On April, 6 Mr Barry Finnegan gave a thought-provoking guest lecture within the LLM Jean Monnet Module “EU External Relations Law and Policy”. The lecture was titled on "How, through TTIP, CETA, and the proposed ‘Multilateral Investment Court’ (or ISDS), the EU’s external trade objectives risk reversing the liberal democratic gains of the rule of law, chemical and food standards, labour rights and climate change regulation", and addressed the main flaws of the new generation of EU trade agreements.
Barry Finnegan is a Programme Director and Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Journalism & Media Communications in Griffith College. He holds an MA in International Relations from Dublin City University. His research on the evolution of European Union international trade policy and civil society’s responses to it, has led to Barry presenting to the Oireachtas Joint Committees on ‘European Union Affairs’, and ‘Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation’, and to the government’s civil service TTIP negotiating committee; as well as at conferences at DIT, Trinity College, and Griffith College, and also to regular appearances on Newstalk national radio, and presentations at public debates and meetings around the country. His paper ‘TTIP and CETA in Irish Newspapers: Plurality of Editorial Bias for Differentiated Readerships’ is due for publication in 2018 in the Irish Communications Review journal.
The lecture was organized by Dr. Delia Ferri within the realm of the Jean Monnet Module “EU External Relations in a Time of Crisis’, coordinate by Dr. Delia Ferri and Prof. John O’Brennan. The overall module is characterized by two complementary components: an in-depth postgraduate module on ‘EU external Relations Law and Policy’ (LW648) and an innovative summer school ‘The EU and Human Rights in a time of crisis”