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hi hello welcome to this introduction to european union law online course my name is harris and i'm going to be lecturing you through some of the basics of eu law which i know can be quite confusing quite quite a difficult area to get your head around especially if you're a student studying it for the first time so i'll be creating this online course to really break down the basics and give you the foundations of the eu like i said my name is harris and i'm a scots law graduate from the university of glasgow i graduated last year and just now i'm a private legal tutor specialising in international law and eu law um but mostly i'd just like to help students get through their degree and begin to really make the most of their university experience so if you don't know um this is not my first online course i've created three others um namely i've created one on introduction to scott's law which was my degree and it really helps students get to grips with the scottish law degree and what to expect before they begin their studies introduction to international law which was my favorite topic of the law just because i specialized in it at university where i give kind of a basic introduction to international law and international legal concepts and finally probably my most creative was law goods and international trade where i take the journey of a startup company and how it eventually becomes a multinational company and looking at it through the lens of international trade law so all three courses are available on udemy and skillshare you can purchase them if you require discount codes email me and i can see what i can do for you so who's this course aimed at well it's aimed at a number of people namely undergraduate students or bachelor students those who are studying eu law at university eu law can hit you very very hard you can get a knee-deep and trade regulations right from the very beginning so having a background and a foundation before you start your course is really really important i'm additionally there are a lot of masters students who are about to encounter something to do with the eu or something related to the european union and so for them having background knowledge about european union law is actually very very important so for them this will be very very a very useful course as well for foreign lawyers outside of europe the eu can be an enigma so learning about the european union will be very important perhaps if you're looking to practice in the in the eu or perhaps if you're just moving to a european country and the general public right curious people interest in law or politics or countries or culture or economics um so this course will have something for everyone so in terms of the course topics this is a very very brief course i'm not going to have 10 or 12 lectures and i try and keep all my courses very very brief and so we're going to be talking first about the history of the eu which actually is more like a background in the context behind the european union and why it's so important um we're going to be looking at institutions of the european union principles the key eu principles that have shaped the european union for freedoms which is the pinnacle of what europe stands for and challenges maybe future challenges and that dreaded word brexit as well and in this lecture we'll be looking at the history of the european union now with the european union i always say is a bit of an enigma people know what it is people know that it must be important but there is a real divide between the european union institutions and union citizens so if you're a normal citizen in slovakia or greece or spain and you know that the eu exists you know that it's there but you have so many questions and there's um almost like a class divide between and the people who run the eu and normal citizens who are subject to the eu and so because of that i think there is a lot of misconceptions um people don't realize don't understand how it is applicable in their own lives and so because of that i think there are a lot of questions that need to be answered so here are some common questions i think that people normal people normal europeans have about the european union most of these questions have actually come from me interviewing normal people right so interviewing friends and family and asking them well if you could ask if you wanted any questions answered about the eu what would it be so these are the kind of things that come up like what does your mep actually do what cause brexit what does it mean for europe um who actually runs the eu and so throughout these five lectures i'm going to deliver we're going to answer each one of these questions just so i can bring this all back to practicalities to basics right how does it affect us as individual citizens so let's get on with the first lecture and when we talk about history and we talk about the eu um i think it's really important to look at the timeline and how we got here right how we got to 2021 how we got to 27 sovereign states being part of an economic union we have to go all the way back to the 19th century in order to really get to grips with this we start with the 19th century and we start with the rise of this thing called nationalism between european states right people take for granted that today we have countries actual countries well before wasn't always like that there weren't secure borders same way there are there is today the reason we high borders is because of this sense of nationalism that began to rise among european people that was one of the biggest causes of the two world wars not just world war one but world war ii especially but especially at the end of 1945 when you know a ridiculous number of people are dead i think it's 80 million or something or dead people realize that actually something's got to give in europe right and um you can't keep having wars every few years because then life's just not worth living and so this was the inspiration for the creation of the european coal and steel community in 1951 first ever european organization between different sovereign nations evolving into the european economic community a single european act uh the treaty on the european union and finally we had the lisbon treaty which kind of summarized everything and is the uh is the most recent major treaty which lays the foundations for the eu now we're going to be like i said we're going to be looking at each one of these milestones in turn and how they were important so just a quick note about nationalism um i spoke earlier about just um how before the 19th century or during the 19th century there weren't distinct borders between countries and that's not entirely true but there wasn't a rigid sense of nation states like we have in europe actually europe looked like this um before world war one what you had was the russian empire at the east on the east which encompassed a lot of countries to modern day countries so russia and kazakhstan and belarus etc and we had the german empire and the austria-hungarian empire and so these three empires as you can see were empires that encompass different people so you would have had in the the austria-hungarian empire austrians and hungarians as well as lots and lots of other cultures and nationalities now they felt part of a group but they were administered by the empire right so it wasn't like you had a separate country of austria in a separate country of hungarian in both austria and hungary there would have been austrians and hungarians no there was under one empire and the problem with empires is that once nationalist sentiment begins to build it's very difficult for the empire to begin to control that and make sure that those people have allegiance to the empire and not their own nationality and actually you know in history the only way that empires have done that is through force and when you use force against the people who believe that they have a right to defend themselves well then you get war and that's exactly what happened in europe in the early 20th century we had um world war one