Verba volant, sed imperant?
The Legal Challenges of EU Communication
September 6th 2024 | Sala Consiliare “Lorenza Carlassare”
Corso Ercole I d’Este 44, Ferrara
Inaugural Conference of the Jean Monnet Chair
The event has been acknowledged by the Ferrara Bar Association with 6 credits for the purposes of the Continuing Legal Education Programme.
The event will take place only in person and it will be open to a selected audience.
Academics and practitioners interested in following the event are kindly requested to send their request before September 3rd 2024 to jmchair.eulaw@unife.it, together with a brief CV.
Legal science has devoted so far very little attention to the communication made by EU institutions.
In a nutshell, its approach can be summarized by an old Latin motto, which says: ‘verba volant, scripta manent’. Spoken words fly away, only what is written remains – and, thus, deserves to be taken into consideration, being able to impose rights and obligations on individuals.
However, in the information society we are currently living in, this approach is not fully convincing.
A bare ECB press release, taken following the famous «whatever it takes» speech, has threatened the principle of primacy of EU Law in the Gauweiler case. The decision to move the European Medicine Agency’s headquarter from London to Amsterdam, that led to four cases before the EU Court of Justice, has been firstly adopted through a tweet. The so-called EU-Turkey ‘Agreement’ on the management of the Syrian refugees’ crisis, according to both EU Courts was a bare intergovernmental statement, published by means of a press release, and thus not reviewable by the EU Judiciary.
Legislation and communication have always gone hand in hand for regulating societies. However, the rise of internet and of social media has clearly projected the latter into a new dimension, whose impact on the legal sphere still has to be fully mastered by legal scholars.
Studies on soft law have made a first attempt in this regard, focusing on acts that have an ambiguous nature… but were, at least, acts, often adopted following procedures set forth by hard law. Conversely, press releases, announcements, posts on social media clearly go beyond this nature, being often unwritten or totally non-legal sources, adopted through unregulated procedures – yet, this notwithstanding, often having a huge impact on individuals.
Against this framework, the Jean Monnet Chair Verba Volant, sed Imperant? The Legal Challenges of EU Communication aims at debating whether and to what extent communication means and strategies can be seen as new sources of EU Law and how the settled principles on EU judicial protection can handle this brave new world. To this end, the inaugural Conference aims at bringing together academics and practitioners, both from national and EU level, to discuss the legal implications of EU Communication and to map its impact in various EU policy fields.
9:00
Introductory remarks
Serena Forlati | Dean of the Department of Law of the University of Ferrara
Giovanni De Cristofaro | Coordinator of the Ph.D. Programme in EU Law and National Legal Orders at the University of Ferrara
Jacopo Alberti | Professor of EU Law at the University of Ferrara and Coordinator of the Jean Monnet Chair
* * *
9:15
Session I
Key-note Speech
Jacques Ziller | Full Professor of EU Law, University of Venice (formerly at Paris Sorbonne, EUI, Pavia)
Communicating EU Policies and Law in 24 Different Languages: a Challenge for Artificial Intelligence
* * *
09:45 – 15:30
Session II
Roundtable debate on the making, the strategies and the legal implications of EU Communication
Chaired by Jacopo Alberti and Jacques Ziller
Speakers
Raffaella De Marte | Head of Unit (Media Services Unit) at the European Parliament
Niels Timmermans | Spokesperson at the Belgian Presidency of the Council of the European Union
Telmo Baltazar | Principal Adviser for Corporate and Political Communication at the European Commission
Stefaan Van der Jeught | Press Officer at the Court of Justice of the European Union and Professor of EU Constitutional Law at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Paul Gordon | Head of Newsroom at the European Central Bank
Damijan Fišer | Senior Communication Officer and Deputy Spokesperson at the European Court of Auditors
Agenda
(for a detailed description of the topics to be discussed, see the Annex below)
09:45
The making of EU Communication | Main issues: the governance of communication; the legislative framework of communication; the interplay with the legal sphere; institutional vs personal communication
The debates will be paused around 11:15 for a coffee break
11:30
The strategies of EU Communication | Main issues: the choice of topics, media and product; engagement assessment and targets; regulation by communication; multilingualism
The debates will be paused around 13 for lunch
14:00
The legal implications of EU Communication | Main issues: public perception; institutional balance; accountability/judicial protection
