When the UK and the EU concluded the Trade and Cooperation Agreement at the end of 2020, Gibraltar was deliberately left outside its scope. After more than four years of negotiation between the UK, the EU and Spain, with the Government of Gibraltar advising the UK team, to agree the yet closest relationship of UK related territory with the EU. The negotiations benefited from a political agreement in June 2025, a finalised legal text in December 2025, and the draft Treaty jointly published by the UK and the EU on 26 February 2026. The Committee of Permanent Representatives unanimously greenlit the texts on 1 April 2026, and the Agreement is now expected to enter provisional application on 15 July 2026, with formal ratification under the UK Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 and the parallel EU procedures to follow.

The Treaty is genuinely novel in EU external relations practice. It will remove routine physical checks at the land frontier with Spain, with full Schengen border controls relocated to Gibraltar's airport and port and operated under a tailored, dual-control architecture. Gibraltar, a British Overseas Territory that remains outside both the EU and Schengen, will simultaneously join the EU customs union and dynamically align with substantial parts of the EU acquis, including in goods, environment, energy, social and labour standards, transport and indirect taxation.

The CELS seminar examines the draft Treaty across three panels chaired by Professor Catherine Barnard with experts from both the University of Cambridge and beyond:

• “'The Constitutional Position of Gibraltar'”: Dr Jamie Trinidad, KC, Fellow, Lauterpacht Centre and Wolfson College, University of Cambridge
• “The Legal Debate in Spain about the Treaty”: Professor Alejandro del Valle Gálvez, Professor of International Law, University of Cadiz. Visiting Researcher - University of Manchester (13:05)
• “Free Movement of Person”: Professor Steve Peers, Professor of Law, Goldsmith University of London (25:13)
• “Dynamic Alignment in the EU-UK Gibraltar Agreement”: Professor Catherine Barnard, Director of CELS and Trinity College, University of Cambridge (45:45)

• “Customs Union, Institutions and Comparisons with the EEA”: Professor Halvard Haukeland Fredriksen, Professor of Law, University of Bergen (1:11:52)
• “Human Rights”: Nabil Khabirpour, Member, CELS and Fellow, Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge (1:27:16)

• “Financial Services”: Professor Eilís Ferran, Professor of Company & Securities Law at the University of Cambridge, Fellow of the European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI), Emeritus Fellow of St Catharine’s College & Provost of the Gates-Cambridge Trust (1:48:41)
• “Gambling”: Peter Montegriffo KC, Team Leader, Consultant, Hassans International Law Firm, Gibraltar (1:59:18)
• “Energy and Sustainable Development”: Professor Markus W. Gehring, Member, CELS & Fellow, Lauterpacht Centre and Hughes Hall, University of Cambridge (2:12:55)

For more information about CELS see: https://www.cels.law.cam.ac.uk/

The Centre for European Legal Studies and the Centre for Public Law held a book launch and panel discussion on Dr Mohamed Moussa's recent monograph: Federal Impartiality: Navigating Divisive Rights in the EU and the US (Hart, 2026)

Professor Catherine Barnard (Cambridge), Chair of European Law

Professor Mark Tushnet (Harvard), William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law, Emeritus

On 28 March 2026 CELS held a seminar event on 'The Rule of Law as a (dis)unifying Value in the European Legal Order?'.

Among the rule of law's many virtues is its capacity to provide a framework for deliberating competing ideas of justice, fairness and equality. Yet a value once widely shared is now increasingly contested in both status and meaning. The Centre held this event to explore these and related questions.

The seminar was structured around four core sub-themes. Each of these will begin with a 20-minute presentation followed by a facilitated discussion:

• I:The Nature of Values in Supranational Legal Orders - Nabil H. Khabirpour (Video (YouTube) / Audio)
• II: The Judiciary and the Rule of Law in Europe - Lord Justice Baker (Video (YouTube) / Audio)
• III: The Rule of Law, the Market, and European Identity - Professor Catherine Barnard (Video (YouTube) / Audio)
• IV: Enforcing the Rule of Law as a Value under EU Law - Professor Albertina Albors-Llorens (Video (YouTube) / Audio)

For more information see:

https://www.cels.law.cam.ac.uk/activities-archive

On 28 March 2026 CELS held a seminar event on 'The Rule of Law as a (dis)unifying Value in the European Legal Order?'.

Among the rule of law's many virtues is its capacity to provide a framework for deliberating competing ideas of justice, fairness and equality. Yet a value once widely shared is now increasingly contested in both status and meaning. The Centre held this event to explore these and related questions.

