Jan Wouters

• PhD in Law, KU Leuven, 1996
• Managing Director at KU Leuven

This book provides key interdisciplinary perspectives on the current challenges faced by EU policymakers in framing and implementing a coherent European industrial policy, employing specific case studies from the digital, automotive, steel and defence industries as well as concrete examples of EU policies.

Over the last two decades, international humanitarian law (IHL) has seen a stalling with regard to States’ willingness to adopt treaties or to be formally involved in the development of IHL. This raises the question of whether holding on to the doctrine of sources as laid down in Article 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice is th...

The World Trade Organization (WTO) faces an existential crisis. Nominations to the Appellate Body (AB) are deadlocked; tariffs are being raised and retaliated against; and substantive negotiations are stalled. A number of Members, including European Union (EU or the Union) and its Member States, are convinced that the WTO is in need of profound ref...

Bringing together scholars of migration and constitutional law, this volume analyses the problematic relationship between the rise of populism, restrictions of migrants' rights and democratic decay in Europe. By offering both constructive and critical accounts, it creates a nuanced debate on the possibilities for and limitations of legal resilience...

The World Trade Organization (WTO) Secretariat has developed a typology to categorize various Special and Differential Treatment (SDT) provisions in WTO agreements. This typology is based on the aims and intended effects of such provisions. However, it fails to highlight their legal effects. A legal typology is particularly important because the de...

Millions of people have been depending on commons such as forests, pastures, grazing lands, and fisheries to meet their basic needs for centuries. Because these commons are often left unrecognized, they face the threat of enclosure, which risks depriving peoples in the Global South from their most basic access to essential resources. Legal scholars...

The Covid-19 pandemic has brought to the fore significant shortcomings in global health governance. Faced with the rapid international spread of the virus, international actors unsuccessfully attempted a coordinated international response to tackle the Covid-19 outbreak and its far-reaching repercussions. The present article aims to shed light on c...

This chapter assesses the role of fundamental rights in EU competition enforcement. EU competition policy comprises a number of limbs, each with its own peculiarities and rules but together contributing to the objective of protecting (relatively) undistorted competition in the Union's internal market. The key reason why EU competition policy is an...

This chapter analyses the tools used as part of EU migration policy and argues that these are very much focused on control which has negative implications for the human rights of migrants. The EU's current status as a major international player in migration governance has become only possible after the development of the relevant competences on mig...

This chapter discusses the emergence of the European Union's (EU) commitment to human rights. The EU's de facto constitution has not always been endowed with human rights provisions. The original founding Treaties contained no mention of human rights — or ‘fundamental rights’ in EU jargon — and this remained the case until the adoption of the Treat...

This chapter addresses equality and non-discrimination, which are explicitly acknowledged as foundational values in the EU context in Article 2 TEU. Similarly, the right to non-discrimination enjoys wide recognition in international human rights law. In the EU, non-discrimination had a specific role to play from the outset of European integration....

This chapter offers a global view of the EU legal framework for the protection of fundamental rights and the basic functioning of its key constituents, most notably the Charter of Fundamental Rights. The EU Charter of Fundamental Rights was originally devised in 2000 by the so-called European Convention consisting of representatives of the European...

This chapter explores the role of human rights in EU trade policy. Ever since the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon in 2009, the EU has made the promotion of human rights an integral part of its trade relations with third countries. It has done so by requiring all external trade, cooperation, partnership, and association agreements, includin...

This chapter studies the role of human rights in EU development policy. The place of human rights in development policy was solidified at the constitutional level with the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, which made the promotion of human rights in all EU external action a legal obligation. As a result, different institutional mechanisms, the...

This chapter examines the roles of the various institutional actors in the EU fundamental rights architecture. The European Commission is the most well-known supranational institution of the EU. It acts as the central pillar of the EU system with responsibilities spanning legislative proposals and enforcement of EU law, among others. As such, the C...

This chapter focuses on the relationship between international law, the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), and the EU. International law features with respect to the EU both as an object of the EU's internal fundamental rights regime and as a source of human rights obligations. Whereas the latter reflects the original conception of interna...

After the June 2010 federal elections in Belgium, a fractured federal parliament revealed deepening political divisions, triggering a crisis which reached a solution only after 541 days, in December 2011. And yet, the collapse of Belgium is far from inevitable, as it is a case of federalism rife with contradictions. The Belgian federal system does...

This article introduces the special issue ‘New Frontiers in Children's Rights: From Protection to Empowermen’. It gives an overview of new frontiers in children's rights. It also takes a historical perspective on children's rights, including on their legalisation to situate the concept of empowerment therein. It then gives an overview of the specia...

