Professor W. T. Eijsbouts, Professor of European Constitutional Law and its History at the University of Amsterdam, will give a lecture on "European Sovereignty" at Leiden University. The event will take place on Friday 18 May 2018, from 15:00 to 17:30, in Room Rechtenkamer (Academy Building), Rapenburg 73, Leiden.
Amid the resurgence of militancy in defence of national sovereignty and constitutional law, against international law and multilateralism (Trump and fellow populists and autocrats Orban, Putin, Erdogan, Modi, Duarte, Xi Jinping) and against the EU, EU law and institutions (Brexit, national constitutional courts); amid the flurry of contradictory constitutional doctrines on sovereignty in scholarship (pluralism, identitism, foundationalism, Carl Schmittism), the new French president Emmanuel Macron rises alone in his defence of state sovereignty as a pillar of multilateralism (UN 19 Spt 17, in rebut of Trump), and even as a pillar of European integration. Tom Eijsbouts will explain Macron's idea of sovereignty and give it an underpinning in international law, in national constitutional law, in EU law and in legal philosophy. In one concrete example, he will show how Macron's notion could allow the German constitutional court, judicial ringleader in the debate on sovereignty, to escape from its current case law characterized by 'last warnings' against further EU integration."