Image credit: Valdas Miskinis/Pixabay The Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) determines the powers of the institutions of the European Union (EU) to legislate and adopt legally-binding acts, also called competencies (Art. 2 TFEU). The EU has three types of competencies: Exclusive competencies– where only the EU can legislate (for example, customs…
Image credit: Falling whistles brief case, WoodSmithe/CreativeCommons On 13 June 1971, one of the most influential newspapers of the United States published a series of secret documents about the Vietnam War. These contained governmental information stating that, although the United States was not going to win the War, it would continue sending troops and investing…
Image: TheAndrasBarta/Pixabay Over the course of recent years, the EU has stumbled from one crisis to the next. Financial issues, migration and Brexit are just some of the aspects most frequently discussed in public and academic discourse. I was given the opportunity to converse with students from all over Europe about the current state of…
Image credit: Bruno Martins/Unsplash I contatti tra persone di culture, storie e lingue diverse divengono ogni giorno più frequenti, e le cause sono molteplici. Tra gli incommensurabili motivi che hanno favorito giorno dopo giorno questo continuo contatto culturale possiamo sicuramente riconoscere, in ambito più ristretto rispetto a un discorso mondiale, il costante e continuo…
Image: Adobe Stock/1STunningART One hundred years after the first women achieved the right to vote and sit in parliament in many European states, the data shows that women continue to be under-represented in politics and public life in the European Parliament, national parliaments and governments, and local assemblies. However, after the most recent European elections…
Image: pixabay The Dutch political scientist Cas Mudde recently said that populism has become ‘the concept that defines our age’, and the electoral surges of right-wing populist parties have been branded a ‘populist zeitgeist’. Yet populism is a slippery concept, featuring both the right and the left: next to right-wing parties such as, among others,…
Image: Blanton Museum of Art/Unsplash Any territory where political power is exercised is obliged to create in its citizenry a sense of belonging. This sense of belonging to the territory, called identity, allows a political entity to obtain legitimacy. Through this legitimacy, such a political entity ensures its own existence because the citizenry accepts the…
Image: Adobe Stock/tampatra A miniature plea on behalf of the non-constituent peoples* Participation of the constituent peoples (Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs) in the system of government of Bosnia and Herzegovina is an integral and very important element of its heterogeneous legal, political and social order. Conversely, however, the exclusion of those who are non-constituent[1] members…
Image: Dubioza Kolektiv The 1990s saw the dramatic collapse of Tito’s Yugoslavia, which dissolved into six independent republics: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia & Herzegovina (BiH), Macedonia, Serbia, and Montenegro, as well as Kosovo (a state not recognised by Serbia, BiH, and five other EU state members). Together with Albania, these seven republics comprise the so-called Western…
Image credit: Markus Spiske/Unsplash New technologies have always challenged, if not disrupted, the social, economic legal and, to an extent, the ideological status quo. Such transformations impact constitutional law, as the State formulates its legal response to the new technologies being developed and applied by the market, as well as in consideration of its own…
