Dans le cadre de son cycle de conférences consacrées à l’UE en tant qu’acteur international, l’unité de recherche en droit de l’Université du Luxembourg invite Bart Van Vooren, avocat à Bruxelles, à tenir une conférence le 10 novembre 2014 de 17 à 19 heures.

Bart Van Vooren is a full-time lawyer in Brussels, as well as a seasoned academic with a PhD from the European University Institute, and an appointment at the University of Copenhagen. The objective of this lecture is to bridge both worlds, the Brussels bubble and the Ivory tower, and to place EU external relations law in its political, social, economic and historical context. This will be achieved by taking a number of topical issues, and by looking at them through three distinct lenses.

The examples covered will be: first, the Council of Europe Match-Fixing Convention which the European Commission – to the surprise of many third countries – did not sign at the Ministerial Conference in Macolin in September 2014; second, the EU’s implementation of the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing to Genetic Resources as an example of EU law-making in the implementation of international law; and third, the EU-USA Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership which so passionately captivates the No-camp that it is at risk of becoming a second ACTA.

In the lecture, these examples will be discussed from three distinct perspectives. First, EU external relations law itself: its functioning, interpretation and application to the examples at hand. Indeed, EU external relations law is difficult to define, and encapsulates EU institutional, constitutional and substantive law, as well as various aspects of international public law. Second, the action of the Union in the world is not neutral from the perspective of European integration. While at times the most effective option for the twenty-eight Member States would be to join forces, that may raise questions as to what it means for the Member States’ individual international positions. The third aspect is that the body of EU external relations law is not purely (if at all) the result of grand conceptions of European integration, but that it is often the expression of the societal reality it organizes towards a certain outcome, and is shaped by them.