Volume 21 No. 1

Message for Issue 21.1

Dear readers,

Happy New Year, and welcome to the new decade! We hope you enjoyed a restful break, and are full of energy to tackle the new year!

The beginning of this new year also marks the beginning of a new decade, the 2020s. It comes after a few turbulent years for the European Union and just a month after a new Commission assumed office. There can be no doubt that the coming decade will be full of challenges for the EU. With this in mind, the German Law Journal decided to do something perhaps unusual. We asked a range of colleagues working in the area of European Union law —young and established; generalists and specialists— for their take on the main challenges for the EU in the 2020s. We asked them to keep contributions very short, and left a choice of topic, style of engagement, and argument up to them. Twenty challenges for the EU in the 2020s, in short. We hoped this would offer an exciting panoply of different visions on the EU in its current guise and its future trajectory.

And it does. In this first issue of 2020, you will find a fascinating range of perspectives on the EU and the role of EU law. Without wanting to spoil too much of the fun of going through the short pieces yourselves, and discovering the views of our contributors, we can say that this range includes environmental destruction, citizens’ assemblies on refugee law, the rule of law crisis, and the role of the ephemeral European ‘public’. It covers the role of artificial intelligence, the role of values in the EU, and the potential for transnational party lists.

We are taking the unusual step of not announcing the authors’ contributions in this message, as we’re afraid it would spoil your fun of discovering them for yourselves. It is, after all, much less fun to open a present once you know what’s in it. Instead, we’re very proud to announce the list of contributors to this exciting project: Michèle Finck & Floris de Witte (introduction), Liz Fisher, Joanne Scott, Cathryn Costello, Gráinne de Búrca, Koen Lenaerts, Alberto Alemanno, Diamond Ashiagbor, Antoine Vauchez, Mark Dawson, Marija Bartl, Franz Mayer, Valsamis Mitsilegas, Mireille Hildebrandt, Orla Lynskey, Silvana Sciarra, Irma Mosquera Valderrama, J.H.H Weiler, and Loïc Azoulai. I know, we are very impressed too!