EU dimensions to national law

The deepening of the European integration process presents the EU Member States with many challenges in terms of the policy space for the evolution of national law. Even in domains which used to be mainly reserved for national lawyers such as family and social law, tax law, penal or criminal law, the impact of EU legislation can no longer be ignored. For example, in terms of family law, the Member States transferred competence for judicial co-operation in civil matters to the European Community. Also, the European Commission issued a Green Paper on the conflict of laws in matrimonial property regimes in 2006. Examples of new developments in penal law at EU level include the 2005 proposal for a Directive on criminal measures aimed at ensuring the enforcement of intellectual property rights and the recently adopted Directive 2008/99 on the protection of the environment through criminal law. In an era of globalization, EU law also increasingly impacts on the legal systems of third countries and on international law instruments in many areas of law. On the other hand, legal developments at national level obviously also influence EU law.

In this context, this Call for Papers aims to launch debate and reflection on a wide range of themes, including:

• The impact of EU law on specific fields of national law, including family law, penal law, tax law, social law, environment law, etc.;
• How national constitutional law is affected by EU law and vice versa;
• Ways in which developments in national law influence EU law;
• How third countries experience EU law, including through multi-lateral fora.

Those researchers that are interested in participating are invited to send in their work on these and related issues to the conference organisers (see below). Please note that the above terms of reference are not intended to constrain researchers in their choice of topics, but only to illustrate the scope of the conference.

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