subject to the rule of law, and doctrines such as political-question, act-of-state, or acte du gouvernement are out of place in a changing world and in the forward-looking polity which the EU aspires to be.

About the author

Piet Eeckhout is Professor of European Law at King's College London since 1998, and directs the Centre of European Law. He is an associate academic member of Matrix Chambers, London. Before joining King's he held academic positions at the Universities of Ghent and Brussels, and worked in the Chambers of Advocate General Jacobs, European Court of Justice (1994-1998). His academic interests and activities cover many different areas of EU law, including external relations, the internal market, state aid, judicial protection, the constitutionalization process, and fundamental rights protection. He is also very active in the field of international economic law. He is editor of the Yearbook of European Law and is the author of External Relations of the European Union - Legal and Constitutional Foundations and of The European Internal Market and International Trade - A Legal Analysis. 

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The Fifth van Gerven Lecture on 7 October 2005. was organised in close cooperation with the Ius Commune Research School. The Lecture closed a one day conference on “European Constitutionalism Beyond the EU Constitution”. The Research School unites scholars from the law faculties of Leuven, Maastricht, Utrecht and Amsterdam.