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Aphrodite Yiasemi

Aphrodite

PhD Student

Email: a.yiasemi@qmul.ac.uk

Profile

Thesis Title

Is accession of the EU to the ECHR beneficial for the protection of individual fundamental rights under terms which the CJEU would interpret as compatible with the EU Treaties and the EU legal order? (working title)

Supervisors

Dr Angelos Dimopoulos and Dr Paul Gragl

Scholarship

Graduate Teaching Assistant

Summary of Research

This thesis examines the accession of the European Union (EU) to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Specifically, the thesis asks, ‘whether it is possible to have accession under terms which are compatible with the EU Treaties and EU legal order, as these have been interpreted by the CJEU, and which addresses the identified deficiencies in the EU to protect fundamental rights’. The background of this topic begun with the identification of deficiencies within the EU in protecting fundamental rights.  Based on these deficiencies (in part), the EU legally bound itself to accede to the ECHR in an effort to address them. This topic is important and topical because the EU remains legally obliged to accede to the ECHR, yet the proposed Draft Accession Agreement (DAA) for the materialisation of this obligation was rejected by the CJEU as incompatible with the EU legal order.

The tentative finding is that by adhering to terms of proposal which the CJEU has found to be in accordance with the EU legal order, accession does not address the identified deficiencies. The tentative reasoning for this finding is that the specific interpretation of the EU legal order by the CJEU favours the principle of autonomy over principles of fundamental rights (working abstract).

Biography

After receiving a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Exeter in 2014, Aphrodite obtained a Master of Laws in International and European Law from the University of Ghent Belgium in 2015. Following that, she worked as a trainee advocate in a law firm in Nicosia, Cyprus and qualified as an Advocate at the Cyprus Bar Association in August 2016. Aphrodite joined the School of Law at Queen Mary University of London as a PhD candidate in 2016 and she was awarded a Graduate Teaching Assistantship by the School of Law.

Research and Teaching Interests

EU law, Human Rights, International law and the Law of Contract.

Research

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