Wednesday, July 12, 2017
Turnbull Room (University of Glasgow)
Cultural diversity: the term covers divergent, often even antagonistic, interests, namely the alleged interests of a State and nation to be distinct and homogeneous on one hand and the alleged interests of minorities and migrants on the other hand in a pluralistic society acknowledging their specificities. A legal conceptualization that embraces opposing interests is problematic. It is even more problematic within the EU, where such opposition of interests is combined with an opposition of contexts within the area of freedom security and justice (which is hardly conceivable as homogeneous space); of spatial dimensions - EU internal and external actions - and of beneficiaries (States as well as individuals - EU citizens and third country nationals).
The paper explores the concept of cultural diversity within the constitutional and political project of the European Union and aims at understanding whether it can accomplish an autonomous function as a legal principle: any additional value of cultural diversity to the doctrine of competences, the doctrine of the protection of national interests through the institutional set-up of the Union, citizenship, non-discrimination and minority rights?