This chapter addresses policy responses to the crime-terror nexus adopted by the European Union and the Council of Europe. First we examine the patchwork of European Union legal instruments and policy documents to understand how they deal with the crime-terror nexus. The nexus has historically been present in EU policy regarding money laundering an...

The European Union and Human Rights: Analysis, Cases, and Materials maps and critiques the EU's commitment to human rights in both internal and external affairs. The book covers the evolution as well as the current state of the EU's engagement with human rights, focusing, on the internal side, on the role of the EU law in the multi-faceted system o...

This chapter evaluates the language and concepts surrounding human rights in the EU. It begins by investigating the dichotomous language of ‘human’ and ‘fundamental’ rights. Even a brief look at the EU Treaties makes immediately clear that both ‘human’ and ‘fundamental’ rights are mentioned in various parts of the text, most often as part of refere...

This chapter describes the central aspects of human rights in EU external policies and representation. As such, it focuses on the second prong of the EU's relationship with human rights — their external promotion (as opposed to their internal protection). The general principles and objectives of EU external action are unsurprisingly enshrined in th...

The aim of this chapter is to reflect on the role referendums might play when it comes to national and European legitimacy and decision-making processes, by looking at these issues through the unusual prism of the only referendum ever held in Belgium, on King’s Leopold III right to rule in 1950 (the question royale). Belgium is founded upon a conse...

This chapter provides an overview of the historical evolution and the post-Lisbon institutional and legal characteristics of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), including the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). Specific attention is paid to the specificity and sui generis nature of the CFSP as an EU competence and to the instrumen...

This chapter provides an overview of the questions pertaining to the international legal personality and external powers of the Union. It presents and analyses the seminal judgments of the extensive case law of the Court of Justice on the external powers of the Union that span almost fifty years. It thereby explains the distinction between the exis...

This chapter deals with the status of international law in the EU legal order under the Lisbon Treaty. It presents in great detail the most important cases of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) on the incorporation of international agreements and their rank in the domestic legal order. The origins and current practice of the doctrine of direct eff...

This chapter provides an overview of the historical evolution and contemporary legal framework of the EU’s common commercial policy (CCP). A structured presentation of the most important European Court of Justice (ECJ) case law in the field recalls the scope and objectives of the CCP. Specific attention is paid to the unilateral regulation of trade...

This chapter deals with the status of international agreements of EU Member States in the EU legal order. With reference to relevant European Court of Justice (ECJ) case law, it provides a useful overview of different categories. Agreements concluded between Member States with third States before EU membership enjoy certain protection under Article...

This chapter recalls how the EU started to become engaged in the international protection of the environment. It explains in detail the ECJ case law on the choice of legal basis under EU law when an international agreement contains both aspects of commercial policy and environmental protection. It also analyses the internal struggle between the EU...

This chapter provides an overview of the treaty-making procedures in the European Union. It explains the historical evolution of primary law in the field and gives examples for each step under Article 218 TFEU (negotiation, signature, provisional application, and conclusion). Excerpts of European Court of Justice (ECJ) case law illustrate how these...

This chapter provides an overview of the specific provisions of the Treaties, secondary law, and practice that determine which actors are tasked to externally represent the Union in third states, international organizations, and international fora, as well as international dispute settlement mechanisms and diplomatic exchanges. It starts with the c...

This chapter provides an overview of the sanctions that are available to the EU in the conduct of its foreign policy. First, it focuses on EU restrictive measures or sanctions analysing the applicable provisions and procedure for their adoption under the EU Treaties before making a systematic presentation of the different regimes adopted by the Uni...

This chapter presents the rules under EU law and international law that enable the EU to participate in the work of other international organizations. It explains the process of the EU becoming and acting as a full member in an international body composed of States, such as the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) or the Wo...

This chapter provides an overview of the cooperation policies of the Union beyond trade. In particular, it focuses on the neighbourhood policy, development cooperation and cooperation with developed countries, and humanitarian aid. It presents and analyses their development in time and the case law of the Court of Justice on their nature and scope,...

This chapter provides an overview of the development of the phenomenon of mixed agreements. It explains the legal and political reasons for the emergence and perseverance of mixed agreements. The chapter also analyses the legal limits to the use of mixed agreements, and discusses salient legal issues that arise with regard to their signature, concl...

Can two small European countries surrounded by nations who shaped international law have an international law tradition of their own? Studying the example of Belgium and the Netherlands in this regard is an interesting way to look at the European tradition from a different perspective. By looking at the lives and work of Belgian and Dutch scholars...

The European Union (EU or Union) has the ambition to be an important actor in the global order. Pursuant to Article 21 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU), it is set to “work for a high degree of cooperation in all fields of international relations” and “promote an international system based on stronger multilateral cooperation and good global go...

