Lecture by Prof. Kenneth Armstrong (University of Cambridge)
Event Information
Description
On Tuesday 26 February Kenneth Armstrong, Professor of European Law at the University of Cambridge and holder of the 2018/2019 Ganshof van der Meersch Chair at the ULB, will give the opening lecture of the chair, entitled "Governed by Europe or Governing through Europe. Lessons from Brexit". He will be welcomed by Professor Ramona Coman, Director of the Institute for European Studies.
Professor Armstrong is the author of Brexit Time: Leaving the EU - Why, How and When? (Cambridge University Press 2017) and writes the blog Brexit Time. In 2018 he was awarded a three-year Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship to analyse the dynamics of regulatory alignment and divergence after Brexit.
This lecture is organised by the Philippe Wiener-Maurice Anspach Foundation, which promotes academic exchanges between the ULB and the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford.
Abstract
Every democratic and constitutional order experiences the same dilemma, namely how to govern through a set of political and legal structures while at the same time being governed by those structures. The way in which we conventionally resolve this dilemma is by emphasising that these structures and the discipline that they exert are a means of self-government and self-realisation. Extrapolating this idea to the European Union is more difficult. Many of the EU’s recent crises seem to emphasise the disciplining aspects of membership - fiscal discipline after the financial and economic crisis; the discipline of burden-sharing and solidarity after the refugee crisis - rather than the self-realising aspects of what it means for European states to govern collectively through EU institutions. The aim of this lecture is to analyse the discipline of membership against the backdrop of the challenges facing the European Union, including the challenge of Brexit. It addresses concerns that the EU has lost its ‘mission legitimacy’ and considers how the EU might seek to address that problem in ways that make the discipline of membership a means of self-government and self-realisation.
The lecture will take place at the Université libre de Bruxelles (Building H, Room H 1302, ground floor - avenue Paul Héger 10, 1050 Brussels) and will be followed by a reception. The event is free but please register via this page by 18 February.
Contact : fwa.relations@ulb.ac.be
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