This week’s event announcement is below.

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The European Parliament (EP), Elections and Brexit:

An Evening with Claude Moraes, Chairperson of the EP LIBE Committee

City Law School, 23 April 2019

Event Series: Institute for the Study of European Law (ISEL) and Constitutional Law

Speaker: Claude Moraes, Labour MEP for London, Chair LIBE Civil Liberties Committee of the European Parliament

Chair: Prof. Elaine Fahey, City Law School

Discussants: Dr Elizabeth O’Loughlin, City Law School; Dr Adrienne Yong, City Law School

The European Parliament is increasingly in the spotlight for its growing politicisation and rising legal competences. Claude Moraes, Labour MEP for London and Chairperson of the ‘LIBE’ Civil Liberties Committee of the European Parliament, arguably the EP’s most powerful and globally significant committee, will give a talk at City Law School on Tuesday 23 April at 6.00pm.

Legal Opinion is divided on whether the UK should be required to hold EP elections while still a member of the EU without having formally left the EU or whether flexibility can be shown to core institutional principles, representative democracy and evolving constitutional affairs. The EP itself looks set to play a fundamental role going forward in UK-EU negotiations on a future trade relationship. What practices and principles are of note? As part of an emerging transnational regulator, the EP is increasingly involved in global regulation e.g. as to Facebook, hearing evidence from Mark Zuckerberg who refused to appear before national parliaments and committees, including the UK parliament. Often decried as politically unimportant and a talking-shop by politicians and media in the UK, at a global level the EP is accorded greater credibility and political space because of the ever-growing global reach of EU law. Claude Moraes shares his thoughts as outgoing chair of arguably the most important European Parliament committee, the LIBE committee.

The talk will consider the role of the European Parliament in the Brexit negotiations, whether the UK needs to legally hold European Parliament elections and the transnational dimension to civil liberties e.g. where the EP is involved in the transnational regulation of data, security and terrorism.

Event information and registration can be found here.