When traders and protesters clash over the export from Britain of live animals, are the traders correct in saying that they have rights under European Community law? How do we address the demands of thousands of asylum seekers to stay in the European Union? Is it true that officials from the European Commission can search a company's premises in the UK if they suspect breaches of the EC competition rules? How does European Law protect our interests as consumers? Over the last thirty years or so the European Community and, more recently, the European Union, has become an increasingly important feature of legal life in both Western Europe generally and in the United Kingdom since it became a member in 1973. Although originally concerned primarily with economic and commercial questions, the scope of this activity has broadened to embrace social and environmental issues. European law therefore impinges on a number of areas of domestic law and it is difficult now to have an overall understanding of the law of England and Wales without some knowledge of the impact of the Community and Union legal system.

The aim of this module is to introduce students to selected topics of substantive Community law. It builds upon a knowledge of the Community and Union legal order through a number of policy areas and the law giving effect to these policies. In any one year two substantive topics will be studied and drawn from a list comprising: the free movement of goods and the single market; the free movement of persons, immigration and asylum; regulation of competition between undertakings and the evolution and impact of European consumer policy. These topics have been selected as areas of both central and contemporary importance and as being illustrative of the problems of giving effect through legal regulation to policies which are worked out at the supranational level.