Between Internal LAWS and Global Practices: UN Instruments in the Eu's Area of Freedom, Security and Justice

The recent migration crisis placed the EU as a global actor in an uncomfortable spotlight, when it was strongly critiqued by the UN for its failure to act. The crisis neatly brings into focus the broader question how does the EU's global action relate to its internal laws? UN instruments are the most frequently cited norms in EU law and EU treaties give the UN system respect and primacy. In turn, the UN is exceptional in the place that it accords to the EU as a global legal actor. However, beyond the UN, the EU has recently had a limited impact in the global legal order. This paper seeks to generate transparency as to how we understand EU rule-making practices, and to develop our understanding of the relationship between EU law and global governance. This paper studies the use of UN instruments as external norms and standards in EU rule-making in its Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ). It provides an overview of a project which purports to systematically identify UN instruments used external norms (understood as external sources from International conventions, treaties, instruments) in all AFSJ rule-making since the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon to the end of the first legislative cycle (the Stockholm Programme, from 2009-2014), mapping internal and external instruments. The paper assesses how the EU promotes its norms in its AFSJ, where the EU obtains the norms that it promotes and its specific place in the global legal order.