Law & Justice

After several systemic crises in a decade, emergency politics has taken hold in Europe. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and later the Covid-19 pandemic, governments have responded with exceptional measures. Along the way, they have accumulated extraordinary powers. We might be tempted to think that this form of politics is the natural […]

Brexit used to sit on the far side lines of politics. Indeed, the word ‘Brexit’ was only invented in 2012, and until the referendum, most people didn’t know what it meant. (Now it’s in the Oxford English dictionary.) Prior to 2011, tabloids such as the Daily Mail and Daily Express were more fixated on false […]

Only the Tories can now save Britain from the Tories. That may seem a strange thing to say, but even Tories know when things have gone too far. The Conservatives have dominated the 19th, 20th and, so far, the 21st centuries. Since the 1830s, the Conservatives have been in the business of winning. They are […]

Former Conservative MEP, Daniel Hannan, has penned an article for The Telegraph with the headline: ‘Poland is learning, as Britain did, that the  EU will never let its members be sovereign’ What nonsense. The EU is not a foreign power lording over the members. The EU IS the members. All EU laws and treaties are […]

The government has announced that it will bring in a new Brexit law to allow traders to scrap metric measurements and sell products and food in just pounds and ounces only. Do you know what 1kg of bananas is in imperial measurements? No, I didn’t think so. (It’s around 2 lb 3 ounces.) Since 1974, […]

On 9 September 2021, seven European citizens who marched in solidarity with migrants across the Franco-Italian Alpine border were acquitted of facilitating irregular migration. The decision is a victory for activists in France, reaffirming their right to act in solidarity with migrants based on the constitutional principle of fraternity. The trial took place on 27 […]

Brexiters claim that the EU is run by unelected bureaucrats. It’s a laughable claim because it’s untrue. The EU is a democracy, run by elected politicians. By comparison, the UK seems more like a quasi-democracy, with unelected decision-makers and undemocratic practises that would be considered despotic compared to EU standards. Take our Parliament. It consists […]

by Solomiya Kharchuk This article is based on research presented at the UACES Graduate Forum Research Conference 2021 (17-18 June, online)   The clash over LGBTQ+ rights between Poland and the European Union has been particularly noticeable in recent years. From this clash, questioning around why Poland and the European Union disagree on the issue […]

So, here’s THE key question: Who made the decision for the UK to leave the EU? It wasn’t the referendum. The referendum, as agreed by Parliament, was advisory only and not legally capable of making any decision. This was confirmed by the Supreme Court, who also ruled that the decision to leave the EU had to be taken by […]

The European Neighbourhood Policy and its Eastern Partnership are key strategic policy frameworks for European Union external action. However, after little effective transformation and many unanticipated consequences, the EU admitted in 2015 that its once prized policy was overly ambitious. In response, it was scaled back to an incentivized reward mechanism for good government behavior, […]