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H2020Individual fellowship2017–2018

JUSECON · Legal rights and the political economy of debt and austerity in Europe

Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Duration
2017-08-01 → 2018-07-31
EU contribution
€86,239
Participants
1
Scheme
MSCA-IF-EF-ST

Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.

Results in brief

Legal rights and the political economy of debt and austerity in Europe

A central aspect of this research project is to bring together the state-of-the-art across a range of disciplines to study and bring to light the ways in which human rights have been circumscribed within the dynamics, intellectual justifications, logic and practice of contemporary global capitalism as played out under the European crisis of debt and austerity. This work is underpinned by a preoccupation that flows from the handling of the Greek debt crisis and the conflicts with basic requirements of democratic governance that it exposed. One part of this research project studies the possibility of denouncing agreements on economic conditionality, accepted under duress and that fail to conform to universal principles of sovereignty, democratic governance and the protection of human rights. Another aspect of this work considers the 'utility' of international human rights law in the area of socio-economic rights in advancing the harms of capitalism when deployed in the context of debt crises, This research project draws on the researcher’s expertise and multidisciplinary approach to scholarship. Among its aim is to contribute to resituating social justice at the heart of economic and financial policy in Europe. The central findings cover both the legal significance of the democratic ideal to the validity of debt agreements and the role of the welfare state and the inadvertent uses that social rights play in sustaining the worst tendencies of capitalism.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union

Project objective

This research project will explore the Greek debt and austerity crisis to consider what it discloses about the influence of European political economy on the principles and practices of legal rights, and with what implications. The term ‘legal rights’ in this work includes human rights as well as the international rights of states and these respective approaches underpin the two component parts of this study. This is a multidisciplinary study that assumes the validity of law as a means of advancing the cause of justice, but recognises that it is shaped in important ways by other dominant narratives. This study is an exploration of that clash of narratives and its effects on justice in Europe.The first part of this research project is animated by the idea of ‘social rights as fiscal risks’, an idea that finds expression in the latest Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) of August 2015 between the international creditors and Greece. In exploring the means through which human rights safeguards are being made to disappear under fiscal targets, a case study on the influence of austerity reasoning on what constitutes the public interest as a human rights concept will form part of the first section of the project. The second part of this research project will explore the legality of the bailout agreement when measured against the principle of economic self-determination. A preliminary review of the same MoU would seem to offend any reasonable form of economic self-determination, a principle with a long pedigree in international law and demands by states of sovereignty over their economic affairs. Taken together, the two studies will expose ways in which rights are being shaped by the intellectual justifications, logic and practice of economic and financial policy as played out under the European crisis of debt and austerity.

Original text from CORDIS.

Participants

  • EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE · FiesoleCoordinatorItaly

Links

Data: CORDIS, © European Union