Accommodating Secession within The EU Constitutional Order of States

Abstract

The presentation provides for a holistic account of the legal mechanisms that allow the EU to accommodate all three forms of secession that may take place within its borders: internal secession; external secession; and withdrawal from the EU itself. 
Despite conventional wisdom, the presentation suggests that provided that those processes are in conformity with the foundational values of the Union enshrined in Article 2 TEU, the EU legal order is flexible enough to accommodate them. Such deferential and accommodating approach that respects the constitutional identity of the EU Member States and their regions is in conformity with the composite nature of the European constitution, whose component parts - the EU Treaties and the national constitutional orders - cannot function without the other. For a multi-level constitutional order of States whose very raison d’être has been the promotion of peace between its members, this nuanced position is of critical importance.

Speaker

Nikos Skoutaris - University of East Anglia, UK

Bio

Nikos Skoutaris received his Ph.D. in Law from EUI (Florence, Italy) in 2009. Since then, he has worked as a Post-doctoral Fellow at the University of Tilburg, as an Assistant Professor at Maastricht University (The Netherlands) and as a Senior Research Fellow at the LSE. Currently, he is an Associate Professor in EU Law at the University of East Anglia (UEA). 

His research lies in the intersection between constitutional law, EU law and conflict resolution theory. Its main focus has been on analysing how the EU constitutional order recognises and accommodates different aspects of the right to self-determination.  

You can find more information in my website 'On Secessions, Constitutions and EU law'