and world war ii largely caused by nationalist sentiment and especially after the fall of the german austro-hungarian russian empire after world war one there was kind of like an interim period between world war one and world war ii where nations were getting to grips with this new idea of nationalism this new state-centric world that they had built and that can cause some problems especially when some people feel subjugated and when there's not really an international legal system so instead of nationalism becoming this force for goods this idea of allowing a subjugated people a minority their right to govern themselves it actually became a poison in europe and because of that governments actually began to wage war on other governments that culminated in both world wars and by the end of 1945 that 80 million people died as a result of both wars um and so by the end of world war ii largely through war itself but also famine starvation disease because of that three percent of the world's population was just wiped off this planet and these were people 80 million people who had lives and dreams families and just totally wiped off generations wiped off the planet and so because of this the world had to become very introspective especially european leaders and people who had lived through the war had become very very introspective and realized the current system wasn't working and so we would have required something something to restore order and stability and peace and so six countries uh met up in paris and france and they created the european coal and steel community and the european coal and steel community created in 1951 was the first ever european international organization and before this it was almost impossible to think that sovereign states could be joined together without an empire but this idea of having an international organization where france could still be french france could still be france and germany could still be germany yet they could be part of a union that was pretty much unheard of at that point so this was a dramatic kind of shift in how europeans saw themselves or europeans saw nation states as a whole it was made up of six countries initially a lot of the other european countries didn't join because because of various reasons um they felt as if um their sovereignty was being eroded as people they felt as if there wasn't enough benefits in joining these communities but six countries did join and the purpose overall was to eliminate trade barriers between countries and reduce the risk of war now why trade barriers well i spoke about this and actually in my law goods and international trade lectures so if you want to check that out but essentially when you have countries trading with each other making money from each other um they're less likely to go to war with each other so they're less likely to fight and when everyone's trading and no one's fighting that means most people then are also getting pretty rich and i think everyone in the world would rather be driving lamborghinis than going onto the battlefield um and so because of that um the european and economic sort of the european cold and steel community were allowed for this to happen initially however the only thing that was being traded was coal and steel now the reason it was just coal and steel was because really this entire organization that initially was created was for two countries for germany and for france because these two were major players in world war ii and both of these countries had a border with each other which meant that it was very very easy for one to attack the other which is exactly what happened during world war ii and so the idea was to get germany and france to cooperate with each other in the heart of europe so that other countries could follow suit and the best way to cooperate is to trade two resources coal and steel why coal and steel because those two resources are the main resources used to wage war you can't build tanks without steel you can't run machines without coal you can't build weapons without either and so to have them trading with these two it meant that they couldn't just go to war with each other because they would have been relying on each other for the resources to go to war and when you really really reflect on this this was an ingenious idea i don't know who came up with this but we can thank whoever did come up with it for 70 years of lasting peace in europe the economic coal and steel community became a real success and so those six countries that created the economic coal and steel community wanted to go one step further and create a market for all products not just coal and steel which is exactly what happened and so they were still six member states but now was the purpose was to extend the golden steel community and create a common market for all goods and services so it wasn't just cold and steel now it was bananas and it was um it was about to say mobile phones but they didn't have that in 1957 but you get the gist right any products and that they had they would then start to trade these six countries and the effect was that trade barriers were eliminated for the first time in europe and goods and services flows freely between countries and people right because if you offer service people also flow freely so that's when you've got this huge migration of germans who moved to france and french people who moved to germany and italians have moved to germany and those generations exist today in europe people who can trace their lineages if you're living in let's say for example germany you trace your lineage it's not german it's actually italian or it's actually dutch right and so it had this it was this free flow of information and ideas and clearly clearly the system has worked by 1986 whatever this was every other country wanted to get in on it as well the european union then began to expand exponentially six more countries were added to the or existing six including the uk and ireland and the purpose of the single european act was just to further integrate key countries in europe and the effect was quite practical so shortened the there was quite a lot of long legislative procedures in the eu which made passing resolutions quite slow so that was shortened um trade barriers again eliminated but those rules were also refined and in particular the uk who was is one of the richest countries in the world was now part of this organization and that just gave um the european union so much more credibility in the world because there was more funding and we had this major player now who was part of the eu and in 1992 we had the treaty on the european union and that is where we get the name today the european union it wasn't always like that um the number of countries stayed pretty much the same except there was further integration and the purpose now was to create an official economic union between the member states so whereas before there was a kind of like an agreement where trade and services would flow now this was all getting quite official there was an official economic union with policy and structure and an institution in brussels which would regulate all of this and integration was enhanced and so some of the effects of doing this was that there were some provisions made by central european institutions to regulate foreign policy between countries so that they don't contradict each other and there was shared eu citizenship of everyone so so whether you were born in luxembourg or the uk or italy you were not only an italian citizen or a luxembourgish citizen you were also a eu citizen and so when people felt part of that organization it meant that they were more likely to contribute to it and of course there was a creation of the euro as a single currency which of course has its flaws but you can clearly see where we're going with this right is to further integrate as many countries as possible and by the time the treaty of lisbon was passed in 2007 the eu had expanded exponentially from 12 countries to 27 right and this was largely because of eastern european enlargement countries who used to be part of the soviet