Dimitry Kochenov

is a Lecturer in European Law, University of Groningen, Faculty of Law. Research Project: ‘EU’s Possible Future: The Transformative Potential of the Tandem of European Citizenship and Equality’.

Dimitry Kochenov obtained his Ph.D. on ‘EU Enlargement and the Failure of Conditionality’ (Kluwer Law International, 2008) from the University of Groningen and LL.M. in Comparative Constitutional Law from the Central European University in Budapest. He has been teaching European Law at the University of Groningen since 2006 after being Ubbo Emmius Fellow at the Department of European and Economic Law for three years. He is also a Fellow of the Groningen Graduate School of Law and a permanent guest professor at the Euroculture Erasmus Mundus Programme at the Faculty of Arts of the same University.
In recent years Dr. Kochenov has been a guest professor, inter alia, at Osaka Graduate School of Law, Ecole Supérieure des Sciences Commerciales d’Angers (in Angers and Manila) and American Bar Association Rule of Law Promotion Initiative (Kiev), and lectured at a number of institutions, including EURAC (Bolzano), ERA (Trier), and Université Marc Bloch (Strasbourg). He also consulted the Government of the Netherlands on the application of EU law in the overseas possessions of the Member States of the Union. His research focuses on EU citizenship law, EU non-discrimination and equality law, EU external relations law and the legal regulation of enlargements, as well as broader issues of democracy and the rule of law.

Research Project

Citizenship without Respect. The EU's troubled Equality Ideal

With the change of the paradigm in EU development from economic success to economic success in a Union inhabited by equal citizens, the Union will necessarily be called upon to change the mode of its operation profoundly, if not entirely. The assessment of such transformation will necessarily build on the engagement with citizenship and with equality, as well as the analysis of the connections linking the two. I will map the developments which are likely to result in the eventual reinvention of the Union, building on the clash between the economic rationale behind the current operation of the Union and the logic of equality which is to acquire more importance, naturally amplified by European citizenship. The main aim and focus of the research would thus be the demonstration of the likelihood of the anticipated transformation. Intending to use the likely developments in two interrelated areas of Community law (citizenship, equality) to judge the future dynamics of the whole project of European integration I will extrapolate the implications of evolution of these particular areas beyond the confines of their respective sub-disciplines. Moreover, since I intend to confine part of the research to the analysis of the alternative scenario, supposing the shift I anticipate is never to happen, I intend to make my argument about the future more convincing by demonstrating how dangerous it is likely to be if the "present" lasts too long.