Taming The Dark Energy Of EU Law project team host first workshop

The Leverhulme Trust-funded, Taming the Dark Energy of EU Law, project team hosted its first workshop on the 20 and 21 May at Edinburgh Law School.

Niamh Nic Shuibhne (Project PI), Eleftheria Asimakopoulou (Postdoctoral Research Fellow) and Bob Roth (Early Career Fellow) were especially delighted to welcome Claire Patterson, who will take up the PhD Studentship funded by the project in September this year. 

Edinburgh Law School colleagues and PhD researchers working in the field of EU law were joined for lively and rigorous discussion of the project’s main themes by Professor Emerita Marise Cremona (European University Institute), Professor Michael Dougan (University of Liverpool), Professor Emeritus Sir David Edward (Chair of the Edinburgh Europa Institute) and Professor Christophe Hillion (University of Oslo) alongside Edinburgh Law School’s newest Honorary Professor, Dame Eleanor Sharpston. After each project team member introduced their planned work, the first part of the workshop considered the legacies of Opinion 2/13, delivered by the Court of Justice just over ten years ago and preventing the EU’s accession to the European Convention on Human Rights (a process that has still not been fully resolved). The Opinion’s emphasis on the specific and essential characteristics of the EU and its legal order is at the heart of the Dark Energy project. In the afternoon, attention shifted to the present and possible future(s) of EU constitutionalism.

Professor Niamh Nic Shuibhne said: "It was really wonderful to have the complete project team together in Edinburgh for the workshop and to present and reflect on our plans for the work ahead with our EU Law Subject Area colleagues from the Law School as well as academic friends from beyond the University of Edinburgh who have supported the project so generously from the very early days of its conception. We are all so inspired by their suggestions and questions and keen to push on with trying to work through them over the coming months."

The whole project team also expresses its sincere thanks to everyone who attended the workshop for their engagement with the central ideas and the aims of the research; to Edinburgh Law School for generously supporting the event; and to Szandra Bekei, Elizabeth Darby, Stephanie Lewis, and Shauna Thompson for their work before, during, and after two memorable and inspiring days.