bloc who used to be kind of under the thumb of russia actually now went west and wanted to embrace free market capitalism um were disillusioned with the russian model and so they became part of the eu the eu took them in with open arms because the more people the better right the more people the more population the more services the more trade the more credibility you can have across the world and the purpose was actually to combine the european community which existed as a separate community and the union into one entity and that's today called the european union and the effect of this was to detail precise rules for regulation of eu institutions governance courts policy all that jazz and so having seen the progress of the eu from humble beginnings um all the way to this 27 state monster um we're going to answer a question we're going to answer the one of the first common questions is why are some european countries still not part of the eu surely they would get some sort of benefit well it depends right first of all you need to realize that only european countries can really be part of the eu otherwise i would kind of lose that identity that it's built up and there's only a select number of countries in europe and all the big ones are part of the eu and so some countries would rather be part of the common market the internal market and still not give up their sovereignty countries like iceland and norway and some countries are actually on the list to join it's called eu enlargement um but they need to air out some problems right there's maybe corruption in their system maybe there's human rights abuses etc that would include selby serbia albania some countries have far too many internal conflicts and like i said pure pure human rights records so ukraine belarus ukraine is in a long-running dispute with russia over crimea the problem is if the eu was to integrate ukraine into europe if russia was to attack ukraine the eu would be put in a very awkward position where it has to help ukraine yeah at the same time it doesn't want full-on war with russia that would depe defeat the whole purpose and so it's in a very awkward position where i think it probably does want ukraine to be part of the eu but it knows ukraine's baggage right there's a lot of issues and so that'll put you in a very awkward position simply some countries are just too small to join so there are some countries like andorra and monaco which maybe the benefit of them joining the eu wouldn't be as great and actually for them to join the eu wouldn't be great for them either they're better off just governing themselves as autonomous territories and keeping good relations with all the countries across the world i'll reference this textbook throughout the entire course um it's european union law by christine bernard and the reason why i love this textbook is because in every single chapter it's written by an expert instead of the same author and so i've gotten most of my information from here so if you're interested in going into a bit more detail in this course feel free to check out this textbook hello welcome back to this introduction to european union law course and in this lecture we're going to be talking about institutions first of all i really want to get this concept out of the way i want to look at well for normal people right institution can be many things but what is an institution or what is the definition of an institution this is how i like to look at institutions in general in life uh human beings have a goal and they always have goals that they're trying to achieve whether that's to stop war like it is in the eu or whether that's to educate people like it is in a university or whether that's to run a country like it is in government and so in order to achieve these goals one man himself can't do them the task is just far far too big i need a lot of resources one of those resources you need is extra people and so you could easily describe institutions as these groups of collective people collective human beings all striving to achieve one goal and so with the european union as an institution it is an institution on its own but it also has its sub institutions which also try and achieve the overarching goal or who have their own goals to regulate the economy to make sure the people are happy to make sure trade is going well to make sure it's democratic and so all of this is for the overarching goal of integrating europeans making people rich stopping more and so that's the best way to look at an institution and why we have them this is a list of all the institutions in fact that's a lie this is a list of some of the institutions in the european union and as you can see there are a ridiculous amount now one thing you need to know about the european union in general is that it's filled with a bunch of bureaucrats and if there's one thing that bureaucrats love it's making things very very difficult and complicated and everyone wants to achieve the same goal but they do it in a much more complicated fashion and so one of the ways to do this is by creating lots and lots of different bodies and institutions and then they all work for the same goal now that's okay in practice but the problem is when you're a student trying to learn eu law it's almost impossible to memorize everything and that eu law has to offer not only do we have seven official institutions seven in the treaty of the european union but there are at least seven plus more other institutions and bodies who also help with the official bodies and who also have their own policy that becomes the problem for students especially and thankfully for you i have taken the time to read about the seven official ones and really try and break them down into one or two lines at most and so this will give you some foundations to go on and understand what institutions actually are but i can absolutely empathize empathize with people who are just too bored to learn this but actually you realize how it all kind of links in the seven official institutions are listed in the treaty of the european union in article 13 and it's the parliament the council the council of the eu which is different to the european council the european commission court of justice central bank and the court of auditors and we'll look at each one in turn and how it relates to the legislative process because this is a law course and so we won't be focusing on the politics of it we'll be looking at the law firstly let's map out how all the institutions relate to one another and how they actually interact so if we take the european council as the heads of state of each government um they would probably relate more to the european commission because they would be in constant discussions with the european commission on what their country needs and in terms of laws and so if the european council is made up of presidents and prime ministers they're going to represent the member states and they'll then go to the commission to tell them actually look we need laws on these kind of things on specific issues etc the commission would then draft up what we call a proposal and once they draft up this proposal is sent to the european parliament and the council of ministers both to debate the proposal to amend it to scrutinize it before it actually becomes legislation itself and eventually eventually after days of talking they will end up passing the legislation and then you'll have the law now i've had a i've got banana as the icon for this law and i'll explain why in a minute but that's basically the example legislation that we're going to use bananas and so once you've passed this banana law it can then go to two other institutions the first is the european court of justice and they will set any debates that are regard regarding the legislation so if someone takes the eu to court on the passing of laws to bananas then the court of justice will deal with this and you also have the court of auditors which is not a courts actually their role is to set the budget for implementing the legislation itself and finally we have the last institution the european central bank it