During the first two weeks of September, our research team had the pleasure of welcoming one of its international members to Universidad CEU Cardenal Herrera for a research stay in Valencia, hosted academically by Professor Susana Sanz Caballero.
The stay provided an opportunity to further develop several lines of research related to the rule of law, the EU legal order and the fundamental values enshrined in Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union. It also offered an excellent opportunity to strengthen cooperation between the national and international members of the project, exchange ideas on ongoing research and prepare some of the team’s forthcoming academic activities.
During his visit, he also took part in the launch of the collective volume Overcoming the Crisis of Democratic Values in the European Union, edited by Susana Sanz Caballero and Antonio Bar Cendón and published by Tirant lo Blanch in 2026.
Following his stay, he kindly shared with us some reflections on his experience at Universidad CEU Cardenal Herrera, which we reproduce below.
Two weeks at Universidad CEU Cardenal Herrera
I spent the first two weeks of September in Valencia, on a short research stay at Universidad CEU Cardenal Herrera. My academic host was Professor Susana Sanz Caballero, to whom I am grateful for all the support in organising my visit.
I was kindly offered two places to work: one in a beautiful historic building of the university located in the Old Town, the Palacio de Colomina, and the other in the library at the Alfara del Patriarca campus (about 10 km north of the city centre, well connected by metro).
During my stay I worked on two papers. One looks at the role of national judges in the EU legal order, tracing how their mandate as EU judges has evolved in recent case law of the Court of Justice of the EU. The other concerns the fundamental values of the EU set out in Article 2 of the Treaty on the EU, and engages with recent literature that frames those values as the EU’s constitutional “core” and Article 2 as the highest provision of the EU constitutional order.
Besides research, I took part in the launch of the volume Overcoming the Crisis of Democratic Values in the European Union (Tirant lo Blanch, 2026, available in open access here), edited by Professor Susana Sanz Caballero and Professor Antonio Bar Cendón (University of Valencia). There I spoke about my chapter, which looks at the role of national courts in safeguarding the rule of law in the EU and its Member States, and asks whether the Court of Justice’s case law on national courts affects (or might affect) not just the formal structure of national judicial systems, but their legal culture too.
The stay also gave me the chance to talk with Professor Susana Sanz Caballero, Professor Leopoldo García Ruiz (Dean of the Faculty of Law, Business and Political Science), Professor Clara Portela (University of Valencia), and other colleagues about the ongoing project “Crisis of Values and Identity of the European Union: Democratic Resilience against Hybrid Threats”, in which I participate as well. We discussed our planned contributions and the research I am working on with Professor Dario Čepo and Assistant Professor Mateja Čehulić from the University of Zagreb for the project’s first meeting in February 2027. In addition, I learned about other projects at the university, funded by the Generalitat Valenciana, Spain’s Ministry of Science and Innovation, and EU programmes – a good sign of the quality of the research being done there.
I especially enjoyed talking with young researchers at Universidad CEU Cardenal Herrera – Almudena del Castillo Santamaría, Zitan Peng Hao, Enrique Roger Belloch, and others – about their research and teaching. It was inspiring to hear such promising scholars talk about the issues they are working on.
All in all, I can only recommend Universidad CEU Cardenal Herrera as a great place to do research and write. To anyone who gets the chance to go there, I would say: “¡Hazlo real!” (“Make it real!”) – the university’s own campaign slogan. The facilities and support are excellent; the academic staff is wonderful; and the community small but tight-knit, friendly, and supportive. And Valencia itself is a beautiful, vibrant city with plenty to enjoy after work – a place that sometimes gets overlooked next to Spain’s more famous destinations like Madrid or Barcelona, even by some locals who do not always realise how good their city is.
From the research team, we would like to sincerely thank him for these generous words and, above all, for the weeks of research, academic exchange and shared conversations in Valencia.
Research stays by our international members are an essential part of the project’s international dimension, creating opportunities for researchers from different universities and academic backgrounds to meet, exchange ideas and develop new avenues for cooperation. This visit has also helped to further strengthen collaborations that will continue through the project’s forthcoming activities.
It has been a real pleasure to welcome him to Universidad CEU Cardenal Herrera. We hope that these two weeks in Valencia will be only one more chapter in an academic collaboration that will continue to grow.
And, borrowing his own words, we look forward to continuing to “make it real” together.