The European Union’s (EU’s or Union’s) own Member States are themselves bound, under the Treaties, to respect and promote human rights. However, in recent years, the consensus over human rights has been challenged by what has been called ‘backsliding’ in some Member States. This chapter captures the reciprocal relationship between the EU and its Me...

This chapter looks into the historical background of the European Union’s (EU’s or Union’s) current commitment to human rights, by retracing the evolution of the EU from an economic community to a more political union based on shared fundamental values. The chapter aims at driving home three core messages that are essential for this volume, namely:...

With the Treaty of Lisbon, the profile of human rights issues has greatly risen in relation to European Union (EU) policies, whether internal or external. The EU has made the commitment to ensure that all its actions are compliant with human rights, and to seek to promote them. Yet, the Union’s commitment has come under close scrutiny, not only for...

In the absence of agreed institutional arrangements for the post-Brexit EU-UK relationship the present contribution explores whether guidance can be found for the institutional dimension of their future relationship in a number of other documents and principles. We will, first of all, examine the institutional framework laid down in the ‘Agreement...

The corporate responsibility to respect human rights was formally introduced in 2011 with the unanimous endorsement of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) by the UN Human Rights Council. It is grounded in social expectations and forms part of the companies' “social license to operate.” This paper argues that this responsi...

This contribution aims to unravel some of the specific features of the crisis of multilateralism, drawing evidence from informal cooperation in the G-format of the G7/8 and G20. In doing so, it reassesses the debates over the efficacy and legitimacy of these informal bodies, in light of domestic developments such as the rise of populism, anti-eliti...

This volume focuses on three main themes that are interdependent: the universality, the proliferation and the costs of human rights. This introductory chapter frames these themes in the context of their theoretical background and explains why they have been chosen as focus of the book. Subsequently, it brings together the essential findings of the...

This insightful book offers a critical reflection on the sustainability and effectiveness of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and its legacy over the last 70 years. Exploring the problems surrounding universality, proliferation and costs, it asks the provocative question, can we still afford human rights? Expert contributors illust...

This Article revisits the EU’s foundational decade with the view to explain the idea of legitimacy as legality that made its mark on the Treaties of Paris (1951) and Rome (1957). To the architects of these Treaties, it was the Member States’ decision to create a common market that justified the creation of supranational institutions in general and...

The many recent cyber incidents have shown how cybersecurity has entered the realm of international relations. Several international organizations have taken cybersecurity policy initiatives, notably the United Nations (UN) and the European Union (EU). Both organizations aspire to a leading role in enhancing cybersecurity resilience. To date, howev...

Although some research suggests that legal, well-regulated trophy hunting programmes can positively contribute to wildlife conservation efforts, surprisingly little legal scholarship has focused on the regulatory framework that governs trophy hunting, and remarkably little guidance exists for the development and improvement of regulation in this ar...

This working paper revisits the Union's relationship with multilateralism as a key organizing principle of EU external relations, by placing it within the broader current crisis and contestation of multilateralism. In doing so, it presents EU-Japan relations as a particularly noteworthy case to understand how the Union is beginning to respond and p...

Research Handbook on the Theory and Practice of International Lawmaking. Edited by Catherine Brölmann and Yannick Radi. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 2016. Pp. xvii, 484. Index. - Volume 114 Issue 1 - Rita Guerreiro Teixeira, Jan Wouters

European Papers

European Papers

European Papers

This extensive volume of the Elgar Encyclopedia of Environmental Law probes the essential concepts, contemporary research, and key elements of law at the intersection of international trade and international environmental law. Its succinct, structured entries provide a definitive and comprehensive assessment of the interactions between these fields...

The European Union’s Emerging International Identity. Views from the Global Arena Annuaire de droit européenne

FRA occupies a specific place in the network of decentralized European Union agencies. Unlike most, it is not concerned with technical regulation of economic activity. The politically sensitive nature of fundamental rights and the existence of a greater range of, also non-EU, actors able to supply expertise in this field condition the political rol...

European Yearbook on Human Rights 2019 - edited by Philip Czech October 2019

The aim of this contribution is to unravel the European Union’s position and role within a deepening and broadening global normative web. After briefly reexamining the debate over the general shift in global governance and its impact on international law, this chapter delves into assessing the impact of informal global fora and their relationship w...

The chapter focuses on the impact of globalization on public international law in times of anti-globalism and populism, where globalization itself has increasingly become contested. It submits that traditional public international law has been dangerously unreceptive in capturing new transnational regulatory actors and normative dynamics, which mak...

The Legal Framework of the OSCE - edited by Mateja Steinbrück Platise May 2019