Corsi di Studio del Dipartimento di Giurisprudenza

The course pursues the general objective of the Master Programme to train new legal experts and professionals endowed with the proper cultural profile and the skills which are necessary to understand supranational legal phenomena and their evolution from a European perspective.

In this framework, this course contributes to provide the students with a basic knowledge of the foundational legal features of the EU legal order. As such, it is mainly addressed to those students who lack preliminary knowledge on the EU institutional system and legal structure/mechanisms, with a view to reach a level playing field and fully equip them with the necessary legal tools to better approach the Degree Course.

It is important to note that the course is also part of an open access on-line platform of UniTo courses, to which the students can have access even before joining UniTo and starting to attend classes (please cfr. https://start.unito.it/). Moreover, those students who are willing to strengthen their skills/refresh their EU law knowledge can even just benefit from the on-line learning materials (either entirely or partially, as they wish), without any obligation to take the final exam. 

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

Knowledge and comprehension

- Solid knowledge of the institutional system and of the main features of the EU legal order

- 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

- Awareness of the importance and influence of EU law on many other areas of legal studies

Ability to apply knowledge and comprehension 

- Ability to develop a legal reasoning from an EU law perspective 

- Ability to understand EU legal texts

Autonomous intellectual approach and critical thinking

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

- Ability to undertsand topical issues through the lenses of EU law

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

The course is delivered on-line. Learning materials include videos, brief texts, presentations, schemes, self-assessment tests, summaries.

Due to the COVID-19 related restrictions, the final exam will temporarily be an oral one. Specific instructions will be given to those students who register to sit for the exam. 

(Once the health emergency will be over, the exam will consist of a written test with 3 open questions.

There are no pre-determined limits to the length of the answers. Depending on the characteristics of the questions, the time allocated will range from 1 hour to 1 hour and 15 minutes.

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

No specifc tutoring activities have been planned. The professors are available by e-mail, in video-conference or in person (where possible, due to the current health emergency) for any students who might need help.

In sum, the course will cover the following arguments:

- The origins and the development of the process of European integration

- The institutional framework of the European Union: the European Parliament, the European Council, the Council, the European Commission, the agencies

- Sources of EU law: general features of the EU legal order, the notion of direct applicability of EU law

- Sources of EU law: primary law, the general principles of EU law, the Charter of fundamental rights of the European Union

- Sources of EU Law: the acts of the institutions (regulations, directives, decisions)

- The competences of the EU. The principles of subsidiarity and proportionality

- The primacy of EU law over the national legal orders

- The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, with a specific focus on its horizontal clauses and its relationship with the European Convention on Human Rights  

- European citizenship

- Free movement of persons in the EU

- The general legal framework and case law on the protection of selected fundamental rights (eg: privacy, balance between economic and social rights, etc.)

1) On-line materials (start.unito.it)

2) Compulsory textbook: Robert Schütze, European Union Law, 2nd edition (Cambridge University Press, 2018). Only the following selected chapters: 1 to 7, 10 to 12, 15 (only pp. 589-610), 16 (only pp. 655-674). The book is also available in e-book format.

Please refer to the start.unito.it platform for additional information.