These questions are political, social and cultural, and yet, it was European law and scholarship that have revived the topicality of these questions recently. The Commission v Hungary judgement from April 2026, hailed epochal and ground-breaking, brought these questions to the forefront of academic and public debates. In its judgment the European Court of Justice not only held that the values enshrined in Article 2 TEU (such as rule of law, democracy, human rights) are justiciable and can be used to declare national legislation (in this case Hungarian media law) as violating EU law; the judgement also indicates that a European society already exists, grounded in these very values.

Mixed reactions

Reactions to the judgment have been mixed. On one hand, critics argue that the Court has opened a Pandora's box by rendering vague principles directly enforceable. Moreover, many of the concerns raised already in the 1990s remain pertinent today: the normative proclamation that European society exists cannot dissolve a social reality still marked by linguistic, cultural, social, and political heterogeneity—the very features traditionally thought to define a society in the first place. On the other hand, proponents contend that legal rules play a productive, constitutive role: by articulating shared values and enforcing them as binding commitments, law can itself generate the cohesion and common identity that critics find lacking, rather than merely reflecting a pre-existing social fact.

Bring legal discourse on European society into conversation

In light of the European Court’s groundbreaking decision, this conference aims to bring legal discourse on European society into conversation with scholarship on European values and identity from the humanities and the social and political sciences. It will explore the social, political and cultural ramifications of the judgement, examine both the idea and the reality of a European society, and reflect on the role of law in bringing such a society into being.