Foundations of European Union Law

The departments of European Law (EL) and Public Economic Law (PEL) offer an introductory course on the Law of the European Union (EU) to all students without any prior knowledge of European law, be it law students or students from other disciplines (such as economy, sociology, history and the exact sciences).

Topics to be dealt with include:

• Introduction: general aspects of EU law, structure of the EU;
• EU Institutions and decision-making processes and legal instruments;
• Supremacy, direct effect of EU law, reception of EU law in Member States and state liability;
• Judicial protection: how to enforce EU law?

The principal aim of this course is to help students to achieve a critical and informed understanding of how the European Union and European Union law operates. It offers a general overview of the core principles of the treaties of the EU, secondary legislation and case law.

This course is an 'early exit' course. It runs for five weeks, i.e. from the start of period 2 until the end-of-year break, allowing exchange students to complete the course by the end of the first semester.

Effort requirements
You are obliged to attend the plenary seminars and the tutorials and should participate actively in class discussions. In order to do so, students are expected to study in detail the mandatory literature for each week in advance. It is expected that students bring their text of the Treaty with them to each seminar and tutorial.

Assessment takes the form of a digital, on-site exam. The final exam takes place in the final week of the course.

Please note that this course is worth 5 ECTS due to the 'early exit'. Exchange students that wish to take the course until the end of the block for 7,5 ECTS should register under the course ID 'RGBUIER008'
Place of the course within the curriculum:

• Optional course only open for exchange students with an 'early exit'.

After this course:

• the student has knowledge and a basic understanding of institutional EU law
• the student understands the core principles of the European Union legal system
• the student can describe the main themes and general doctrines of institutional EU law

Sufficient knowledge of the level 1 courses of the bachelor program.