MCEL Master Thesis Project

Project coordinators: Sarah Tas, Felix Peerboom, Lilian Tsourdi

Migration is a politically salient issue. Not only is migration present in media headlines and political discussions, in recent years there have been significant developments in its legislation and governance. Most prominently, last May the EU co-legislators agreed on a complete overhaul of the Union’s acquis on migration, asylum, and integrated border management (a set of measures that have become known together as the New Pact on Migration and Asylum). At the same time, the EU is increasingly streamlining migration management in its broader external relations and diplomacy. These developments raise interesting and pressing legal questions. By focussing on ‘Migration Law and Governance’ this year’s MCEL master thesis project provides you with the opportunity to engage with these important legal and societal developments.

Within the project you can write a thesis on a wide variety of issues. For example, topics could cover, but are not limited to:

• Interplay between key EU constitutional principles and asylum, migration, and integrated border management policies;
• Interplay between EU asylum and migration law and policy with international refugee and human rights law;
• Policy implementation and administrative governance in asylum, migration, and integrated border management policies;
• Interplay between EU and national regulation of migration, asylum, and integrated border management;  
• Labour migration regulation;
• Temporary protection regimes;
• Solidarity and fair-sharing;
• Digital borders (e.g., databases, use of AI tools);
• Environmentally induced displacement;
• Human trafficking and migrant smuggling;
• EU agencies’ role in the management of migration;
• Accountability in migration.

Project coordination: Pauline Melin and Fulvia Ristuccia

The interaction of the process of European integration with the social sphere has been crucial since the very origins of the European project. Amidst the inherent tensions that more than 60 years of European integration have not yet entirely solved, the question remains as to what role has the EU to play in relation to social justice and whether the EU itself can be ‘social’.

The idea of social justice relates to redistribution and solidarity, to the protection of vulnerable individuals and communities and to the struggles and tensions that societal and political changes imply.

Social Justice and EU law is therefore not a monolithic notion. It can be declined in several ways across various areas of EU law such as in EU citizenship and migration; Economic and Monetary Union; EU environmental law, EU disability law, EU equality law etc.

For example, topics could cover, but not limited to:

• Cohesion and NextGenerationEU;
• EU citizenship and transnational solidarity;
• Topical issues of EU social / labour law such as platform workers, minimum wages, addressing the gender pay gap, role of equality bodies, work-life balance;
• Social justice in climate change;
• Social rights in the Charter of Fundamental Rights.

Project coordinators: Pauline Melin and Merijn Chamon

The Conference on the Future of Europe was set up by the EU institutions and allowed citizens to debate the future of the EU from April 2021 to May 2022. On Europe Day, the Conference adopted its conclusions and made 49 proposals to the Presidents of the European Parliament, the Council and Commission. On 9 June 2022 the European Parliament adopted a resolution, calling for a revision of the EU Treaties, since ‘several of the Conference proposals require amendments to the Treaties’. In her State of the Union Speech, in September 2022 Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also announced that the Commission is in favour of calling a Convention to alter the EU Treaties.

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.

Project coordinators: Sabrina Roettger-Wirtz and Annalisa Volpato

The COVID-19 pandemic which has the whole world including the European Union in its grip since March 2020, is proving to become one of the largest challenges the Union had to face in its history. This thesis project enabled students to conduct research on the impact of COVID-19 crisis on various areas of European Law including the free movement of persons, health law or public procurement and to analyze the response mechanisms to the pandemic put in place by the Union through public health measures or economic support. Five students have successfully completed their Master's theses dealing with the inter-institutional exchange of information, the proportionality of internal border controls and free movement restrictions more broadly, compulsory vaccination obligations, and the new challenges to state aid law. MCEL master thesis project 2021-2022 was coordinated by Dr Sabrina Roettger-Wirtz and Dr Annalisa Volpato.

Project coordinator: Marjan Peeters

Greening Europe was the 2020-2021 MCEL master thesis project which brought together students and staff members of MCEL who are interested in the study of EU environmental law. Where our society faces ever increasing complex issues in relation to the protection of the environment, the need to study EU environmental law needs hardly to be underlined. While, on the one hand, the EU is often perceived as a global green standard-setter because of its ambitious environmental policies, the content and implementation of these environmental standards, also in the internal order, which in fact should lead to a transition of our society to a more sustainable one, comes along with many legal questions and disputes.

The summer of 2021 saw the successful completion of ten master theses. The topics discussed are diverse and vary from the codification of climate neutrality in the new European Climate Law to the protection of wolfs in France as required by EU nature conservation law. The students were supervised by MCEL staff members and several seminars were organised to discuss research methodology and research results. The coordination of the project was done by Prof. Dr. Marjan Peeters, Professor of Environmental Policy and Law. Marguerite Apraxine (bachelor student European Law School) provided administrative support to the thesis project.