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: On June 30, 2009, the German Constitutional Court declared the Lisbon Treaty to be compatible with the German constitution. The Lisbon decision marked the end of an intense constitutional battle. The following text illustrates how different views on and different understandings of...

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: This paper, which is based on information provided by national reports submitted from 17 member states and one candidate state, reflects on the aftermath of the non-ratification of the Constitutional Treaty (TECE), and more specifically on the particular path chosen by EU political...

Abstract: As the distinction between interpretation and politics diminishes, the need for pluralism in interpretation increases. The Article argues, first, that the rule of law requires that no one tribunal possess the power to subordinate a whole legal system to its politicized rule. The...

Abstract: The negative outcomes of the French and Dutch referenda on the Constitutional Treaty have opened a period of profound constitutional disenchantment in relation to the EU. This impression seems confirmed by the recent Presidency Conclusions of the European Council which, although...

Abstract: Although not originally foreseen in the founding Treaty, today the most important and widespread form of EU regulation in the internal market is concerned with the government of risk. Indeed, similarly to what occurred in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s, the EU has in recent...

Abstract: The issue of DNA database legislation is one of the most delicate challenges of legislative harmonization at the European level. The balance between the right to privacy, and the right to security and to fair trial is hard to be achieved and it depends a lot from the cultural,...