Europe’s “Independence Wars”

Guest: Antoine Vauchez (University of Paris 1-Sorbonne and Max Planck Law Fellow).

On today’s episode Christopher Murphy is joined by Antoine Vauchez to focus on the re-invention of a central concept of contemporary European democracy, namely that of ‘independence’. Antoine—who heads the Max Planck Law Working Group on ‘Independence and Democracy in the European Union’—traces how the notion of independence has become a highly contested subject within the EU, often culminating in what he terms Europe’s independence wars. From the backsliding of the rule of law in Poland or Hungary to the heated debates over the unconventional monetary policies of the ‘über-independent’ European Central Bank, Antoine demonstrates that how we understand and interpret the notion of independence is at the heart of modern political and legal debate in Europe.

Link to Antoine's paper: https://academic.oup.com/icon/article/20/5/2032/6881104