doesn't directly relate to any legislation but what it will do is it will regulate the euro and make sure that the rating for inflation is not too high for member state economies and make sure actually each country's economy or the ones who adopt the euro anyway is sufficiently strong enough for this legislation to be implemented so feel free to take a screenshot or to take notes of this infographic here and i think this is going to be one of the most useful pictures that you might use when you study eu law let's begin first with the european council so with each institution that i look at i'm going to analyze two things i'm going to analyze their composition as in who makes up that institution i want to look at their role in the legislative process okay only two things there are many other things that i can talk about but this is an eu law course right and we're not talking about european institutions as a political entity we're looking at them as legal entities um so when it comes to the composition of the european council consists of heads of state right 27 members there's 27 members and they're heads of state that includes prime ministers presence chancellors and this woman is part of it angela merkel she's the chancellor of germany which essentially is the prime minister or the head of germany right so she'll be on that european council the rule in the legislative process is to appoint members to the european commission which states will often appoint commissioners who will represent their interests right so they're not going to appoint a commissioner who isn't going to tow the country's party line um and this is where we come to the law that we're going to discuss or use as an example throughout the discussion of institutions and so i said before how the european council will take the interests of their people their citizens and look at laws that they need to talk to the commission about the laws that they need to let the commission need to create a proposal but so let's say all the union citizens now want to change the color of bananas right i don't know physically how you would do that um but it might be possible but now let's say everyone in germany and greece and france wants bananas to be red and not yellow so bearing that in mind the council will go to the commission and the commission will be composed of what we call the college of commissioners which is 27 commissioners appointed by the council from each member state and each member will be in charge of a certain department in the eu so monetary policy or trade or climate change and that's ursula von der leyen she is the president of the commission just now and so in terms of the law that now union citizens want about changing the color of bananas it'd now be the role of the commission to make a proposal that would change would detail the practicalities of changing the color of bananas from yellow to red and they would propose this legislation or create the proposal and send it off to the council ministers and the parliament the proposal itself will look a bit like this okay i'll be i'll say a proposal for a director of the european parliament in the council on the changing of colours of bananas in the european union from yellow to red so very very simple and this would be something now but the next institute next two institutions will look at will be debating amending and trying to pass as law so in the european parliament which is composed of 705 meps from all 27 member states and elections will take place every five years normally tournaments very low it's about 40 because people don't feel the connection to the european union um and what happens is domestic political parties will run in the elections and depending on the number of votes there are they will be grouped into the eu parliament depending on their political views so if there's a domestic political party who is more right-wing they'll be grouped into a more right-wing set of political parties from other countries in the eu same with left-wing socialists et cetera et cetera david sasuli on the left that he is now currently the president of the parliament of course his role in the legislative procedure is obvious um it will receive the proposal from the commission scrutinize debate and amend it now i remember um doing a european union simulation of this exact thing right so it was like a three-day event where a bunch of us 40 or 50 people and we take part in a three-day event where we would take the role of a member of parliament from a specific country in a specific party and then debate and amend and scrutinize a piece of legislation or a proposal for three days essentially and passing it it was great fun there were socials and stuff it was excellent but it really put me into the shoes of what it takes to be an mep and so i was an mep um for a socialist party in cyprus and what you notice especially in the european parliament is that the groups in each parliament really deviate from each other you'll have one group with lots and lots of different countries in there and different interests yet normally they act in harmony right so if the group decides that actually they're not going to accept this proposal or accept this amendment then there aren't many outliers there right they're probably all just singing unison and so we found the issue especially when we were in part when we were doing a simulation in parliament if we wanted an amendment passed and if we wanted a proposal passed you had to get the backing of the big groups in parliament and actually that doesn't happen in the debate chamber that happens during coffee breaks and the socials and outside of the actual official debating chamber itself so in summary if most parliamentary groups are against the proposal they'll probably not get past because mps will really defect from the views of their group in parliament and this leads us on to another common question about the eu which is what does your mep actually do many people don't know who their mep is they don't actually know what he does or and why he's getting paid to do what he does um but in general this is what they do they'll scrutinize they'll debate their amend eu law and they'll travel to and from the european parliament in brussels and they're also meet with other meps in their parliamentary group and be part of focus groups and projects and stuff like this throughout europe the council of ministers very very similar to the european parliament in terms of its rule however its composition is very very different so it's unelected it's not democratic and it consists of 27 ministers from each member state and they're appointed by the member state governments now what's interesting with the council of ministers is it's not set like the commission so european parliament changes every five years but there are that's elections you can see how that works and the commission is appointed there's only one person that's appointed the commission by the council with the ministers the council ministers there's not just a set group the composition of the council of ministers will change depending on the issue that needs to be debated so let's say for example the proposal is about trade law well then what you would get is different ministers from each country who specialise in trade law if the proposal is about fisheries policy then you'd get ministers from the member states who specialize in fisheries policy and so on and so on and so the council ministers is much more flexible and you can so you can think about it as a revolving door of experts who come in and out and who are not set in their composition um and so jip tranholm nicholson he is right now the secretary general of the council this role again is the same as the parliament receive the proposal scrutinize it debate it amend it i've done two european simulations one where i was a parliament member but one where i was a council minister for belgium actually and what i found especially when i was the council minister there was less of us not as many as there is in parliament so there's more um people in parliament there's less than the council ministers and