International Conference on Citizenship and Rights in the Consumer Society
The Jean Monnet Eucons Project is organising its First Eucons Annual Meeting, an International Conference that aims to bring together scholars of European Constitutional Law, to debate and discuss current topics in the field. In the spirit of the Italian-Spanish Seminar on Constitutional Studies, the Conference seeks to draw attention on two ideas, one generic and, the other, more specific. With the former, the purpose is that of opening a dialogue on the most relevant topics in the field that have been published in recent times. To this end, we present a call for a “discussion between publications”. With the latter, we would like to devote attention to a topic of great interest and innovation for contemporary Constitutional law: the present-day Consumer Society. This requires a reassessment of the classic postulates of the welfare society and thus affects the essential pillars of our coexistence. In this sense, the Conference will have two parts. The first, more conventional, will include “Plenary Panels” that bring together renowned international speakers and “Communications Panels”, which are open to all those who wish to contribute with their knowledge and research to the topics addressed during the Conference. The second part of the Conference will focus on the discussion – between the authors and thoughtfully selected discussants – of the selected publications. All this will take place at the Faculty of Law of the University of Granada on 26th and 27th October 2021. The Conference will be preferably held in-person, although – considering the evolution of the epidemiological situation – the holding of the event in a hybrid mode is also expected.
The recognition of human subjectivity and individuality is the keystone of modern Sociology and Law. Accordingly, it implies the recognition of mankind’s capacity to self-determination, to be different, to create the History in a rational way; as well as that she holds in her hands the possibility of change and improvement. The foundations of the modern state were laid in the idea of the human being as a subject, and the dialectic it preserves with the public power and the community. Initially, as an individual subject endowed with spheres of immunity from external interference (liberal State); later as a cooperative subject whose destiny is linked to the community and articulated through public power (social State). In both cases, the concept of citizen has summarised a compendium of rights and freedoms that articulated the relationship between the individual and public power. But the process of globalisation and the acceleration of communication technologies have transformed –in record time– the links between individuals and the state, between public authorities and the community. The reason for this is the emergence of new private, financial, multinational and technological powers that are not subject to the borders of States and go beyond their territory and their law. This situation has been relevant in the mutation of the concept of citizen, as the citizen-state relationship has been undermined and new dialectical categories such as creditor-debtor, service provider-user or producer–consumer have been created.
The European Union, as a supranational Community based on constitutional values, has sought to rebalance the process of globalisation with the legal-political integration and the creation of European citizenship. However, this dynamic and gradual integration process has been more effective in the construction of an internal market (based on the four fundamental freedoms) than in the political-democratic integration. Thus, European citizenship – at the current stage of integration – characterises a subject endowed with rights but who is acting within the framework of a market based on the objective principles of non-discrimination and free competition. A citizen who acts freely but within the predetermined framework of production and consumption established by the market.In this sense, the First Eucons Annual Meeting aims at a rigorous and critical academic debate on the configuration of European citizenship and its meaning in the Consumer Society paradigm: the culture of men and women integrated into European society, more than anything else, as producers and consumers. A model of citizenship embedded in rights, which should therefore be articulated in the light of the constitutional values proclaimed in Article 2 TEU. However, once these values are triggered within the current margins of the integration process, the concept of citizenship ends up being used mostly in the regulation of production and consumption relations. This dialectic ought to create a space for reflecting on the contemporary configuration of multiple constitutional goods and interests – such as ecology, equality, work, housing, etc. – from whose content and legal regulation will emerge the concept of contemporary European citizenship.