Setting the Agenda

Abstract

This book is based on the open access book entitled ‘The Ethical Spirit of EU law’ (Springer, 2019), which was the outcome of the previous Jean Monnet Chair on ‘European integration & ethics’. The European Commission under Erasmus+ has kindly supported the previous Chair and the current Jean Monnet Chair on ‘EU Values & DIGitalisation for our CommuNITY (DIGNITY)’. In this 2019 book I have argued to fill certain gaps that occur if EU law refers to non-legal concepts such as ‘ethics’, with reference to the EU’s common values, as well as the fundamental rights, especially of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. The current book now continues where the previous book has ended and summarises the research output of the current Jean Monnet Chair. This chapter addresses the various objectives of this book. Which values affect which levels, the European Union (EU), the EU Member States, and individuals (objective 1)? What is the temporal, content-related, personal, and territorial scope of these values (objective 2)? What is the relationship of these values to each other, the relationship between values and fundamental rights, as well as the relationship with legal and or ethical principles (objective 3)? Finally, based on the identified status quo, the question of a possible ‘future direction of travel’ will be addressed (objective 4). This first chapter also sheds light on key terminology, such as ethics and morality, values, (general) principles of EU law, (mutual) trust, as well as soft- vs. hard-law.