Maria Kotsoni
Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Hellenic Studies and Public and International Affairs, funded by the Paul Sarbanes ’54 Fund for Hellenism and Public Service, 2024-2025
- DegreePh.D., Law, European University Institute, 2024DissertationDid the Euro-Crisis Change the Social Constitution? An Analysis of Constitutional Amendment Projects in Greece and IrelandResearch ProjectConstitutionalizing European Fiscal Constraints without Constitutional Amendment? Lessons from Greece’s Post-Crisis Social Constitutionalism
Maria Kotsoni is a public law scholar interested in social constitutionalism, comparative constitutional law, and the protection of social and labour rights as fundamental and human rights at a European level. Maria obtained her PhD from the European University Institute with a thesis titled ‘Did the Euro-crisis Change the Social Constitution? An Analysis of Constitutional Amendment Projects in Greece and Ireland’. Her thesis and published work broadly focus on the evolution of social strands of constitutions and of other legal sources protective of labour and social rights, on comparative constitutional change, and on crises as drivers of constitutional change. She has taught seminars at the Law Department of the EUI on topics related to the legal and conceptual foundations of Social Europe, including critical approaches, and on the protection of labour and social rights in the Council of Europe and the EU. Maria is a consultant to the Council of Europe’s Department of Social Rights.
About the Research Project
Constitutionalizing European Fiscal Constraints without Constitutional Amendment? Lessons from Greece’s Post-Crisis Social Constitutionalism
While at the Seeger Centre, Maria will work towards publishing a monograph drawing from the PhD thesis. Her book project will examine change of European social constitutions, its drivers, actors and mechanisms. At the same time, she will work on a series of publications investigating how the constitutionalization of European fiscal constraints has reshaped European social constitutionalism. As a part of this project, she will investigate the constitutionalization of rules of budgetary discipline through informal constitutional change, as demonstrated in post-crisis social constitutionalism of sovereign debt states, primarily Greece.