you're on your own in terms of um representing your country and it was much more taxing as a process to create amendments to pass things to get into agreements and disagreements um because you're on your own and you're not really helped out by other party members it's really just a lone wolf process and so it made me appreciate the work that council ministers especially go through however by the end of all of these discussions which in my case in that simulation was three days in reality can sometimes take up to three years and what you'll have is a nice polished eu directive and this directive will state that um this is a director of the european parliament on the changing of colours of bananas from yellow to red and it will have all the necessary provisions in it for bananas to now be read instead of yellow uh the core of justice of the european union will play a role in settling disputes that related to the legislation in terms of composition of the court there's not just one court called the court of justice of the european union the court of justice of the european union is the institution within that there are actually two courts that are important the first one is the european court of justice consisting of 27 judges from each member state and 11 advocate generals opinions are not legally binding but they're highly respected these people are extremely knowledgeable about eu law and there's also another court called the general court which consists of 54 judges two from each member state this court was created after the ecj to help with the increased workload that they were constantly getting and that's cohen leonard he's the president of the institution of the court in terms of their specific roles the ecj that's the first one will here create cases from national courts on preliminary rulings and direct actions as in if a domestic court needs to clarify something about eu law then it can take this to the ecg and the egc that's the general core it will hear cases directly from individuals and companies about non-compliance with eu law by a state or institution so um if you are a union citizen and you feel like your rights have been violated then you can go directly to the european general court and make your claim the european court of auditors is not a court it's actually more of a regulatory body which will regulate um spending in the eu and so it's composition consists of a bunch of auditors from each member states klaus heiner elena he's the president just now of the court of auditors and so these guys will set the budget for the eu and make sure there's no over underspending and so their role is to set the budget of the eu handle their financial affairs track spending and make sure there's no over underspending make sure there's no financial corruption and like i said it's not technically a court um and its decisions are not binding legally bindings finally you'll be glad to know we have the european central bank and it's composed of staff so not specifically any ministers who are appointed but just a bunch of staff and specifically there are 3 500 all across europe um including bankers and advisors and and that's christine lagarde she is the president of the bank just now on their role to regulate the eurozone which consists of 19 member states who use the euro as their currency i did a year abroad in germany in my third year of university and it was in a city called mainz which is a 30 minutes train ride away from frankfurt and frankfurt hosts the european central bank and so i was lucky enough to be part of a group who got a tour from an economist at the ecb and as you walk into the ecb what you'll see is that there is a museum on your left hand side on the ground floor which kind of just details the history of the bank and what its main aims are its objectives and how it's changed people's lives and stuff but there was one statistic that kept coming up over and over again when i was doing this tour and it was literally plastered everywhere and this was that inflation has to be kept at around two percent and that is one of the main targets of the ecb you may be wondering well why is inflation such an obsession for the eu well the reason for this is that so inflation has tended to go up every single year since the industrial revolution and the problem is when inflation goes up a little bit too much let's say 10 or 20 things that's products get too expensive and so if you take the average price of products you have a kind of set price and you know what you're gonna get next year if next year you realize actually that all the products that you're buying have gone more expensive yet your wages your the money coming in is stagnated but what that does that causes a lot of resentment between people and we have the eu which is full of over 300 million people if inflation gets out of control and yet wages stagnate what you actually have is a bunch of people who begin to get very very angry with the institutions and the elites in europe and in their governments and what that can do is when people get really angry and they can no longer afford essentials like food and sanitary equipment that can breed hate and anger resentment and that could topple the entire system itself so it's really really important for the eu to work on keeping economic inflation at constant rates so that people aren't surprised year on year because the eu then lose legitimacy and that can result in the downfall of the entire system so you can understand why this is such a key target it's more than just economics this is about everything that underpins society another question and i got asked by friends and he said well who actually runs the eu essentially which one is the one that's at the top which one's running it as i've just discussed no single institution has all the power they're all subject to each other and the idea is that power is shared between all the different institutions and there's a system of checks and balances between each institution hello welcome back we're on to lecture number three of this introduction to european union law online course and in this lecture we're going to be looking at the principles of the european union and so these are principles that the courts have laid down which ultimately as you'll see is what creates the link between abnormal union citizen and how they can enforce eu law against their member states and uphold their rights under the eu um in this lecture we're going to be talking about three specific principles um which i think are not only the most important and the most fundamental uh you'll be heavily examined on them during your degree i'm sure just because they're so important but i think they're also important because these are the principles that normal people can rely on when they are taking their member state to court because maybe the government hasn't implemented a legal right that they're entitled to and this is where um the eu court of justice can actually act as a friend for union citizens they can act as a very very effective balance against member state governments from trampling on the rights of their own citizens so the first principle that we're going to be looking at is direct effect the principle of direct effect the second will be indirect effects which interesting enough they're not opposite principles are actually very very similar to each other and the third one will be supremacy or primacy of eu law let's begin first with direct effect now the principle was first mentioned and created in a case called van genden loose and direct effect is essentially where a lot is passed by the eu and this is effective in a member state without the needs for that member state to implement the law through domestic legislation so if we had take this as an example if there's eu law that has been passed down from the parliament and the council and it now becomes law and that can be enforced in a country such as italy by eu citizens themselves italy doesn't need to enact a domestic act of parliament to say that this european law is an act of parliament those italian citizens can rely on that directive or that