Towards a European Digital Citizenship? Building the ‘right to have rights’ in society online

An event organised by the Institute for the Study of European Law (ISEL), City Law School

Chair: Adrienne Yong, Senior Lecturer in Law, The City Law School, City, University of London and Co-Director of the Institute for the Study of European Laws (ISEL)

Speaker

Anastasia Iliopoulou-Penot, Professor of European Law, University Paris Panthéon-Assas, Centre for European Law

Discussants: Francesca Strumia, Professor of Law, The City Law School, City, University of London and Giulio Kowalski, Reseach Student, The City Law School, City, University of London

Abstract

The paper argues that the concept of ‘European digital citizenship’, understood as ‘the right to have rights’ in society online, provides a useful lens through which it is possible to analyse certain significant developments taking place within the EU legal order.

These developments concern the adoption of a new generation of far-reaching European legislative instruments, such as the GDPR and the DSA, placing limits on private corporations and empowering individuals.

They also refer to the case law of the Court of justice, which progressively develops a number of entitlements - i.e. both substantial rights and procedural guarantees- of the Internet user.

These entitlements are constructed by the Court as a particular ‘fundamental status’, protecting individual autonomy, e-privacy and control over one’s personal data.

The new set of digital rights consecrated by the EU legislature and the Court of justice, in the light of the Charter, opens up a different vista of how citizenship can evolve in the EU beyond the framework of articles 20 and 21 TFEU and the free movement paradigm.

It is submitted that the currently incipient form of European digital citizenship could become an essential component of European digital constitutionalism and develop into a driving force of the digital policy of the EU.

The paper of the author can be read here: Anastasia Iliopoulou-Penot, 'The construction of a European digital citizenship in the case law of the Court of Justice of the EU', (2022), 59, Common Market Law Review, Issue 4, pp. 969-1006

About the Speaker

Anastasia Iliopoulou-Penot is Professor of European Law at the University Paris Panthéon-Assas. She also teaches at Sciences Po Paris.

She holds a PhD degree from the University Paris Panthéon-Assas and a first law degree from the University of Athens.

She has been an academic visitor at the University of Oxford (Institute of European and Comparative Law) and a post-doctoral researcher at Sciences Po Paris (Centre for European Studies).

Her work focuses on European citizenship, the protection of common values and fundamental rights in the EU, the functioning of the internal market.