Ever since its inception, one of the essential tasks of the EU has been to establish the internal market. Despite the impressive body of case law and legislation regarding the internal market, legal and factual barriers still exist for citizens seeking to exercise their full rights under EU law. This book analyses these barriers and proposes ways in which they may be overcome. Next to analysing the key barriers to exercising economic rights more generally, this book focuses on three areas which represent the applications of the four basic freedoms: consumer rights, the rights of professionals in gaining access to the market, and intellectual property rights in the Digital Single Market. With chapters from leading researchers, the main pathways towards the reduction and removal of these barriers are considered. Taking into account important factors including the global financial crisis, as well as practical barriers, such as multilingualism, the solutions provided in this book present a pathway to enhance cross-border realization of European citizens? access to their economic rights, as well as increasing in the cultural richness of the EU. EU Citizens? Economic Rights in Actionis an important book, which will be an essential resource for students of EU citizenship and economics, as well as for EU policymakers and practitioners interested in the field.

This book looks at democratic empowerment via institutional designs that extend the political rights of European citizens. It focuses on three themes: first, the positive and negative effects of the European Union institutional design on the political rights of its citizens; second, challenges for democratic regimes across the world in the 21st century in the context of regionalism and globalization; third, the constraints of neoliberalism and capitalist markets on the ability of citizens to effectively achieve their political rights within the Union.

This collection presents the main outcomes concerning social rights, active citizenship, and governance in the European Union, as presented at the final conference of the Civil Society and New Forms of Governance in Europe (CINEFOGO) Network of Excellence (Brussels, March 2009). The classic social debate about active citizen involvement in governance has re-emerged in the changing contexts of globalization and European integreation. Researchers have been involved in deepening the understanding of the role of civil society and new forms of governance in Europe and the making of European citizenship. They have been systematically studying political, legal, institutional, and economic conditions, as well as the different roles of various actors and institutions, the extent of their involvement in decision-making, and how their actions influence the changing human living conditions, including the actual accessibility of social rights for EU citizens. Different aspects of the structural changes to welfare states, and the extent and forms of citizens' participation in addressing public affairs, have been placed in the center of research attention. (Series: European Civil Society)

While the European integration project is facing new challenges, abandonments and criticism, it is often forgotten that there are powerful legal instruments that allow citizens to protect and extend their rights. These instruments and the actions taken to activate them are often overlooked and deliberately ignored in the mainstream debates. This book presents a selection of cases in which legal institutions, social movements, avant-gardes and minorities have tried, and often succeeded, to enhance the current state of human rights through traditional as well as innovative actions. The chapters of this book investigate some of the cases in which the gap between the conventionally recognized rights and those advocated is becoming wider and where traditionally disadvantaged groups raise new problems or new issues are emerging concerning individual freedom, transparency and accountability, which are not yet properly addressed in the current political and legal landscape. Can political institutions and courts without coercive power of last resort actually foster more progressive rights? This book suggests that the expansion of human rights might be a viable strategy to generate a proper European citizenship. This text will be of key interest to scholars and students of European Studies, Politics and International Relations, Law and Society, Sociology and Migration Studies and more broadly to NGOs and policy advisers.

This book identifies, analyses and compares a variety of possible ‘barriers’ to the exercise of European citizenship and discusses ways to move beyond these barriers. It contributes in a multi-disciplinary way to a highly topical issue and offers new perspectives on EU citizenship in the sense that it critically analyses concepts of citizenship, the way EU citizenship is politically, legally and socially institutionalized, and elaborates alternatives to the current paths of realizing EU citizenship.

This book deals with lawmaking in consumer markets, focusing on the increased importance of contracts and self-regulation which have become primary instruments for designing and monitoring legal relationships between businesses and consumers. It asks how common values and objectives of EU law can be protected when lawmaking shifts beyond state law.

This thought-provoking book examines the state of the European Monetary Union (EMU) and its shortcomings in terms of social rights protection in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and the aftermath of the Euro crisis. Providing a critical analysis of the basic tenets of European economic governance, it highlights current challenges for a Social Europe and proposes new avenues for tackling these issues.