In this event, the Constitutional Law and Politics Working Group is delighted to host a presentation by EUI Visiting Fellow Franco Peirone.
Democratic systems regulate electoral competition and access to public office by establishing eligibility criteria that prospective candidates must satisfy. These criteria typically fall into two broad categories. The first consists of positive requirements—conditions such as citizenship or minimum age—that an individual must meet to run for office and, if elected, legitimately exercise public authority. The second category comprises negative requirements, which operate as disqualifications. These include circumstances such as criminal convictions, conflicts of interest, or other forms of legal incapacity that prevent an individual who otherwise satisfies the positive requirements—and may even have won an election—from assuming or retaining public office. The recent and unprecedented rise in cases where democratically elected officials, or candidates with strong electoral prospects, face legal barriers based on negative requirements makes it necessary to examine disqualification more closely.
This paper analyses disqualification as a distinct object of constitutional and legislative design in Europe, with particular attention to the case law of the European Court of Human Rights and compares this model with approaches employed elsewhere. Treating disqualification as a legal procedure requires clarifying its underlying structure: what elements constitute the mechanism? The essential components for disqualification to function as a coherent legal tool include: (i) its rationale or purpose; (ii) the grounds that trigger it; (iii) the authority empowered to impose it; (iv) the adjudicative process through which it is applied; (v) the legal nature of the resulting act; and (vi) the juridical effects that follow.
Speaker: Franco Peirone is an Assistant Professor of European Public Law at the Faculty of Law, Maastricht University, where he has served since September 2021, as well as a Visiting Fellow at the Law Department of the European University Institute. He obtained his legal education at the University of Torino (LL.B., M.A., 2011; Ph.D., 2015), Maastricht University (Visiting Student, 2010), George Washington University (Visiting Scholar, 2014), Università del Piemonte Orientale (Post-Doctoral Scholar, 2016), and New York University (LL.M., 2017), where he was also an Emile Noël Fellow at the Jean Monnet Center for International and Regional Economic Law & Justice (Post-Doctoral Fellow, 2018). Since 2022, he has been a Visiting Professor at Reichman University (Tel Aviv). At Maastricht University, Faculty of Law, he is affiliated with the Department of Public Law and the Maastricht Centre for European Law (MCEL). He serves as Secretary of the ICONS Benelux Chapter. His research has been published in national and international journals and edited volumes, focusing on the rule of law, corruption, and legal temporality. He teaches courses in public and EU law. His academic interests include EU law, constitutional law, and legal theory.
The paper will be circulated before the event to those registered.
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