Associate Professor at the Amsterdam Centre for European Law and Governance (ACELG)

Christina Eckes is associate professor in EU law at the University of Amsterdam and adjunct director of the Amsterdam Centre for European Law and Governance (ACELG). Since 2014 she is one of the research leaders of ACELG's multiannual research programme Compound Constitutions in Europe.

In 2011 Christina Eckes was awarded a personal research grant by the Dutch Scientific Organization (NWO) for her current research project entitled:  Outside-In: Tracing the Imprint of the European Union's External Actions on Its Constitutional Landscape. She spent the academic year 2012/2013 as Emile Noël Fellow-in-residence at New York University and March to June 2014 as a visiting researcher at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin.

Christina Eckes joined the University of Amsterdam in September 2008. Previously, she was lecturer in EU law at the University of Surrey, UK (2007-2008). Her PhD research at the Centre of European Law at King's College London was fully funded. She published a monograph based on her PhD thesis under the title: EU Counter-Terrorist Policies and Fundamental Rights - The Case of Individual Sanctions (Oxford University Press, 2009). She also holds an LL.M (2003) from the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium, and passed First State Examination in Germany (2002).

• ACELG&ACELG Research Programme

• Emile Noel Fellows

• CV with publications

Books 

EU Counter-Terrorist Policies and Fundamental Rights: The Case of Individual Sanctions

see reviews:  Luke A.R. Butler, European Law Review 2010, p. 739; Martin Scheinin, Yearbook of European Law 2010, p. 539; Cian Murphy, European Human Rights Law Review 2011, p. 120; Maria Tzanou, Common Market Law Review 2011, p. 2124; Iris Canor, Leiden Journal of International Law 2012, p. 243. 

Oxford University Press, 2009

Crime within the Area of Freedom Security and Justice: A European Public Order 

edited together with Theodore Konstadinides

see reviews: Elaine Fahey, Common Market Law Review 2011, p. 1737; Wanni Teo, Yearbook of European Law 2012, p. 1.

Cambridge University Press, 2011

 Selected Articles

• 'EU Accession to the ECHR: Between Autonomy and Adaptation', Modern Law Review 2013
• 'International, European and US Perspectives on the Negotiation and Adoption of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA)', Currents, International Trade Law Journal 2013 (together with Dr. Elaine Fahey and Dr. Machiko Kanetake)
• 'Environmental Policy "Outside-In": How the EU's Engagement with International Environmental Law Curtails National Autonomy', 13.11 German Law Journal 2012
• 'Protecting Supremacy from External Influences: A Precondition for a European Constitutional Legal Order?', European Law Journal 18:2, March 2012, pages 230-250
• 'EU Counter-Terrorist Sanctions against Individuals: Problems and Perils', European Foreign Affairs Review 17:1, Spring 2012, pages 113-132

• SSRN with summaries and open access publications

Research Interests

• EU constitutional law
• External relations of the European Union
• Philosophical fundamentals of EU law
• Judicial review in a pluricontextual setting
• Restrictive measures against private individuals 
• EU counter-terrorism

Teaching

• EU Criminal Law (LL.M)
• EU Foreign Relations Law (LL.M)

Outside-In: Tracing The Imprint of the European Union’s External Actions on Its Constitutional Landscape

My hypothesis is that the European Union‘s intensified external actions have implications for its delicate internal constitutional structures. Indeed, some of the Union’s external actions could profoundly change its mode of operation. Core values under EU law, as well as established organizational principles, might come under pressure. Within the complexity of the EU legal order such consequences could be exponentially more destabilizing than within a state structure (that appears monolithic in comparison).

The European Union’s ability to conduct its own external relations is not contested as a matter of principle. It is for instance the only non-state actor that participates in international functional regimes on equal footing with states. At the same time, it is under constant pressure, both from the outside and from the inside. Under international law, only states are vested with ‘original rights’ and hence fully autonomous subjects of international law. And even though other international actors accept that the Union takes at times a state-like position, international law classifies it as an international organization. As an international organisation, the Union remains seen as exercising delegated rights and at least partially as penetrable in that behind the organization there are still the Member States as the ultimate point of reference. This is the outside pressure. The inside pressure is the Member States’ explicit intention to remain visible – next to, behind, and in front of the Union. This, for instance, becomes apparent in the explicitly codified parallel nature of CFSP competences, and in the Member States’ preference for mixed agreements.

The EU’s foreign policy after the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty goes beyond a supportive or supplementary character. The objectives set out in the EU Treaties require the EU to take the role of an international actor separate from its Member States. At the same time, the basic assumption remains that European external actions develop in a supportive parallelism to the EU’s internal policies. This has also for long been the position of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). This research project aims to demonstrate that the opposite can also be true, namely that the Union’s participation in international relations reflects back onto its internal constitutional landscape. The broader underlying questions are: When a complex and compound political construct, such as the European Union, acts under international law, does this automatically entail a federalizing or centralizing effect through ’unintentional constitutionalization of power-sharing’ and ‘the routinization of practices’? What impact has the fact that the EU is increasingly given extensive rights to act as an almost state-like actor under international law?

The aim is to identify and discuss the internal implications of the EU’s external actions in the light of sovereignty. The research is planned as a theoretical inquiry illustrate with detailed empirical studies in to EU law.

First Publications

- C. Eckes, ‘EU Accession to the ECHR: Between Autonomy and Adaptation’, 76(2) Modern Law Review 2013, pages 254–285

- C. Eckes, ‘Environmental Policy “Outside-In”:  How the EU’s Engagement with International Environmental Law Curtails National Autonomy’, 13.11 German Law Journal 2012

- C. Eckes, ‘External Relations Law: How the Outside Shapes the Inside’ in: Diego Acosta Arcarazo & Cian C. Murphy (eds.), EU Security and Justice Law: After Lisbon and Stockholm (Hart, 2014)

- C. Eckes, ‘International, European and US Perspectives on the Negotiation and Adoption of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA)’, Currents, International Trade Law Journal 2013, (together with Dr. Elaine Fahey and Dr. Machiko Kanetake)

• No ancillary activities