In June, as part of a law school exchange program, I had the opportunity to study European Law at the EBS Law School in Wiesbaden, Germany. The courses were designed to educate students about the unique nature of European Union. Part of our education involved trips to the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, the European Parliament and Human Rights Court in Strasbourg, and the European Central Bank in Frankfurt.
Learning is all about discovering the unexpected. I’ve narrowed down my list of things I didn’t expect to learn about the EU to these nine:
- The EU has a supra-national structure. This is the first thing taught in EU law. This means that each of the 28 member states transfers part of its sovereign rights to the EU, which allows the EU to have higher authority and the ability to impose legally binding obligations. But the EU can only impose regulations and directives on member states, not the citizens of those states.
- If you want to join the EU, there are some unwritten criteria you might need to know. This list of three unwritten principles is commonly referred to as “the Copenhagen Criteria.” The countries that wish to join must fulfil the political, economic, and acquis criteria. The state has to have stable institutions that guarantee democracy and human rights; a functional market economy; and must embrace the duties and obligations arising as a consequence of EU membership.
- All 28 states must agree on new members. In essence, each state has the right to veto a new admission. The difficulty arises when a country always vetoes another due to historical grievances. For example, Greece always votes against Macedonia becoming a member, arguing that Macedonia is still a region of Greece and not a sovereign country.
- It takes only 3.8 seconds to translate from Romanian to Maltese. I am in awe of the amount of time and effort that goes into translating every conversation, document, and decision that passes through the EU institutions. In total, there are 24 official languages in the EU and around 4,300 translators and 800 interpreters employed as permanent staff.
- The importance of the arbitral seat in EU dispute resolution. What I found most interesting about international dispute resolution is the importance placed on the chosen “seat” of arbitration. The seat determines the national law that will govern the arbitral procedure. While the venue for the talks can be any location convenient to the parties, most parties choose the “seat” based on how that country will enforce the tribunal’s award(s). The country with the arbitral seat has the exclusive jurisdiction to set aside any award decided by the tribunal. Currently, the most popular seats are Switzerland, because of its fairness and efficiency; Austria, because of its central location and neutral image; and Belgium, because of its ability to conduct proceedings in Dutch, French, and English and because of the amount of freedom they give parties when determining the scope and procedural rules of arbitration.
- The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU prohibits human cloning. The Charter, which became legally binding on Dec. 1, 2009, enables member citizens to take legal action against EU institutions which fail to enforce it. The “new binding” Charter is divided into seven titles: Dignity, Freedoms, Equality, Solidarity, Citizens’ Rights’, Justice, and scope of application. The Charter has been innovative in some regards by explicitly mentioning disability, age, and sexual orientation as prohibited grounds of discrimination.
- The European Bank is more interesting than you’d think. What could be interesting about a central bank? You might be as surprised as I was. The ECB is governed by the Treaty of Function of the European Union where it states the ECB’s competence, objective, independence, and governance. A few things that I found most interesting:
- The European Central Bank’s primary objective is to maintain price stability – its goal is to keep the inflation rate in the euro area below or close to 2 per cent. As of July 2017, the inflation rate is at 1.3 per cent; however, in July 2016 it was at 0.2 per cent.
- 80 per cent of financing in the EU comes from banks rather than shares or private investments, mostly due to Europe’s history with banks.
- The ECB is completely independent.
- The European Court of Justice can only check the legality of the ECB’s actions and cannot assess the technical aspect
- If you are involved with the European Parliament, you are part of the circus. The first thing I noticed about the European Parliament in Strasbourg was the number of people entering and exiting the building with suitcases. The European Parliament has three different places of work: Brussels, Luxembourg, and Strasbourg. Luxembourg is home to the administrative offices, while parliament spends three weeks of every month in Brussels and one week in Strasbourg. This is referred to as the ‘EU travelling circus.’ This perpetual movement adds to the cost of running parliament and is unpopular. It has been suggested to amend the EU treaties to make Brussels the parliament’s single seat. However, the parliament in Strasbourg is important for Francem which vetoes any treaty change.
- Brexit can be vetoed by the European Parliament. Article 50 of the Treaties of the European Union explains the steps for withdrawing from the European Union. Article 50 allows all member states to withdraw from the EU unilaterally. To do so, the state must deliver an “Article 50 letter” to the president of the European Council. Once that letter has been delivered, the country has two years to negotiate an exit deal. The deal must be approved by a “qualified majority” of EU member states and can be vetoed by the European Parliament.
While these are not the only things that I learned on my summer exchange, they are the topics and matters that I found to be most applicable to current world events and possible future world events. So, after just skimming the surface of EU laws and regulations, I am eager to dive deeper and learn more.
Brittany Buna is 2L at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops