The year at the VU Law Faculty starts with an edited volume “The European Union 2004–2024: Twenty Years of Legal Experience, Challenges and Growth after Unprecedented EU Enlargement”, a collective monograph of 33 contributing authors (including 13 from VU Law Faculty) published by the internationally recognised publishing house Asser Press (Springer). Assoc. Prof. Dr Indrė Isokaitė and Prof. Dr Haroldas Šinkūnas are the editors (and authors) and the foreword is written by the President of the Court of Justice of the EU Prof. Dr Koen Lenaerts.
“The EU is a historic achievement, and the membership of each State is a unique story contributing to the journey of European integration built on the ideas, values and principles without which it could have never started. Throughout already more than seven decades the EU has developed from a peace-orientated but mostly economic community to a value-based entity dealing with a huge range of regional and even global issues in its labyrinths of EU—Member States competence division and firmly standing in a fragile and fragmented international landscape,” is emphasized by the editors who remind that having gone through victories and failures the EU still safeguards peace, stability and prosperity in Europe.
In the foreword of the book, Prof. Dr K. Lenaerts writes that the accession of ten countries to the EU in 2004 has been a success story, bringing freedom, prosperity, and progress. “In particular, the Baltic States have become one of the most prosperous regions in Europe, leading the way in digital transformation. At the same time, the EU has been reinvigorated in its fight for freedom, democracy and justice, given that the recent history of those Member States reminds us that those values cannot be taken for granted,“ the President of the Court of Justice of the EU states.
This edited volume is a comprehensive and extensive analysis of key legal developments of the EU and its Member States during the two-decade period of the largest EU enlargement spanning 2004-2024, with insights on the EU’s future. The book draws inspiration from the international scientific conference “The Republic of Lithuania in the European Union: Twenty Years of Experience, Challenges and Growth” organised by the VU Law Faculty on the occasion of the 20-year anniversary of Lithuania’s membership in the EU.
The accession of ten countries (Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia) was an unprecedented event in its scale and its long-lasting effects in Europe. Today’s EU is the result of not only how Member States have benefitted from opportunities but also how they have responded to crises.
Book is open for reading online, it is published there.