 Hello, my name is Catherine Barnard, and I teach EU law to graduates and post graduates. I'm Albertine Albus Lawrence, and I also teach European Union law to undergraduate samples graduates in the faculty. We want to talk a bit about how we teach EU law and what's in the course. For a lot of students, they approach EU law with a degree of ambivalence because they've heard lots about it on the news, some of it correct, some of it incorrect. So they're really a bit apprehensive about what they're going to face. So what we're going to talk to you a bit about is content of the course. We're going to tell you a bit about how we teach it. Now we're going to start with a really very prosaic example, and that is, let's think about a situation where there's a decision that there should be a limited amount of noise that lawn mowers can make. Now, if you think about that, who do you think can best regulate that? Should this be done at EU level or at national level? Just think about it for a moment. And you're probably thinking, well obviously that should be done at national level. What has the EU got to do with something like the amount of noise that lawn mowers can make? But now let's think about it a different way. As far as EU is concerned, they might say, well we actually do need to regulate the amount of noise lawn mowers can make. Because if I'm a lawn mower manufacturer, I want to have one standard, one set of noise that lawn mowers can make, and then I can sell my lawn mowers right across the European Union. And so the first part of the course looks at this question, not at lawn mowers as such, but we look at this question. Does EU have the power to act? And we can tell you the answer to that question is yes. Secondly, should it act? And that's known as a subsidiarity question and that's a big vexed political question. And what looks like something that should be done at national level is actually something which is increasingly done at EU level for the reason of trying to attain a single market. And then the third question is, has that legislation gone further than is necessary? So the very first part of the course is about looking at these fundamental constitutional questions, look at the institutions who are actually adopting this legislation. Then later on in the course we move on to see, carrying with the example that Catherine has just set out, when it will be possible for those who are, for example, and happy with this EU legislation to mount a challenge before the Court of Justice to question the validity of that legislation. So in the second part of the course we look at all the avenues and procedural routes that can be brought before the Court of Justice to challenge legislation. Later on, I'm moving on to what can be done when member states do not comply with EU rule. Following the same example, you may have a situation of someone who perhaps will be very disturbed by the noise of lawnmowers. So imagine that you have a member state that has not implemented this legislation into national law, the person who really wants this legislation to be put into effect may try to challenge that failure of the member state to comply with EU law and that raises the question of how EU law can be used by private parties before the national courts, the remedies that they have and ultimately the possibility even of suing member states in damages when they do not comply with EU law. So these are sorts of things we look at in the first term. And while at first sight you might think well what's that relevant to me, actually it's really interesting because it raises these fundamental points of constitutional importance. Now in the second term we move on to look at more substantive issues and we look at two main areas, free movement of goods and free movement of persons. We'll start with looking at free movement of goods. Now that's the sort of situation where goods are manufactured in one member state and sold in another. The problem comes is that the host state often is not very keen on having those goods coming into the country because they threaten the domestic industry. So just imagine the situation where I manufacture, I produce fantastic British wine. It's absolutely groundbreaking, everyone wants it and I want to try and sell it in France where you imagine the French are not best pleased and so they try and make it as difficult as possible for me to sell my wine. So for example they try and impose customs duties on my wine as they enter France or they try and tax my wine at a higher rate than French wine or they try and inspect my wine for quality, just imagine how you do that. As a goods coming into France of course that slows the goods getting onto the market or they say actually you can only sell your wine in certain shops which means it's not widely available. So in the second term what we do is we look at situations like the one I've just described and see if they're compatible with EU law and basically you'll discover that customs duties aren't permitted at all, taxation which is discriminatory isn't permitted and obstacles based on testing of the product or setting standards are often also unlawful but occasionally can be justified and restrictions on sale also raise really quite big legal issues. Following in that theme the final substantive area of law that we cover in the course is the free movement of persons which is an area of EU law that very much carries through the principles that have been set out in relation to free movement of goods. So when we talk about free movement of persons the idea is that if you are a national of a member state for example if you are a British national it should be as easy for you to work in Birmingham as it is to work in Rome or in Madrid. Indeed for example in my case I will be a living example of that free movement of persons in the European Union. I was born and brought up in Spain. I came to the UK as a student and then I stayed as an academic. So I am an example of the exercise of that free movement of persons which is guaranteed by the treaty. The same applies to companies that want to provide services across the European Union and following from that free movement of persons a very important concept that I'm sure you've come across in newspapers or in the television is the idea of union citizenship a principle that carries with it a panoply of rights that are becoming increasingly more important in EU law. So I hope you've got a taste of what we try and teach to undergraduates the way we teach is we do a series of lectures 40 and all throughout the academic year and then they are supplemented by 10 supervisions and the supervisions broadly follow on from the lectures and we find I think that the students really enjoy the course and it makes them think about EU in a very different way to the way that they started thinking about although some of their prejudices and preconceptions that they had before they began their course and they certainly begin to appreciate that the EU is a more complex and subtle and sophisticated entity than perhaps you understand from reading some of the British tabloid press.