The debates will be paused around 15:30 for a coffee break
* * *
15:45
Session III
Interdisciplinary perspectives on EU Communication by the Young Researchers’ Platform
Chaired by Jacopo Alberti
Alessandro Cuomo | Ph.D. candidate at Maastricht University
Taking Words Seriously: Function, Risks and Opportunities of the ECB’s Communicative Practice Between Effectiveness and Transparency
Giulia Toraldo | Post-doc Research Fellow at the University of Naples
Benefits and drawbacks in the use of dematerialized communication as a tool for EU regulation
Eleonora Dallagiacoma | Ph.D. Candidate at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart Milan
Narratives behind the European environmental policy: a focus on the Nature Restoration Law
Francesca Tassinari | Post-doc Research Fellow Juan de la Cierva at the University of the Basque Country
The EU’s migration and asylum strategy and communication: regulatory perspectives from the executive leadership
Cecilia Rasetto | Ph.D. candidate at the University of Pisa
The European Union communication strategies in the agri-food sector: the Data governance and the smart labels
17:00
End of the Conference
General approach
The Roundtable aims at discussing whether and to what extent communication strategies by EU institutions (press releases, posts on social media, statements by EU leaders, etc.) are acquiring a normative power and are able to steer the behaviour of individuals, companies and national governments.
The Roundtable will gather together distinguished members of the EU institutions and of the Academia. The initiative has purely scientific and academic purposes. Opinions will be presented by speakers in their personal capacity and do not bind the institution to which they belong. After a first tour de table with the Roundtable's distinguished speakers, any participant at the Conference is welcomed to take the floor and step in the discussion.
Chatham House Rules apply.
Detailed Agenda
The making of EU Communication
Governance of communication: Could you please describe how is structured your Office, to whom it reports and the procedures to be followed for communicating?
Rules: are there internal decisions, guidelines, codes of conduct or other sources regulating the communication of your Institution? Moreover, do exist minutes or working documents of the meetings in which the decisions on communication are taken? Have access to those documents ever been requested?
Focus – the interplay with the legal sphere: is there any specific connection between your Office and the Legal Service before adopting any communication? Is there any ‘legal checklist’ to be followed to check the legal implications of your communication, so as to avoid the creation of unintended expectations in the public?
Institutional vs Personal communication: how does your Institution manage the interplay between the ‘institutional communication’ made by the same Institution and the one personally made by the leader(s) thereof? Moreover, are there codes of conduct that the leader(s) have to follow for communicating through their personal channels?
Open floor: is there any other issue that could be of common interest?
The strategies of EU Communication
Topics: how does your Institution choose the topics of your communication? Is there any selection?
Media / Product: how does your Institution choose the media on which it communicates and the product (text, video, audio, etc) with which it does so? Which impact has had the rise of social media on the communication of your Institution?
Engagement: does your Institution set specific targets of public engagement (both in terms of views and reaction) that have to be reached with its communication?
Regulation by communication: do you have specific communication strategies so as to support / enhance / expand the scope of the act or the fact that you are communicating?
Multilingualism: which impact has multilingualism on the communication of your Institution? The plurality of cultures generates different communication strategies depending on the language that you use / the national public you are referring to?
Open floor: is there any other issue that could be of common interest?
The legal implications of EU Communication
Public perception: has your Institution ever been questioned by individuals or companies for its communication?
Institutional balance: has the communication by your Institution ever encroached upon the prerogatives of another EU or national institution, or viceversa? How are managed those conflicts?
Accountability and judicial protection: has your Institution ever been hold accountable before national or EU Courts / Ombudsmen for something it has barely communicated, yet not officially legally adopted?
Open floor: is there any other issue that could be of common interest?
Venue
University of Ferrara | Department of Law
Sala Consiliare "Lorenza Carlassare"
Corso Ercole I d'Este, 44 | Ferrara
Call for Papers
The Conference has been anticipated by a Call for Papers for early career academics and practitioners that can be found here.
