re:constitution
2020/ 2021

Francesco Luigi Gatta

Mobility Phase: University of Konstanz | European Court of Human Rights

Migration and Rule of (Human Rights) Law in the EU: a European “Constitutional” crisis?

Francesco Luigi Gatta is Research Fellow at the Université Catholique de Louvain (Belgium) and member of EDEM (Equipe Droits Européens et Migrations). He teaches EU Law at the Tuscia University (Italy) and EU Law and EU Constitutional Law at the Riga Graduate School of Law (Latvia). He holds a double-PhD in EU Law from the University of Padua (Italy) and Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck (Austria). He was Visiting Research Fellow at the European University Institute (Italy) and at the Université de Strasbourg (France). He was Trainee at the European Parliament (Legal Service) and at the Council of Europe (Legal Affairs and Human Rights Committee of the Parliamentary Assembly). His main research interests are in International and European Union Law, with a particular focus on the areas of human rights, migration, asylum and border controls. He is author of various articles and publications on international and EU law issues.

Migration and Rule of (Human Rights) Law in the EU: a European “Constitutional” crisis?

The project aims to demonstrate the interrelationship between two “crises” occurred in the EU: the “refugee crisis” and the crisis of the principle of the Rule of Law. The starting point is the postulate that the two crises are closely connected and find their point of convergence in the kind of responses that the EU and some of its Member States have put in place in order to face the migratory pressure. In the name of the emergency, legal and policy measures have been adopted in a manner that, both from a substantial and procedural point of view, appears to be in violation of some of the very founding principles of the European integration experience, such as Rule of Law, human rights protection, transparency and democratic control. The migratory crisis acted as catalyst for the proliferation of atypical, “de-proceduralised” and informal measures, which are highly disputable in terms of compatibility with EU law and international human rights law. The project intends to investigate whether and how the migration crisis has accelerated the phenomenon of the rule of law backsliding in the EU, and to analyse the repercussions on European constitutional principles such as democracy, transparency, solidarity and human rights protection.