regulation from the eu against the italian government without it being domestic law and so this is why we have this direct connection between the eu institutions and their citizens as union citizens however there is a caveat and the three caveats specifically are that laws can only be directly effective as in you can only make use this provision if they are sufficiently clear and precise so there's no ambiguity regarding the eu legislation itself they are unconditional which means that you don't need to apply them with conditions on top and um it can only be relied on directly if the member state such as italy has either failed to implement that european law in the required time period or it's implemented incorrectly if you when you go on to the subject and you research further you realize you'll find that it's not always as easy as it seems and there are some other hurdles to go through but the idea is that there is some sort of cooperation between an eu citizen and an eu institution and it's not just the case that the member state has to act as a stop gap every time a piece of european legislation is issued moving on with indirect effects um this was first mentioned in a case called van coulson and an indirect effect this is the principle whereby member states have a duty to interpret all national laws in conformity with eu law so there can't be any deviations there can't be any inconsistencies with eu law because if there are that will create problems if an eu citizen wants to enforce his rights in real life or in court that causes a problem especially for people in european countries because their allegiances are now being split on the one hand they're a european citizen and they've been told that you can enforce european law directly as a uri as a as a union citizen on the other hand they're also a citizen of their member state and the member state has much more control and so having this divide will inevitably cause a lot of problems so this principle is there to stop that like i said an example is that france cannot pass national national legislation which is going to contradict laws that are passed by the eu um and in fact this will apply to legislation already enacted by france even before say for example it joined the eu so let's say french legislation um was passed which contradicts eu legislation but this was before france joined the eu let's say he has a law from 1786 this would law would also be subject to the requirement because the idea is that member state governments cannot rely on any laws which would directly conflict with the eu as long as they are a member of the eu and so what it would require in theory is france to repeal the outdated or old legislation and replace it with new european union legislation which is consistent and up to date in practice this can be quite problematic and the reason is problematic is because because what you're essentially saying is that french legislation should conform to eu legislation and not the other way around and so this can be problematic in terms of sovereignty unfortunately you can't run an organization when each country is passing its own laws and contradicting one another all in all the aim of the principle is just to ensure consistency between eu and domestic law so that a european union citizen such as someone from slovakia or romania can happily travel to the netherlands or to france and know that the laws are fairly consistent on the eu level and that some weird domestic regulation isn't going to scupper all their plans and the final principle that i want to talk about is supremacy spoke previously about indirect effect and consistency well this takes it one step further right now we're talking about supremacy of eu law so supremacy are primacy they're both called the same primacy of e law is a principle whereby eu law takes precedence over national laws in the event of a conflict so let's say there is a conflict right a really really specific one between french legislation and european legislation in that case theoretically there's only one winner and it's eu law so the rationale the idea behind this is very similar to indirect effect but the rationale is that when is that when states join the eu and sign up to this international organization essentially what they're doing when they sign on that dotted line is they give up part of their sovereignty and law making powers and they hand it off to the european union now ideally every state wants to control all the laws within its borders but a lot of the time that's quite inefficient and so the eu says well we'll take some of your law making powers but in return what you'll get is the eu's economic and political benefits and so yes eu law reigns supreme over national law and it can be seen as this overarching exotic type of law but the idea is that the member states are getting a benefit of it right so the idea is that by doing this by giving eu law the reins here they are part of this economic union where trade free flows freely now you can clearly see the controversial nature of a rule like this because what you're seeing is that the eu will decide laws for our country and citizens who have no idea what the eu is and they don't really relate to it much and they don't understand it very well they just think it's a bunch of elitist bureaucrats in brussels who don't represent them they'll be pretty pissed off if they get there are laws that their country is supposed to decide yet there's this institution brussels that decides them and you could even say well this is one of the major reasons for brexit people don't want their laws coming from someone else they don't want their sovereignty restricted and they want to take back control of all laws regardless of the economic and political benefits if there are any for them so finally we're going to ask a question about how the eu actually affects normal people well well you've just seen those three principles and really that's how it affects normal people eu citizens are able to enforce their legal rights under eu law against the government and other organizations and it also affects them in terms of giving up some of their sovereignty in their country for the eu to make laws for them and in return get economic and political benefits which is not always the case and which can lead to a bit of resentment hello welcome back to this introduction to european union law online course and in this fourth lecture we're going to be talking about the four freedoms now this is where i think um the foundations of the european union actually lie and we'll be exploring exactly how the eu trades and through the internal market how it's been able to galvanize european countries who previously were fighting each other through world wars and now they're trading with each other and exchanging ideas and information so that's what we're looking at in this lecture before we go on to analyzing each freedom in turn um for example the freedom of movement goods etc we're going to actually look at well what actually is the mechanism by which all these freedoms operate and the mechanism is through this thing called the eu common or internal market and in the eu common and internal market it's this idea that all european countries should be part of a european single market whereby goods services people are able to freely move between countries or from country to country without any restrictions so you can imagine it like this um if there's someone in france who has the freedom to go to the netherlands and to set up business there well that's all goodwill and goods right the french government might give that french citizen the freedom to go over to the netherlands and set up his businesses but the eu common market goes one step further it says that not only do french citizens have the freedom to go there but actually when they get to the netherlands they'll be treated the exact same way as people from the netherlands so dutch people the notion that any country's people would treat and other countries people exactly the same as their own was absolutely unimaginable 100 years ago and it's only possible today through