Category: re:constitution
re:constitution – Exchange and Analysis on Democracy and the Rule of Law in Europe aims to inspire comprehensive discussion about and around questions of democracy, the rule of law, and the protection of fundamental rights in Europe. Funded by Stiftung Mercator and co-managed by the Forum Transregionale Studien and Democracy Reporting International, the programme awards Fellowships to early-career scholars and practitioners, offers topical analysis and builds up a growing European network of experts on the rule of law and democracy.
Philipp Schönberger studied International Relations in Dresden and Law at the Humboldt University of Berlin. After his second state examination in February 2022, he started working for the environmental law NGO Green Legal Impact Germany e.V. in Berlin as a legal advisor for climate policy and the protection of climate activists. At the same time, he works as a freedom of information lawyer for the transparency initiative FragDenStaat, focusing on access to environmental information. Since 2019, he has been coordinating a litigation project against the violation of migrants’ human rights at the EU’s external borders, successfully representing more than fifty applicants before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in both interim measures and ordinary proceedings. Previous work experiences include stays at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies in Potsdam, the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights in Berlin, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg and two law firms specializing in climate litigation.
By Beate Streicher. As part of her re:constitution project, Beate Streicher investigated the impact of stereotypes related to gender identity and expression, sex characteristics and sexual orientation on judicial proceedings and decisions and identified key challenges and good practices related to judicial training on this topic. To provide practical recommendations, she examined the guidance of international monitoring bodies, responsible for monitoring the implementation of the Istanbul Convention, combined with insights from elite interviews with eight experts (six identifying as female and two as male) involved in Council of Europe (CoE) cooperation projects dealing with the topic and the respective courses from the Human Rights Education for Legal Professionals (HELP) Programme, including the HELP course on WAJ, violence against women and gender equality and gender mainstreaming.
Valentina Golunova is an Assistant Professor in Digital Democracy at Maastricht University. Her research lies at the intersection of platform regulation and fundamental rights. Valentina’s PhD thesis addressed the interplay between algorithmic content moderation, the regulation of digital services in the EU, and freedom of expression online. At the moment, Valentina is pursuing research projects on the legal approaches to countering disinformation and strategic litigation in the field of digital rights.
By Beate Streicher. As part of her re:constitution project, Beate Streicher investigated the impact of stereotypes related to gender identity and expression, sex characteristics and sexual orientation on judicial proceedings and decisions within the European context and beyond, applying an intersection perspective. The multimethod approach combined an analysis of key cases from the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) dealing with gender stereotypes, recommendations of international monitoring bodies such as the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the Group of Experts on Action against Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (GREVIO), and elite interviews with eight experts (six identifying as female and two as male) involved in CoE cooperation projects dealing with the topic such as the projects on Women’s Access to Justice (WAJ) and the respective courses from the Human Rights Education for Legal Professionals (HELP) Programme.
Beate Streicher is a legal professional with extensive experience in international law, human rights, and advocacy. She is currently serving as a legal advisor on international law at Amnesty International Germany. She is skilled in drafting submissions for legislative processes and international monitoring, with a deep understanding of human rights law and a strong commitment to social justice and equity. Her re:constitution research project (2024/25) examines gender stereotypes in court proceedings and decisions, and her mobility period is being conducted at the Council of Europe Programme Human Rights Education for Legal Professionals.
Ezgi Özlü is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Strasbourg and a re:constitution fellow of 2024/2025. She holds a PhD from the University of Strasbourg, where her research focused on how procedural costs affect the right of individual application before the European Court of Human Rights. Having published in three languages, Ezgi’s research interests encompass issues related to access to justice, including legal aid, procedural costs, admissibility requirements, and reparations. She is also focused on topics surrounding the legal profession, such as legal mobilisation, legal ethics, and litigation funding, as well as broader procedural aspects of international adjudication.
By Olga Ceran. Academic freedom, enshrined in Article 13 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (CFR), has not been discussed extensively in the EU legal literature. What brought it into the spotlight of EU law was the democratic backsliding in Hungary. The judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in the so-called Lex CEU case, concerning the amendment to the Hungarian Higher Education Act, was the first judicial pronouncement on academic freedom in EU law. These developments confirm in practice what has already been pointed out in the literature: rule of law, democracy, and academic freedom are intertwined. Nevertheless, what this means for EU action remains underexplored. While the EU’s toolbox for the protection of democracy and the rule of law has grown in recent years and has been widely discussed, academic freedom is not explicitly a part thereof and there is no specific instrument for its protection.
By Oliver Garner. It may have seemed that the EU’s “Rule of Law crisis” was finally being resolved as 2023 commenced. For the first time since 2015, action by the EU institutions induced both Hungary and Poland to adopt legislation on the organisation of their judiciaries. The decisive factor appears to have been the use of financial pressure through the withholding of EU funds. Nevertheless, problems on a number of fronts suggest that this will not be the silver bullet to solve the values crisis.
By Viktoria Kraetzig. The copyright/free speech conflict is inherent in copyright law: copyright grants its owners a limited monopoly on a work, which is also a communication content. If third parties copy the work, they might infringe copyright while invoking their fundamental right of free speech. The conflict arises because free speech doctrine does not distinguish whether someone speaks with own or other people’s words, whether something has been said for the first, second or hundredth time: speaking is speaking. And so is copying.
By Dr Ruji Auethavornpipat. The European Commission’s Rule of Law Report, while assessing EU member states’ adherence to key rule of law principles, significantly lacks a focused evaluation of fundamental rights protections, especially for migrants. This oversight not only undermines the report’s comprehensive integrity but also reflects poorly on the EU’s commitment to its core democratic values.