Compared to the history of International law, the history of EU law is a young field of research. In contrast to social scientists and legal scholars, historians have only recently entered the field, and the interdisciplinary dialogue is thus comparatively fresh. This workshop intends to keep this conversation going by bringing together researchers to discuss their research on the history of the reception of EU law in the member states. The workshop consists of panel sessions focused on submitted research papers.
At this workshop, we will engage with national reception of EU law from a historical perspective. With a focus on actors, structures and institutions producing the law, we will approach the historical creation of EU law starting from the national sphere as a springboard to questioning boundaries between national, transnational and European containers. By studying the genesis of national EU law receptions, we hope to advance our understanding of the social process that has been popularly dubbed “European integration”, as well as to disentangle it from its own mythology.
The main part of the workshop will be presentations of work-in-progress papers by young scholars from a number of European countries and research environments. We aim to make the workshop a constructive space for developing both the papers as well as our collective thinking, and hope that this work will also continue after the workshop.
Read the full call for papers here.
Program
Thursday, 10 November
9:00: Coffee and fruit
9:15 – 9:30: Welcome
9:30 – 10:45: Keynote lecture by Brigitte Leucht (University of Portsmouth): European legal history as social history: from interdisciplinarity to intra-disciplinarity and back?
10:45 – 11:00: Coffee break
11:00 – 12:30: Paper presentations:
• “… in accordance with EU law?”: Accidental reception as a by-product of national strategies (Magnus Esmark, Norway Inland University of Applied Sciences)
• Denaturalizing Effet utile – the making of a powerful and controversial doctrine (Jacob van de Beeten, London School of Economics)
• Discussant: Mala Loth (University of Oslo)
12:30 – 13:30: Lunch break
13:30 – 15:00: Paper presentations:
• Integration through communication? Rationales in EU social law (Stine Piilgaard Porter Nielsen, University of Southern Denmark)
• The process of EU integration from a perspective of national judges: Evidence from new member states (Monika Glavina, Erasmus University Rotterdam)
• Discussant: Stian Øby Johansen (University of Oslo)
15:00 – 15:30: Coffee break
15:30 – 17:00: Plenary debate to round off the day. Introductions by:
• Hanne Hagtvedt Vik (University of Oslo)
• Tarjei Bekkedal (LEVEL)
18:00 – 21:00: Dinner
Friday, 11 November
9:00: Coffee and fruit
9:15 – 10:30: Introduction by Lise Rye (Norwegian University of Science and Technology): From peace project to community of values. The centrality of law for the evolution of the EU.
10:30 – 12:00: Paper presentations:
• In the shadow of the Single Market? Indifference, reluctance and hopes of the French administration towards the EEC in the context of the 1986 competition policy reform (Lola Avril, University of Eastern Finland & Sebastian Billows, INRAE)
• Postcolonial Constitutionalism: The Case of Malta (Jenny Orlando-Salling, University of Copenhagen)
• Discussant: Magnus Esmark (Norway Inland University of Applied Sciences)
12:00 – 13:00: Lunch break
13:00 – 13:45: Paper presentation:
• The History of Law from below? Helen Marshall, State Retirement Age, and the European Court of Justice, c. 1986-1993 (Mala Loth, University of Oslo)
• Discussant: Lola Avril (University of Eastern Finland)
13:45 – 14:15: Rounding off and farewell
The seminar is sponsored by the project "Internasjonal trygderett", which is a collaboration between the Law faculties in Bergen, Tromsø and Oslo funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Labour and Social Inclusion (formerly Arbeids- og sosialdepartmentet).
Registration
Please sign up here to attend the seminar.