this revolution of trade and commerce where people have been able to see each other's other human beings much more on an equal footing rather than having a divide between them countries will often delegate laws on the four freedoms that i'm going to look at they'll delegate those laws to the eu and then the eu is this overarching institution our authority who's going to coordinate trade and free markets between countries and hopefully allow people to get richer and allow people to get jobs and alleviate poverty around europe at least theoretically that's the idea so let's go on to the four freedoms themselves right so what exactly does the common market entail and which areas of society of life are totally not totally but pretty much unrestricted in the european union well the first one probably the most important is the free movement of goods so goods are able to travel between countries without any restrictions people um so me or not me after brexit anymore but me previously i'm able to easily travel to any european union country and stay there as long as i work and pay taxes et cetera free movement of services that is establishing businesses offering services and finally the free movement of capital that largely concerns investments or sending and receiving money so let's begin first with the free movement of goods when it comes to the free movement of goods it's important to understand the definition of what goods actually mean and in this scenario we are thinking of any product which can be valued in money and can be exchanged so take your pick i've got a pair there as an icon you could have this mobile phone you could have lamps tvs um furniture you name it and actually when i was doing our research for this course i actually found that human body parts also constitute goods because technically they are something that can be valued in money and exchanged although of course it is illegal but goods can encompass a very very wide range of products and so they are a pivotal part of the internal market it's the most commonly transacted element of the eu internal market just because one human is able to trade many many types of goods whereas if one human was to trade services well it would take him years to really perfect that service and then to start and then to begin to trade that so it's much more feasible for a human being to trade many different types of goods in a year than he has to trade many different types of services and so the law in this area is extremely voluminous there are many many trade regulations that students who are going to be studying or have studied eu law will come to realize um can be quite boring but it's important to understand just how important this is and the most important aspect of this idea of free movement of goods is that there is a prohibition of customs duties and any charges of equivalent effect now in my online course law goods and international trades i spoke about how countries adopt this thing called protectionism and essentially it's where they try and stop foreign goods coming into the country in order to prop up domestic goods and there are many other reasons why countries will adopt these protections measures and will put up barriers and duties and charges to stop foreign goods from coming in and the eu tries to reverse that effect it tries to lift all these barriers and allow for one market where trade can easily come and go think of it like this if you were in belgium and you were a small business wanting to sell something to another small business in belgium well there would be very very few actual regulations from the state in that case most likely you would just get on the phone create a contract with the other business and then ship over the goods well the opposite is true for a lot of countries right because there's a border between countries so con so the state is able to regulate what what goods come in and out what the eu wants is essentially for the whole of the eu to become well one state in terms of the free movement of goods so that goods are able to freely travel between countries next up we have free movement of people perhaps the most controversial of the four freedoms and um probably what has caused a lot of turmoil a lot of problems for the european union in recent years especially with brexit as we'll look at in the next lecture um but essentially with the free movement of people it allows the allows union citizens or eu citizens to work study and travel in other eu countries without a visa and visas can be very very complicated and very costly as well so by eliminating some of these barriers the idea is that people come in and out and they're able to contribute to the whole state economy right because when citizens are going over to work and they're also paying taxes and so the whole state benefits and the idea is that um there's like this supply and demand of skills shortages so if the uk needs a lot of plumbers then plumbers from romania are able to go over to the uk to fill that gap and the idea is that the opposite would be the case if romania needs i don't know british chefs um chefs from the uk would go over to romania in reality that's not always the case right there's two problems with the free movement of people that's been highly controversial in recent years the first one is there's this idea that it can create competition with locals having lots of lots of foreigners coming in to a country that can create competition with locals for resources resources such as educational facilities health care and housing now i don't know i don't particularly know how much evidence is behind that um there's lots and lots of other reasons why there are long wait times in hospitals and there's not enough houses namely to do with financing and governments cutting spending on these areas but i think you can understand from a normal person's point of view a normal local's point of view um why this could be such a problem and especially if that's what they've been told um in the media and by other people i can totally empathize with why they feel like that whether it's based in any fact is irrelevant at this point and the other problem is uh richer countries normally the free movement of people have benefited more from from the poorer countries right so i had the example of the uk and romania exchanging people for skill shortages now yeah it might be the case that plumbers from romania go over to the uk but the opposite isn't really the case um very few people from the uk travel to eastern europe and actually what you'll find with europe in general is that western europe and eastern europe have a massive economic divide right there's huge inequalities there and western europe is far richer far more developed than eastern europe and so what you'll have is actually eastern europeans educated people people with skills going over to western europe because they're able to get higher pays more wages progress much better in their career getting far more opportunities but the opposite of course isn't the case and so that has caused a lot of resentment especially in eastern europe so let's go on to uh one of the other questions the common questions that i wanted to answer is um well why is it so easy to travel to an eu country without a visa and i've just explained this because eu citizens have the right of free movement uh and that helps the exchange of people and ideas i always wondered why this was the case why i was able to travel to spain without a visa and literally just book a flight and have my passport ready whereas i wanted to go back to my home country pakistan it was just a nightmare visas were expensive they took ages you had to go to the embassy this is the case right when you have an economic union a free market traveling becomes much much easier the other common question i think is stirred up probably in the media is is it easy for people to travel in europe and live on benefits and this is this idea that well if there's free movement um surely poor peasants from poorer countries are able to simply get on a plane and go to whichever european country will be offering the most