The Fundamentals of EU Law Revisited: Assessing the Impact of the Constitutional Debate
Abstract
With the rejection of the Constitutional Treaty in French and Dutch referenda, the European Union received a severe blow. This precipitated a period of reflection and soul searching. How far should the fundamental principles that shape the Union be re-assessed in the light of the Constitutional debate? Can the Constitutional Treaty be rescued from failure? If not, what other options for constitutional reform are available? Does the Treaty's rejection signal the failure of the Union's goal of democratic governance? The chapters in this volume examine the impact of the debate surrounding the future of the European Constitution on the development of core areas of EU law and policy. Opening with a discussion of the shifting conceptions of European democracy, the volume proceeds to look at key areas of substantive law against the backdrop of the Constitutional Treaty, from foreign relations to fundamental rights, social policy to justice and home affairs. The book concludes with an examination of potential solutions to the constitutional crisis, and models for future constitutional reform.
... The rejection of the Constitutional treaty was a kind of shock. Nevertheless, as Barnard points out, at least some of the opposition used the referenda (where available) "as an opportunity to give bloody nose to the incumbent national governments" (Barnard 2007) to revenge for their ignorance or non-transparency in European affairs. In the context of the current thesis, the author agrees with Weiler who remarked that "What Europe needs… Is not a constitution but an ethos and telos to justify, if they can, the constitutional order it has already embraced" (Weiler 1996: 518). ...
After the Lisbon Treaty, the objectives of the European Union are more numerous and ambitious than ever. But what is their importance and function within the ‘thickening’ legal order of the EU? Combining insights from both the law of international organizations and comparative constitutional law, the article traces the diverging role of objectives for, on the one hand, a traditional international organization marked by the principle of ‘speciality’ and, on the other, a maturing legal order increasingly exhibiting ‘constitutional’ traits. It argues that in the case of the EU, objectives and competences have developed into two related but distinct norm categories. While objectives serve to bolster arguments to shape such powers, they no longer represent a rationale in their own right for founding competences. The EU no longer justifies its existence solely by striving for a particular set of goals. Rather, these norms represent an entrenched duty to pursue these objectives through the actors, structures and procedures available, regardless of the Union's ultimate form (finalité). Today, the EU stands for certain values and has been endowed with powers, the exercise of which is guided by promoting these various aspects of the ‘common good’.
The book is a cornerstone in the studies aimed at introducing a new form of democracy not just at a global level, through international environmental law, but also at local one, by regional and national regulation, to manage global and local ecological problems. In the light of the results pointed out in Parola's book (Environmental democracy at Global Level. Rights and duties for a new citizenship), this second work examines environmental democracy at a local level by referring to EU law. The European Union, as the only global region with the official objective of simultaneously promoting economic development, social cohesion and environmental protection is here used as an example for analyzing how the region has found (and is still developing) a range of solutions to various environmental issues. The book sheds new light on the transformation of Europe into a Green Europe.
This article scrutinizes the last ten years of the academic debate on EU citizenship law taking nine fundamental disagreements among scholars as staring points. It explores EU citizenship’s relationship with three groups of issues of fundamental importance, including the place of this concept within the fabric of EU law, the influence of this concept on the essence of the Union as a system of multilevel governance, and its impact on the lives of ordinary Europeans. A number of key works which influenced the Court and the legislator in the recent years is assessed to outline the likely direction of future research, as well as future EU citizenship’s development. Although the literature on the subject is overwhelmingly rich and diverse, this article aspires to provide a representative sample of issues of interest for the framing of the concept at issue from a supranational perspective, necessarily leaving national (or nationalistic) literatures aside.
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