A famous Latin motto claims that "verba volant, scripta manent" ("what is said flies away while what is written remains"). Accordingly, in the Western legal tradition it is used to say that what is not provided in official documents has no legal value. Does it hold true in the current global scenario?

Some recent events might suggest that such a claim is not completely valid anymore. From the ECB President Mario Draghi's famous «whatever it takes», that brought to the Court of Justice's Gauweiler judgment; from the EU-Turkey so called 'Agreement' and the subsequent NF case: unwritten sources are more and more deeply impacting the EU legal order and its subjects. 

Against this backdrop, the Jean Monnet Chair "Verba volant, sed imperant? The Legal challenges of EU Communication" aims at mapping the growing influence of EU communication, at discussing its theoretical foundation and its impact on the EU institutional balance, as well as assessing whether and to what extent the existing legal remedies are capable to tackle the consequences of this phenomenon on the rights of individuals.

To this end, the Jean Monnet Chair will organise several research initiatives (conferences, workshop, Young Researchers' Platform), institutional events (roundtables and networks between EU institutions and academia), teaching activities (from high-school to Ph.D. students) as well as public events for disseminating its studies to the general public.