The Conference on the Future of Europe

The different proposals made by the Conference indeed raise questions of constitutional, institutional, substantive and administrative EU law:

In how far can a given proposal put forward by the Conference, be realized under the current Treaty framework?

How can the political aspirations of the EU citizens (as expressed in specific proposals adopted by the Conference) be legally best realized?

If a Treaty amendment is necessary or useful to realize the political aspirations of the citizens, how should this amendment ideally look like?

In short, for every of the 49 proposals put forward by the Conference, a legal assessment may be made, using EU constitutional, institutional, substantive and administrative law as the frame of reference.

This is especially relevant since the focus of the Conference was on the EU citizens’ ambitions and hopes for the future of Europe. Now that these aspirations have been expressed, the complicated question of how these aspirations may be legally realized needs to be addressed.

About MCEL

The Maastricht Centre for European Law, MCEL, is the Faculty of Law’s research centre for all issues on European law. It is committed to the study of European law from an interdisciplinary, transnational, and multilingual perspective. MCEL studies the law of the European Union in its constitutional and political context, with a specific focus on the tension between, on the one hand, uniformity and centralisation at the European level and, on the other hand, differentiation and autonomy of Member States. The research programme of the Centre analyses the European integration process from both an institutional and substantive perspective in a global context. MCEL research covers most areas of EU law. MCEL members are part of the department of International & European Law and the department of Public Law.