welfare because of course remember if you settle in that country you are an eu citizen you have to be treated the same as a local citizen so whoever if you get 800 pound in benefits in the uk a person from sweden is going to get 800 in benefits as well so there's this idea of benefit shopping which has been extremely controversial especially because those people on welfare aren't working by definition and so they won't be benefiting to the country through taxes well the truth is it's not actually as easy as simply benefit shopping and going to different country and applying for welfare because in order to you make use of free movement rights citizens have to have eu nationality first of all and then additionally they also have to be economically active and like i said before they have to be searching for work or working of some sort but they can stay there indefinitely without being economically active and looking for work and trying to get jobs or at least those people who have stayed on benefits for a very very long time let's say five ten years in that country they've not done so on paper right it's been sort of underhanded um off the record off the books type of stuff so there will be some dodgy paperwork dodgy stuff going on there somewhere um which is why they've been able to claim benefits for so long even though they're um not a national of that country uh additionally what might also be the case is that well um if you're a worker who comes from another country to another european country you're allowed to bring your family and your family don't have to be economically active only the one person in that family has to be economically active so if you were a husband that came to work your wife could be claiming benefits for a long long time as long as you're married to a person who is paying taxes who is contributing to the economy so it's not as easy as just to say that lots of these people are coming in and getting welfare i think that's massively exaggerated thirdly we have free movement of services exactly what this entails is a bit complicated when you look at the law however services make up a really really big sector of the economy and so the idea is that services means companies right so the freedom to establish companies and then provide that service and then scale up and create jobs for that country and within this umbrella category of free movement of services there are two rights that people are allowed to invoke when they exercise this right and that would be first of all it's the freedom of establishment which allows union citizens to register and set up a business or economic activity so that would be simply registering your company in the whole state let's say i wanted to offer legal services or open up a law firm then i would follow the normal procedures for opening up a law firm in that country without discrimination based on my nationality and secondly once you've established and set up your business you have the freedom to then provide those services for an economic benefit right to make a profit um and that allows citizens to actually provide the service and of course they are then treated the exact same as local citizens so any discrimination based upon someone's nationality if you have a dutch company that's set up in france they have to be treated the same as french citizens it can't be discriminated against by anyone um based upon their nationality and finally we move on to free movement of capital perhaps the least discussed and the least controversial of the three free movements essentially what this allows is for the transfer of money between eu countries with very very minimal restrictions on that and it's helpful for investments through bonds company shares so if i wanted to invest in a company in germany um there are very few restrictions for me to do that and again i'd be treated the exact same as normal citizens and it's also about exchanging foreign currency so there's not as many um there's no sort of tariffs and duties that states can impose to exchange currency and about sending and receiving cash say for example let's say through western union which is a huge sort of money transfer company and so if i wanted to send money to a european country i wouldn't pay extra fees on top of the western union fees i would just go on and pay whatever that company charges and the idea is that less restrictions on capital results in increased investment and that leads to other economic benefits right so again i spoke about foreign direct investment in the international trade course i did where i spoke about how um when a country is given more and more economic investment in theory what that does is create jobs it creates companies services and it creates jobs and it alleviates poverty in theory that is the case in practice it doesn't always work out like that there are lots of issues corruption being the main one but i think overall when you look at the four freedoms and their effect and their impact that they've had on the world in the last 70 or 80 years i think it's extraordinary and modern day europeans can thank whoever came up with this system for years of lasting peace and prosperity hello welcome back to this final lecture final and fifth lecture of this introduction to eu law online course um i think i've covered quite a lot of points that will give students a really good basis a really good foundation to go on with their study of the european union and especially eu law which can be a really really complicated really heavy topic to study well in this final lecture i'm going to talk less about law and about specific provisions and stuff like that but i'm actually going to look at challenges and things that the eu will be trying to overcome um and things that might become problems in the future and later on when it inevitably begins to evolve and become a sort of different organization than it was previously and in this lecture i'm going to look at three specific things three challenges that i think the eu will have to look at in the future and if it wants to remain a viable um a consistent and a respected organization and keep all of its 27 member states um on board the first thing i'm going to look at is how it deals with withdrawal right and especially we're going to look at brexit and some of the reasons for brexit second thing i'm going to look at is financial crisis how it's going to deal with that we're going to look at the euro and analyze this key area a little bit more and finally the refugee crisis which has been this thorn and eu side ever since 2015. so challenge one withdrawal from the eu what's important to realize especially with the eu is that ever since its inception in 1951 the eu has constantly been enlarging and countries have been wanting to join um for over 70 years now and so in 2016 when the uk actually voted to leave that was unprecedented by any measure because before 2016 and even when i was in school when i was in school studying the eu the main topic wasn't how the eu would deal with withdrawal it was actually how the eu would deal with enlargement and there's this still today there's this long list of countries who want to become part of the eu instead of this long list of countries who want to leave countries such as turkey and albania and serbia these countries are at the door and ready to join and so withdrawal was always seen as an abstract concept something that never actually happened in practice but has now resulted in one of its biggest challenges in fact what brexit has really done is set off this chain reaction of other countries who are also looking to exit and it's given some fire to the argument that actually there are a lot of countries around the european union who aren't getting a benefit and who may be much closer to leaving than was previously expected countries like greece and france and netherlands all have their own brexit style movements i think the french one is called frexit netherlands is called nixon and greece is called brexit so all of these countries have very very prominent public figures and politicians who are chomping to have a referendum and to le