Framing the Subjects and Objects of EU LAW: Shifting the Parameters of the EU Integration Narrative

The paper purports to explore how we frame the subjects and objects of contemporary European Union (EU) law. Public international law has long scorned this dichotomy as fruitless. However, EU law sought to differentiate itself as a new legal order, expressly conceiving a new subjects and objects paradigm. As EU integration has evolved, significant changes surround its subjects and objects.

The paper examines two distinct casestudies and their relationship:  (1) the development of the subjects of EU law before and in crisis and (2) the day-to-day exploitation of the boundaries of EU law procuring new objects of EU law.

The subjects of EU law have significantly transformed with strengthened enforcement of EU law which incorporates the individual centrally: e.g. the expansion of internal market law to incorporate fundamental rights concerns or the development of Area of Freedom, Security and Justice. This has revealed the false coherence of the Member State as ‘subject’. The move to intergovernmentalism in response to the crisis seemingly reinstated the Member States as ‘Masters of the Treaties.’ How do we understand shifts in the evolution of the subjects of EU law?

Day to day legislative and executive action in the post-Lisbon period reveals much fluidity in the internal and external boundaries of EU law, with many new objects of EU law. The paper examines: (i) the externalisation of the internal market, (ii) the EU participation in international organisations and (iii) challenges to EU extra-territoriality.