The academic staff is excited to announce that the European Commission, through its Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA), has awarded the Erasmus+ grant for Jean Monnet Activities, as part of its 2022 call for proposals.
The grant concerns a Jean Monnet Chair, entitled ‘Reinforcing EU responsible global leadership: promoting human rights and democracy through solidarity for a rules-based multilateral world (ProSoEULaw Abroad).
The aim of the project is to understand how the EU can play a more proactive role for a rules-based multilateral world. Thus, the research question is if the EU can reinforce its responsible global leadership promoting human rights and democracy through solidarity.
This should help laying the foundations for strengthening active citizenship and building specific expertise of future policy makers and legal practitioners in areas such as democracy, human rights and multilateralism. The specific key adopted in order to conjugate these areas is the promotion of European Union (EU) values in its relations with the wider world. EU’s external relations are, indeed, the basis for multilateralism and, as it is well known, in pursuing these relations the European Union itself has, according to art. 3 paragraph 5 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU), a specific obligation to promote its own values, listed in art. 2 of the TEU, which include “democracy and respect for human rights”, as well as human dignity, freedom, equality and the rule of law. All these values, the article states, are “common to the Member States in a society in which pluralism, nondiscrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and equality between women and men prevail”. The promotion of these values – especially in relations with the rest of the world– is at the core of the Union’s action in the context of multilateralism. Moreover, as stated in the fifth paragraph of Article 3, the affirmation of democracy, human rights and the other values aforementioned shall constitute the Union’s contribution to peace, security, the sustainable development of the Earth, solidarity and mutual respect among peoples, free and fair trade,
eradication of poverty and protection of human rights and the implementation of international law. Therefore, the bottom question of the project is which is, in the contemporary state of globalization, the role of solidarity in the relations between the EU and the “wider world” and if it can be the key towards a new kind of multilateralism based on the promotion of human rights and democracy, as this is functional to the affirmation of all the above-mentioned values and objectives. With this background in mind, the project will examine how the Union contributes to multilateralism through its external action in general and also through specific instruments such as the conclusion of bilateral and multilateral trade agreements (especially “new generation” trade agreements), promoting its values referred to in Article 2 TEU mentioned above.
The Chair will consist of a range of in-depth teaching activities addressed not only to students at different levels (undergraduates, Master students, PhD students) and researchers, but also to practitioners and the civil society at large, with a specific focus on legal practitioners.
Various activities and events (Conferences, Seminars, Round Tables, Winter School, Moot Court competitions) aimed at spreading the project’s main research findings will take place.
At the end of the Project, it is expected to attain a better comprehension of the role the EU can play in promoting human rights and democracy through solidarity for a rules-based multilateral world, offering innovative perspectives on the values-driven external action of the EU and its impact on the rest of the
world. Therefore, this project is particularly suitable for constituting a tool to promote excellence in teaching and research in EU studies (not only inside the EU, but also outside.
The Chair will be hosted by the Department of Law of the University of Pisa, and will be implemented for three years starting on October 1st, 2022.
Prof. Leonardo Pasquali will be the Chair holder.