The seminar was structured around four core sub-themes. Each of these will begin with a 20-minute presentation followed by a facilitated discussion:

• I:The Nature of Values in Supranational Legal Orders - Nabil H. Khabirpour (Video (YouTube) / Audio)
• II: The Judiciary and the Rule of Law in Europe - Lord Justice Baker (Video (YouTube) / Audio)
• III: The Rule of Law, the Market, and European Identity - Professor Catherine Barnard (Video (YouTube) / Audio)
• IV: Enforcing the Rule of Law as a Value under EU Law - Professor Albertina Albors-Llorens (Video (YouTube) / Audio)

For more information see:

https://www.cels.law.cam.ac.uk/activities-archive

On 28 March 2026 CELS held a seminar event on 'The Rule of Law as a (dis)unifying Value in the European Legal Order?'.

Among the rule of law's many virtues is its capacity to provide a framework for deliberating competing ideas of justice, fairness and equality. Yet a value once widely shared is now increasingly contested in both status and meaning. The Centre held this event to explore these and related questions.

The seminar was structured around four core sub-themes. Each of these will begin with a 20-minute presentation followed by a facilitated discussion:

• I:The Nature of Values in Supranational Legal Orders - Nabil H. Khabirpour (Video (YouTube) / Audio)
• II: The Judiciary and the Rule of Law in Europe - Lord Justice Baker (Video (YouTube) / Audio)
• III: The Rule of Law, the Market, and European Identity - Professor Catherine Barnard (Video (YouTube) / Audio)
• IV: Enforcing the Rule of Law as a Value under EU Law - Professor Albertina Albors-Llorens (Video (YouTube) / Audio)

For more information see:

https://www.cels.law.cam.ac.uk/activities-archive

On 28 March 2026 CELS held a seminar event on 'The Rule of Law as a (dis)unifying Value in the European Legal Order?'.

Among the rule of law's many virtues is its capacity to provide a framework for deliberating competing ideas of justice, fairness and equality. Yet a value once widely shared is now increasingly contested in both status and meaning. The Centre held this event to explore these and related questions.

The seminar was structured around four core sub-themes. Each of these will begin with a 20-minute presentation followed by a facilitated discussion:

• I:The Nature of Values in Supranational Legal Orders - Nabil H. Khabirpour (Video (YouTube) / Audio)
• II: The Judiciary and the Rule of Law in Europe - Lord Justice Baker (Video (YouTube) / Audio)
• III: The Rule of Law, the Market, and European Identity - Professor Catherine Barnard (Video (YouTube) / Audio)
• IV: Enforcing the Rule of Law as a Value under EU Law - Professor Albertina Albors-Llorens (Video (YouTube) / Audio)

For more information see:

https://www.cels.law.cam.ac.uk/activities-archive

Speaker: Professor Niamh Dunne, LSE

Biography: Niamh Dunne is a professor at the Law School of the London School of Economics, where she teaches and researches in competition law.

Abstract: Is it possible to reconcile the competing visions of what constitutes ‘effective’ abuse of dominance enforcement that emerge from the contemporary jurisprudence of the Commission and the Court of Justice? Article 102 has been a focal point for efforts both to modernise but also to render more effective the application of EU competition law, with different strands of recent case law emphasising the pursuit of market efficiency, the protection of equality of market access, and the prevention of exploitation by dominant undertakings. This presentation will explore the coherence of these developments, and consider whether this question matters in light of the Commission’s stated objective of achieving ‘a robust enforcement’ of Article 102.

For more information see:

https://www.cels.law.cam.ac.uk/weekly-seminar-series

Speaker: Professor Morten Rasmussen, University of Copenhagen

Biography: Morten Rasmussen is Associate Professor at the SAXO Institute, University of Copenhagen and a leading expert on the legal histories of European integration and the League of Nations. He has published numerous articles and book chapters on these topics. The most recent publication is a general history of early period of European Union Law from 1950 to 1993. He is currently co-editing a Cambridge Handbook of the League of Nations and international law.

Abstract: Professor Rasmussen will present on his forthcoming publication 'The History of European Union Law - Constitutional Practice, 1950 to 1993'. The formative period of EU law witnessed an intense struggle over the emergence of a constitutional practice. While the supranational institutions, including the European Commission, the European Court of Justice and the European Parliament, as well as EU law academics helped to develop and promote the constitutional practice, member state governments and judiciaries were generally reluctant to embrace it. The struggle resulted in an uneasy stalemate in which the constitutional practice was allowed to influence the doctrines, shape and functioning of the European legal order that now underpins the EU, but a majority of member state governments rejected European constitutionalism as the legitimating principle of the new EU formed on basis of the Treaty of Maastricht (1992). The lecture traces the struggle and accounts for eventual stalemate over the constitutional practice and the fragile and partial system of rule of law that exists in the EU today.

For more information see:

https://www.cels.law.cam.ac.uk/weekly-seminar-series