Bernardo Cortese (Università di Padova, Dipartimento di Diritto Pubblico, Internazionale e Comunitario) has posted Transformative power of (EU) law… tema con variazioni (J.J. Piernas López (Ed.), The transformative power of EU Law, Aranzadi La Ley, 2025, pp. 181-197) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
The contribution, part of the TEULP research project at the University of Murcia, addresses the issue of the transformative power of European Union law by examining it through two different theoretical perspectives: the formal one proposed by Poul Kjaer and the substantive or “transformative instrumentalist” one by Ioannis Kampourakis. The author applies these two visions to two specific areas of EU law: the regulation of the rights of persons with disabilities and the prohibition of collective expulsions of foreigners. In analyzing the actual transformative capacity of EU law in these areas, doubts arise as to its real effectiveness in improving the living conditions of individuals, despite its stated objectives. The potential limitations of Kjaer’s formal conception of “transformative law,” based on the self-regulation of social subsystems, and Kampourakis’s substantive conception, linked to grassroots democratic mobilization, are highlighted. The author concludes by emphasizing the importance of an overarching view of interconnected social problems and of the complexity of the context, in order to avoid regressive drifts and ensure the positive transformative role of European law.