Corsi di Studio del Dipartimento di Giurisprudenza

The Civic Engagement, Rights and Remedies course is the cornerstone of a Jean Monnet Chair funded by the European Union in the context of the Jean Monnet Actions 2023. 

The course is framed within the general objective of the Master Programme in European Legal Studies to provide the students with an advanced cultural and technical training on and knowledge of legal phenomena on the European and international stages. In particular, the course aims at equipping the students with an in-depth knowledge of the civic engagement mechanisms available to groups and individuals in the European Union, including  judicial and non-judicial remedies. This is an increasingly important subject of EU law studies and a strategic added value for the students’ professional future.

In this context, the course is closely connected to other initiatives and learning opportunities offered by the Law Department and the Master Programme, such as the Moot Courts project, the clinical programme and several complementary courses focused on learning-by-doing teaching and learning methodologies.  

Lastly, this course builds on the dynamic approach to the acquisition of formal knowledge which characterizes the Master Programme as a whole. Therefore, the course aims at providing the students with the tools which are necessary to understand and critically analyze the contribution which citizens, associations and other organised social entities across the European Union can provide to the political and legal development of the European integration process. This is done through the combination of both a theoretical approach and the practice-oriented analysis of cases. 

At the end of the course, the student should achieve the following learning objectives:

Knowledge and comprehension

- In-depth knowledge of the main mechanisms of civic engagement and protection of rights in the EU and of the procedures and methodologies characterising them

- Ability to analyse and understand relevant legal texts (EU acts, case law, etc.)

- Awareness of the remarkable implications of EU law in every person's situation and for the student's future professional activity

Ability to apply knowledge and comprehension 

- Ability to handle a complex reasoning on EU legal texts

- Ability to apply the rules and principles of EU law to a given situation and to catch their implications

- Ability to apply the rulea and principles of EU law to pending judicial cases, ongoing decision-making procedures and inter-institutional dynamics, to take position and comprehend their effects and implications

Autonomous intellectual approach and critical thinking

- Ability to organise the knowledge acquired and to weight its importance and relevance

- Ability to understand and to personally discuss topical issues through the lenses of EU law, both in the context of a debate and in the framework of scheduled exercises

- Ability to explain the knowledge acquired, by using an appropriate legal terminology 

The course focuses on the following topics:

Introductory elements

- Civic engagement: notion and evolution

- Civic engagement in the EU: peculiarities and methodologies

- The European system for the protection of fundamental rights: recap 

Non-judicial remedies

- The right to petition the European Parliament

- The European citizens' initiative

- Individuals and society at the face of EU legislative procedures: the 'have your say' platform and the Commission's public consultations

- Campaigning and lobbying in the EU: rules and models

- The right to have access to EU documents

- The review mechanisms whithin EU Agencies (selected issues)

Judicial remedies - Selected issues

- The preliminary reference procedure

- The infringement action and the preliminary administrative phases

- The action for annullment

- The action for EU liability  

- The non-contractual liability of EU Member States for violations of EU law 

The teaching methodologies consist of a combination of:

- traditional frontal lessons

- individual and collective analyses of topical events/facts/situations in light of legal texts and case law

- webinars ands seminars involving high-profile academics, experts and practitioners on lawyering, campaigning and lobying methodologies and experiences

- in-class (discussion of) individual and collective exercises aimed to provide tangible output (eg. drafting a Petition to the European Parliament; drafting dissemination Wikipedia items; contributing to a Commission's public consultation; drafting a legal campaign sample project)

- small role games - such as simple moot court exercises and other simulations or scenario-driven analyses - focussing on debated technical issues concerning specific judicial and non-judicial remedies 

PLEASE NOTE that this teaching approach requires the students' timely registration to the course on the CampusNet webpage as well as to the relevant Moodle e-learning page. The sooner the students register, the easier it is to deliver adequate and timely information on the specific schedule and features of each lesson.   

For the students who will decide to take active part in the exercises and assignments proposed during the course (2 or 3 in total, depending on their overall magnitude), the evaluation will consist of a combination of:

- the professor’s individual and detailed feedbacks on each assignment;

- a final multiple choice quiz covering all the core topics addressed during the course

Each assignment will be graded and the average of these marks will be the entry grade towards the final multiple choice test. The final test will allow the students to improve their final mark, but in the event of an unsatisfactory performance reformation in pejus will be possible.

Exercises and assignments will be checked on TurnItIn to avoid cases of plagiarism and AI-supported texts. In the event of a plagiarism or artificial intelligence alert, the student involved will be automatically deprived of the possibility to get engaged in such activities and will have to sit for the 'traditional' written exam.  

Please note that students can be engaged in the activities in question and then decide to quit and choose the ordinary written final test. 

For the students who decide not to take the home assignments, the evaluation will be based on a written exam consisting of 4 open questions, as follows:

- 1 theoretical question

- 1 request to take position on a givenm statement and to support the position by means of approproate legl arguments

- 1 analysis of an excerpt from a judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union or a provision of EU law

- 1 discussion of a case.

Depending on the characteristics of the questions, the time allocated will approximately range from 1 hour to 1 hour and a half.

For the purposes of the final evaluation, the following criteria will be taken into consideration:

- formal accuracy (including grammar)

- completeness of the answers

- adequate selection of the relevant arguments

- adequate presentation of the arguments (including use of an appropriate legal terminology)

- autonomous organization and elaboration of the answer

"Incorrect" solutions to the case will not automatically determine a negative evaluation, as long as the answer will be construed on a coherent reasoning, consistent with the underlying theoretical background and adequately motivated.