European Law Project Workbook

The first thing which comes to my mind is that that prior to the beginning of this course I was a bit concerned. During my ‘career’ at Birkbeck, I have never been working with someone on the project and I thought that it will never happen. It has always been me and the essays, or myself and the deadlines. I used to do everything by myself, whether good or bad. And now suddenly I was asked to participate in the EU Project, where I would have to rely on someone else. Maybe because of that, the EU assessment mode seemed to live in my imagination as a kind of work, which I will struggle with. I did not know how to deal with that, whom to ask and what to expect.

Thankfully, as the autumn term advanced, I was able to catch up with Mirek, whom I knew quite well from our previous years at the University. We have formed a small group of few people-ususally meeting after the lectures- interested in the general themes on EU law. The purpose of these first meetings was to find out what who would like to do and what are the expectations.

Soon enough, as we got familiar with each other, we started to discuss the issues which were of some interest to us, of course bearing in mind the EU perspective. Few weeks after that Mirek suggested that we should concentrate our attention on the theme of standardization and harmonization within European Union, as the topic seems to be quite fresh and unexplored. At this point some of us decided to withdrawn from the group as they wanted to do something else. So there were just two of us.

During the next meeting Mirek, as it was his idea, acquainted me with some general approach related to the issue of standardization within EU so I could make my first steps into the subject matter. To be honest, I knew nothing about the issue but maybe because of that I have really engaged with it.

Since then we have started to meet regularly in order to discuss our progress. My first task was to get some information about the relevant standards such CEN and CENELEC: what was the idea behind their creation and why do we really need these standards.

Then, somewhere around the 18th of November Mirek wrote to Michelle Everson asking whether we can continue with the topic. Once Michelle confirmed that it is a good idea, we have started to write the essay. Each of us had his own part to work with. I have been working on the case law and articles which were concerned with the construction of common market while Mirek took care of the New Approach and standardization bodies. Meanwhile, mostly during the weekends and via the emails, we have been exchanging the work with each other in order to get acquainted with the whole picture. Thanks to that we could also draw some general suggestions, because each of us had his own ideas as to the progress of the project.

It was around that time when we have also decided, as a part of the project, to launch the website dealing with the issues of standardization. I think it was a great idea because it allowed us to engage with something different than writing and reading. Mirek’s friend- Tomek who has been working as a computer scientist–gave us some general advice and pointed in the right direction.

After Christmas, while we were engaging with the readings, it has emerged that the topic on the Standardization and Harmonization within the EU is a quite extensive one. We have decided to concentrate mostly on the Old and New Approach to the standardization, bearing in mind the issues such free movement of goods and the provisions of Articles 28-30, which were closely related to the theme of standardization and harmonization within the EU.

Since then, we were pretty sure as to the project’s direction and where we were heading to. The core part of the essay has been finished. We just needed a bit more research on the reading materials in order to argue our questions.

Summing up, I have really enjoyed that Project. I have never thought it would be so engaging and interesting. The possibility of work as a part of the team has widened my perspectives. I wish we could write the similar assessment earlier in our studies. It would definitely help us while approaching our degree.