Course teached as: B029146 - EUROPEAN UNION LAW 5-years Single Cycle Degree in ITALIAN AND GERMAN LAW
Teaching Language
English
Course Content
Legal nature of the EU - European integration process and enlargement - EU membership – EU citizenship - EU institutions – System of competences - Legal sources - Law making procedures - Enhanced cooperation and other forms of differentiated integration – Judicial control of Eu acts - Relationship between EU law and national law (with special reference to the Italian legal system)
Students regularly attending the lessons will prepare the exam on their lesson notes, supplemented by the materials regularly uploaded on Moodle.
Attending students who shall take the exam for 6 CFU (instead of 9 CFU) will be assigned a reduced exam-program.
Attendance will be monitored through self-evaluation tests, held regularly (one per week approx.). The status of attending student is conditional on the participation to at least 2/3 of these tests. Their outcome is not relevant to the final exam mark.
Non-attending students can prepare the exam according to the following alternative programs:
P. Craig - G. De Búrca, EU Law. Text, Cases and Materials (7th ed.), OUP, 2020 (available at the Library of Social Sciences), limited to chapters 1 to 6 (excluding sections 6.9 and 6.10), 8 to 11 (about chap. 11, only sections 1-3), 12 to 17, and 24.
OR
R. Baratta, Institutions of EU Law, Welters Kluwer, 2002 (all chapters) + P. Craig - G. De Búrca, EU Law. Text, Cases and Materials (7th ed.), OUP, 2020, chapter 24.
The program of non-attending students who take the exam for 6 CFU (instead of 9 CFU) does not include:
- in the Craig/De Burca manual: sections 7 to 10 of chapter 12, sections 9 and 10 of chapter 14, sections 8 and 9 of chapter 15, pages 583 to 608, chapter 17. Also, the study of chapter 9 can be limited to section 6.
- in the Baratta manual: chapters 2 and 4 of Part II; chapter 3 of Part III; chapter 4 of Part V; chapters 3 and 4 of Part VI.
Non-attending students are kindly invited to schedule a meeting in which more details on the programme will be provided. It will also be possible to address problems concerning access to the reference text.
Learning Objectives
1) Attainment of the basic notions concerning: the institutional structure and functioning of the EU; the EU legal sources and their relationship with national law; the EU judiciary systems and the most important competences of the EU courts; the techniques to solve contrasts between EU law and national law. 2) Acquisition of the competence to search EU law sources and to read them on the Eur-lex platform.
3) Acquisition of the capacity to search case law and read in on the Curia.eu platform.
4) Acquisition of the capacity to use properly the correct legal terminology of EU law
Prerequisites
The attendance of the course requires the basic knowledge acquired by passing the exam of "Diritto Costituzionale I" . No formal requirements have to be complied by Erasmus students, but a basic knowledge of public law (according to the programmes of the respective sending Universities) is strongly recommended in order to attend the course fruitfully.
Teaching Methods
Frontal lectures, possibly with the support of slides; direct examination in class of case-law and legislation, distributed through the e-learning platform Moodle. Seminars on selected topics may be held by invited speakers.
Further information
Registration on Moodle: students willing to attend the course (regardless of the "corso di laurea" in which they are enrolled) are invited to register on the Moodle platform, under the course with the code:B031250 (1170) - EUROPEAN UNION LAW 2022-2023 Link: https://e-l.unifi.it/course/view.php?id=34499
Rules on attendance: attendance sheets will be regularly circulated. The maximum number of unjustified absences compatible with the status of "attending student" is 4.
Students reception: in presence, on Mondays, from 12 to 1.30 pm; on-line (G-meet platform) by appointment via mail (nicole.lazzerini@unifi.it)
Type of Assessment
Exams are held in written form for both attending and non-attending students.
The written test consists of about 25 statements with true or false option and 3 open questions (2 with limited number of lines and one - to be chosen between two proposed tracks - without indication of the maximum number of lines for the reply).
Descriptive knowledge, without critical analysis or references to the relevant case law, may lead to a sufficient evaluation but hardly higher than 24/30. The texts of the TEU and TFEU available on Moodle can be consulted during the exam (provided that there are no notes, whereas highlights are allowed). However, the answer that merely repeats (or rephrases) the content of the relevant provisions will not be considered sufficient.
Course program
The Legal Nature of the European Union. - The stages of the European integration process from the Tr. ECSC to date. -Enlargement. - The events relating to membership: accession, suspension of certain membership rights, withdrawal. - Citizenship of the European Union and the rights of Union citizens, in particular the right of Union citizens and their family members to move and reside in the Union. - The institutional framework of the European Union: the political institutions (European Council, Council, Commission, European Parliament), the financial institutions (ECB, Court of Auditors), the judicial institutions (Court of Justice of the European Union). - The Union's regulatory competences: the principle of attribution, the categories of competence, the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality, Article 352 TFEU, the Union's competence to conclude agreements. - The system of sources of Union law: the Union Treaties; the Charter of Fundamental Rights; general principles; agreements concluded by the Union; general international law; binding secondary acts (regulations, directives, decisions) and non-binding secondary acts (opinions and recommendations); atypical acts. - The legislative procedures and the procedure for concluding Union agreements. - Enhanced cooperation and other forms of differentiated integration. - The effects of EU law in Member States' legal systems: principle of primacy, conforming interpretation, direct effect, liability of Member States for breach of obligations under Union law. - The implementation of EU law in the Italian legal system. - The relations between the Italian Constitutional Court and the Court of Justice. - Judicial review in the EU legal system: actions for annulment, actions for failure to act, extra-contractual liability of the Union, preliminary references, infringement proceedings. - The jurisdiction of the General Court in the light of the reform of the Statute of the CJEU.
The syllabus of the course is made available on the Moodle platform.
Sustainable Development Goals 2030
This course concur to the goals of the UN 2030 Agenda for SD