The MCEL Opening Event will focus on the theme of “Social Justice and EU Law”, which we will discuss with:
Tamara Ćapeta - Advocate General at the Court of Justice of the European Union
Sacha Garben - Permanent Professor at the College of Europe
Marion Simm - Director at the Legal Service of the Council.

A roundtable conversation with Prof. Lisa Waddington and Prof. Anne Pieter van der Mei will follow the speakers’ talks.

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 EU integration have not yet entirely solved, the question remains as to what role has the Union 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 plays a variety of roles in different areas of EU law such as in EU citizenship and migration; economic and monetary Union; EU environmental law, EU disability law, social law, and fundamental rights.