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In European Union (EU) law, we can find more and more references in different legal documents to non-legal concepts such as ethics and morality.

While the outcome sometimes might be the same, it is the way of reasoning which distinguishes these three theories.

After this introduction into the relevant basics of normative ethics, let us turn to the status quo of EU law referring to ethics and morality. Following the hierarchy of EU law, let us first have a look at primary EU law.

While objectives 1–3 have been dealt with in the chapters so far, this chapter is dedicated to objective 4. That is to say, whether we can identify a certain common horizontal (or rather a specific) pattern in referring to these terms of ethics and morality, and whether we can thus identify an ethical spirit based on an analysis of these legal texts; or whether we have to ascertain a gap, which has to be filled by other means?

The question whether references to ethics should be understood as an unconditional reference (to one or more philosophical theories), or only as pointing towards a certain idea (question No. 3), has already been answered in the previous chapter (in terms of the second option).

While so far, this book was clearly about the legal situation as it stands, I now want to conclude with some own suggestions for improvement. Much has already been written about the multiple crisis of the EU. However, even if these crises did not exist, it would be high time to further develop a new Union, which is ‘inspired by an ethical spirit’.