EU Integration and Citizens’ Rights: Concept Paper

EUICR asks what effective activation of EU-derived rights can contribute to the EU’s legitimacy. Its research is not limited to rights within the EU, but also encompasses its neighbourhood and the EU’s global partnerships. It achieves results through a unique interdisciplinary cooperation between legal, political, and economic EU studies, with some sociological reflection in its very first event. EUICR research uses topical fields to explore these questions: it evaluates the continuing effectiveness of free movement and anti-discrimination rights within the EU in the post-COVID crisis and the degree to which these rights are effective when extended to citizens of Northern Ireland and Ukraine as examples of (post-)conflict societies in the EU’s Western and Eastern neighbourhood. It asks in how far citizens can create social rights through the instrument of the EU Citizens’ Initiative, using the Universal Basic Income as an example, and how citizens’ engagement with sports can or cannot be furthered through EU rights. In relation to the EU’s global engagement, it investigates how the EU promotes economic rights in its free trade agreements and human rights in its relations with China. Academic results are communicated in traditional ways through events and papers, and in novel ways through art. EUICR offers a sequence of fourteen events. Its three substantive work packages explore the relationship of the EU’s legitimacy and rights of citizens in the European Union (WP2), EU-generated rights in its Western and Eastern neighbourhood (WP3) and the extent to which the EU generates or safeguards rights through its international relations globally (WP4). WP 2 and 3 share an interest in rights to move across borders and anti-discrimination rights, while WP 2 also explores social rights (Universal Basic Income) and entertainment rights (sharing sports broadcast). WP 4 considers the extension of EU rights through trade deals, its China policy and indirect spread of regulation through market-power. As a special element of dissemination, WP5 not only provides for a closing conference, but also a closing arts conference and two citizen-facing arts workshops enabling engagement with anti-discrimination law in post-colonial settings and human rights in China, relating to results of WPs 3 and 4.