[Guest lecture] The EU as an ‘emergency’ actor: what does law have to do with it?

On Tuesday, 9 December 2025, Guido Bellenghi, doctoral researcher at the Faculty of Law, Maastricht University, will deliver a guest lecture in the Master’s course ‘EU Legal System’ at UCLouvain Saint-Louis Brussels.

Drawing on original doctoral research, the lecture invites students to critically examine the notion of crisis or emergency as both a legal and political concept. It will provide an overview of the legal bases underpinning the EU’s emergency powers and the responses of the Union and its Member States to recent crises, before opening a discussion on the implications of the current legal framework—and of past EU experiences—for the emergencies and crises yet to come.