Abstract: The European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) is understood as an important new "instrument" in the EU's Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) "toolbox", designed to respond to the contemporary security environment as well as to overcome the inaction and hesitancy of the past....

Altneuland: The European Constitutional Terrain It is in many respects a New Land - for the first time the Union is openly, officially using the word Constitution in its formal self-understanding. But this, in turn, places it, at least lexically, in the age old terrain of constitutionalism which...

Abstract: Reawakened from its decades-long slumber during the Cold War, the UN Security Council has become more active than ever before.  Increased UN activity, however, has not always spelled increased accountability.  The problem is particularly acute with regard to the UN Security...

Abstract: In Europe the public role of the religions appears to be directly proportional to the fall in trust in the procedural mechanisms at the basis of the liberal democracies. Compared to the strong identities attributed to the United States and to the Islamic world Europe is accused of...

Abstract: The paper compares French and Dutch legal approaches in regulating the use of headscarves in public institutions as examples of divergent liberal legal cultures and national policies towards immigrant minorities. It shows that in France the principle of laïcité or state secularity...

Abstract: Despite the failure of the ambitious project of the European Constitutional Treaty, the new millennium has indeed heralded a new constitutional era for the European Union, focussed on the protection of fundamental rights. Since the approval of the Charter in December 2000, fundamental...

Abstract: The paper explores the impact of the great enlargement of Europe (European Union and Council of Europe) to the east on the judicial interaction between the EU, the ECHR and the Member States legal orders. In order to appraise the dynamic and prospective nature of the enlargement, in...