Event: DANCING Academic Conversation with Dr. Vilija Vėlyvytė

For the third DANCING Academic Conversation Dr. Vilija Vėlyvytė joined us from Reading University, UK to present and discuss her recent book ‘Judicial Authority in EU Internal Market Law: Implications for the Balance of Competences and Powers’ (Hart Publishing 2022), which was shortlisted for the University Association for Contemporary European Studies (UACES) Best Book Prize 2023.

Dr. Vilija Vėlyvytė is Lecturer in Law at the University of Reading. Previously, she was British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in Law at the University of Oxford, where she taught EU Law, Constitutional Law, and Law and Public Policy. Prior to that, Vilija was Emile Noël Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Jean Monnet Center at NYU School of Law. She has written on the EU ‘competence creep’, the balance of powers between EU legislature and judiciary, tensions between EU internal market and socio-economic rights, and the relationship between the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) and European Court of Human Rights.

After presenting her thought-provoking book challenging the conventional view of the CJEU as an enforcer of the limits of EU competence by demonstrating that the CJEU itself expands those limits — and the limits of its own powers — through the interpretation of EU free movement law, the DANCING Academic Conversation saw a lively and engaging discussion on some of the issues raised. In particular, questions regarding the interpretation of competences as set out in the EU Treaties and how that reading affects the principle of conferral were discussed. Similarly, the participants considered whether and how this dynamic can be observed in other areas of EU law such as competition law and social security. The friendly atmosphere of the event and a responsive speaker made for an insightful edition of the DANCING Academic Conversation series that provided food for thought and relevant arguments for the ongoing research of the DANCING project.

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