The newly created European Law Unbound Society (ELU-S) held its inaugural conference on 25-26 September 2025, at the Charles University in Prague. Vincent Delhomme presented a paper and chaired a panel, both dealing with contemporary challenges in EU internal market law.
Together with Hanna Schebesta, Vincent presented a draft paper on 'Sustainable Food Law and the Future of the Internal Market'. The article analyses the concept of 'sustainability' within the Internal Market's free movement of goods framework, using the area of food law as a case study. In how far do Member States' sustainability measures restrict the free movement of goods? And how does the complex and ambiguous concept of 'sustainability' fit with the accepted justifications under Article 36 TFEU and the broader free movement of goods case law?
Vincent also chaired a panel entitled 'A Market of Values: New Dynamics in EU Internal Market Law', featuring presentations of Martijn van den Brink, Franca Feisel, Konstantinos Lamprinoudis and Yann Lorans.
This panel investigated the three following themes:
- The interplay between internal market and EU values: primary and secondary law
- Legitimacy, rule of law (conferral) and commodification of EU values
- The EU, the internal market and the constitutional asymmetry thesis
- The internal market and differentiated integration (e.g. minimum harmonisation) in case of value dissensus between Members States
The ELU Society is a newly created society, which aim to create an open agora where different geographies, generations, (sub)fields of law, and methodological approaches can engage in sustained dialogue on European legal issues. The next annual conference will take place at Católica Global School of Law, Lisbon, on September 2-4, 2026.
