The paper discusses the concept of 'environmental justice' in the European Union, approaching it from the perspective of the centre-periphery gap in the EU, that is, the divide between the Member States from Western and Northern Europe on the one hand and Central and Eastern Europe on the other. It identifi es distributive, procedural and corrective injustices that make the EU periphery, albeit less responsible for historical and contemporary environmental harms in Europe, bear the greater environmental burden, in addition to having less infl uence over environmental decision-making than the EU centre. The discussion is informed by the ideas that have emerged in US scholarship, especially regarding the concept of environmental justice itself, as well as the critical analysis of the (re)distributive effects of law and the identity critique of law. The paper concludes with a refl ection on possible avenues for integrating environmental justice concerns into the EU legal and institutional framework in order to better address the centre-periphery gap and mitigate existing regional inequalities in environmental matters.

The ontological, terminological and conceptual confusion that surrounds the concept of ‘general principles of European Union law’ is far from being resolved. The constitutional interlocutors—the Court of Justice of the European Union and the highest courts in Member States—have at times fiercely argued about their different understanding of general principles, whereas European legal scholarship has failed to convincingly clarify the intricacies surrounding this source of law. Instead of engaging with a more abstract, theoretical question of what general principles are, this paper reflects on the practical, functionalist question: how are they used by the Court of Justice and what are some of their functions and implications? To do so, it enquires into contextual, institutional and strategic features of the Court's behaviour and jurisprudence and responses of the highest national judiciaries to this jurisprudence. The aim is to offer an alternative account of the Court's jurisprudence on general principles.

The article provides a functionalist account of the ‘institutional uses’ of (human) dignity in the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Union. It looks at how the legal concept of dignity is invoked and used in the adjudication processes in the European Union, what is its role, and what are its practical effects. The aim is to arrive at a better understanding of the dignity’s functional roles in the EU, but also of the functional similarities and differences in comparison with other European jurisdictions. This will further show in what aspects dignity is independent of or dependent on institutional contexts in which it operates, especially regarding the judicial practices and mutual relationships between different courts.

Human dignity in the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Union – Human dignity in EU migration law, particularly in the area of asylum law and irregular migration – Requirement of dignified treatment of third-country nationals in the EU – Relationship between human dignity and substantive values such as tolerance, identity, rights, justice, and the law – Human dignity as a moral right, a legal status, and a political status – Human dignity as a moral principle with a legal pedigree, which underpins determinations of the scope of rights of third-country nationals in EU migration law

Very shortly after the Russian military invasion of Ukraine on the 24 th of February this year, students and academic staff set out to organise a get-together to reflect on the awful outbreak of the war. The resulting symposium entitled War in Ukraine: Politics, Law & Identity -organised by the department of Transnational Legal Studies and the VU Interdisciplinary Centre of European Studies -took place on 8 March in an overcrowded room at the Vrije Universiteit and more than 60 virtual attendees. In the title, 'war' was meant to avoid the euphemisms that were still in fashion at that time.The words 'politics' and 'law' were intended to acknowledge the fundamental way in which those social domains are mutually constitutive. The word 'identity' to stimulate thinking about the ways in which the war fosters and mobilises old and new identities. International and EU law in (post-)conflict states: any lessons for Ukraine?Davor Petrić 4