Activating EU rights: Past and Present of Fundamental Human Rights

2026-07-22

The main objective of the Jean Monnet “Activating EU rights: Past and Present of Fundamental Human Rights” Module (ActEuR) is to deepen knowledge and raise awareness among a wide target audience on the threat to fundamental human rights at European level through a sociological-historical perspective that adopts the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights as a frame of reference. It represents the instrument through which the ActEuR project intends to connect past and present forms of violations/threats of the rights of dignity, freedom, equality, solidarity, citizenship and justice, such as EU’s core values. The basic consideration that drives the project is that large sections of the population of EU countries, especially young people − also as a result of the multiple and prolonged crisis, including ongoing pandemic crisis, affecting Europe − are “captured” by speeches that tend to normalize violence, xenophobia, racism, and that this trend is destined to spread more and more in European societies without the development of a “critical public memory” able to show the continuity between past and present violations/threats of human rights. Going beyond the strictly legal aspects, without underestimating them, ActEuR focuses on the “social Europeanisation” of fundamental human rights conveyed by the EU Charter. Its main activities are: 1) a Teaching course for Master degree students of the University of Salerno (IT) on the EU Charter; 2) Public webinars involving university students, national and local civil society actors engaged in the field of human rights, institutional representatives, and the wider public; 3) School roundtables involving teachers and students of secondary schools; 4) Empirical research on the spread of denial of fundamental human rights in youth populations. All of these activities have in common that they consider the EU Charter a dynamic instrument, a “living text” that protects, broadens and adapts to the present a core of fundamental human rights.

Italy

2025-12-15