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This book examines how and where the EU's intensified external actions have impacted its internal constitutional structure, concentrating on how its organisational principles have been influenced and as a result, profoundly alter the involvement of the various EU institutions and the influence of the Member States on the decision-making process

EU external actions have deep constitutional and institutional implications for EU law and practices. The EU's competences in external relations have continuously increased, including with the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon. As a result, the EU has become ever more active in external relations. This has in turn increased the internal constitutional and institutional effects of EU external actions. This text traces these legal effects and the broader constitutional implications, including potential integrative forces.

The 'Europeanisation' of the fight against crime is a broad and much-contested notion. This in-depth analysis of the role of the EU in fighting crime within the area of freedom, security and justice explores the impact of EU policies in the Member States, the progressive convergence of Member States' criminal law systems, the emergence of mutual recognition as an alternative to harmonization, and the incremental development of the ECJ's jurisdiction. The essays also explore the limitations inherent in EU counter-crime policies and the changes brought about by the introduction of the Treaty of Lisbon. These changes are discussed both collectively and within individual substantive areas in which the EU has taken an active role in fighting crime, such as corruption, money laundering, terrorism, organised crime and extradition.

On 7 December 2020, the EU Foreign Affairs Council adopted an 'EU Global Human Rights Sanctions Regime' (EU HRSR). The objective of the EU HRSR is to give the EU to a flexible tool to address serious human rights violations and abuses worldwide. This article starts from the position that setting up an EU HRSR serves a noble objective. The EU HRSR could be desirable tool to flexibly confront those with consequences that commit serious human rights violations. Yet, it would crucially need to comply with human rights itself. This is not a small feat to accomplish. Much hinges on the listing and delisting criteria, the required evidentiary standard, and the information on which the listing decisions are based. Based on a detailed analysis of the Court of Justice's sanctions case law, the article sets out the requirements with which the EU HRSR would have to comply. Finally, the horizontal EU HRSR is an attempt to decouple the protection of human rights from specific (political) conflicts. This decoupling directly charges the protection of human rights, which is traditionally portrayed as 'neutral', with sovereign politics.
Human rights, sanctions, restrictive measures, listing criteria, evidentiary standard, delisting

AbstractThis Article argues that the cooperation obligations of the Member States under EU law are best understood as forming part of an overall duty of EU loyalty and elaborates on the consequences of framing it in this way. EU loyalty legally requires Member States to make the common EU interest their own. The Article further demonstrates that EU loyalty is more relevant and more stringently applied in EU external relations than within the EU legal order. Loyalty obligations of the Member States reach into the future, extend to hypothetical situations, and are at a comparatively high level of abstraction aimed to protect the Union's ability to act effectively on the international plane. This limits Member States' margin of manoeuvre, including when they take unilateral external action within the realm of their retained national competences. The Article explains that this may be functionally justified by the high stakes of non-concerted external action. However, and in particular with the EU's increased external powers and the ever-growing relevance of international cooperation, the stringent application of cooperation requirements should be (better) explicated and justified.