European Law

During the course students will get acquainted with primary and secondary EU law, with rules lying upon the EU law, with development of the EU primary law. Students will analyze EU legal acts: their hierarchy, meaning, adopting, specificity in comparison to legal acts in selected Member States, they will analyze and evaluate role of the EU institutions in the decision-making process, implementation and application of the EU law, role of the Court of Justice of the EU and other EU courts in enforcement of the EU law, finally they will analyze selected rulings of the Court of Justice of the European Union and deal with substantial law of the European Union: Single Market and selected policies of the EU as well as analyze efficiency of the EU soft law. At the end of the course students will analyze multilingual nature of the EU law and use Eur-Lex as an instrument of searching for the EU legal acts as well as evaluate development of the EU law.

The course consists of 15 classes (2 academic hours each):

1/ Kick-off meeting; introduction to the course

2/ Primary and secondary EU law – theoretical introduction

3/ Rules of the EU law. Development of the EU primary law till the Treaty of Lisbon

4/ Development of the EU primary law from the Treaty of Lisbon. Analysis of the current state of the EU primary law

5/ EU legal acts: hierarchy, meaning, adopting, specificity in comparison to legal acts in selected Member States

6/ Role of the EU institutions in the decision-making process, implementation and application of the EU law.

7/ Role of the Court of Justice of the EU and other EU courts. Enforcement of the EU law.

8/ Selected rulings of the Court of Justice of the European Union.

9/ Introduction to substantial law of the European Union: Single Market and selected policies of the EU

10/ EU soft law

11/ Multilingual nature of the EU law; Eur-Lex as an instrument of making the EU law closer to citizens

12/ Evaluation of development of the EU law

13/ Summary and revision

14/ Exam

15/ Analysis of the exam results

K. Davies, Understanding European Union Law Fifth Edition, Routledge, New York 2013

A. Biondi, P. Eeckhout, S. Ripley, EU Law after Lisbon, Oxford 2012

C. DeBurca, European Union Law, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2010 and any later edition

A. Staab, The European Union explained: institutions, actors, global impact, Bloomington 2008

S. Hix, The Political System of the European Union, Second edition, Hundmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire 2005

J.-C. Piris, The Lisbon Treaty: A Legal and Political Analysis (with a foreword by Angela Merkel), Cambridge 2010

Web pages:

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/homepage.html

https://e-justice.europa.eu/home.do?action=home&plang=en

The Lisbon Treaty’s website: http://europa.eu/lisbon_treaty/index_en.htm

The Europen Courts’ website: http://curia.europa.eu/jcms/jcms/j_6/, http://eca.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/eca_main_pages/home

Students will be able to point out and characterize in comparative perspective most important elements of the EU legal system as a part of its political system (sui generis) as well as be able to compare it with legal systems of the member states. Students will know how to recognize and analyze mechanisms of functioning of the EU decision-making and law-protecting institutions, they should also be able to recognize their mutual influence and foresee consequences of functioning of certain mechanisms. Students will know how to describe and explain legal provisions and their meaning for the whole EU political, social and economic system concerning European intellectual property law as well as be able to analyze EU concepts of protection of intellectual property law and evaluate the idea of European patent, point out most important problems related to it.

Students will have skills of explaining, using different normative approaches, role of certain legal provisions of the EU law, role of institutions protecting proper application of the EU law, role of lawyers dealing with the EU law. They will have the ability to design and institutionalize forms of participation in preparation of the EU legal acts, of analysis of certain legal provisions and detect any problems with application of the EU law (also by intervening in proper institutions protecting the EU law). Students will have the ability to identify and solve correctly problems related to proper application of the EU law as well as the ability to prepare documentation proving lacs in proper implementation and application of the EU law. Students will be able to properly apply knowledge and skills related to work as the EU legal system analysts as well as officials dealing with EU legal acts.

Assessment methods: evaluation of active participation in the course and a written exam (both test and open questions); Students will have to prepare short presentations on various aspects of the EU law; Assessment criteria: students will have to give evidence (by discussing topics of each class, expressing opinions, prepare high-quality presentations and obtaining a high score in the exam) of good knowledge of the course topics, students will also have to be able to express their critical opinion on the topics covered by the course (e. g. on role of the Court of Justice in proper application of the EU law).