Environmental concerns have played a key role for institutionalizing energy policy at the level of the European Union. There is thus a tendency in research literature to assume that the objectives of these cognate policy areas are compatible and mutually reinforcing. There have been only few...

The European Council occupies a central role in European politics. Yet it is not officially accountable to any public or parliamentary body for the decisions it makes on behalf of European citizens. National parliaments are only entitled to exert control over their own Heads of Government or...

No matter how one evaluates the product of its work, the Convention on the Future ofEurope has marked a turning point in the history of European integration. This article is divided into three parts. The first presents the different actors who participated in the Convention and the cleavages...

This article offers an institutionalist explanation of French preferences on the future of Europe from the Maastricht Treaty of 1992 through the Constitutional Treaty of 2004. It argues that the autonomous institutional logic of the constitution-drafting exercise increasingly shaped the...

The article explores whether the Constitutional Treaty may provide more legitimacy for governance in the European Union. After presenting a list of normative criteria, relevant parts of the Constitutional Treaty are summarised and evaluated. It is concluded that the Constitutional Treaty's...

This article analyses the impact of the EU's new Constitutional Treaty on the parliaments of its member states, with specific focus on access to information and on monitoring compliance with the subsidiarity principle. The main argument of the article is that while the Constitutional Treaty will...

A priori voting power analysis can provide an effective tool for assessment of decision-making rules, which is particularly needed in procedures using weighted voting. The Council of the EU is such a case and the decision-making rule for this main decision-making body is a long-lasting problem...

The theme of the article is the ECJ's approach to the standing of private applicants in actions of annulment. The analysis places the emphasis on the Opinions by AG Jacobs and the rulings of the CFI and the ECJ in UPA and Jégo-Quérè and on the limited changes proposed under the Draft...

In contrast to the attention devoted to the rejection of the EU Constitutional Treaty at French and Dutch referenda; the Spanish referendum, where this Treaty was ratified, remained under-researched by political scientists. This paper analyses the voting behaviour at the Spanish referendum on the...

This article deals with the intricate ratification process of the Lisbon Treaty, while focusing on the thorny issues of Euroscepticism and democratic deficit within the European Union in the current institutional context. The study is based on a wide research endeavour, whose purpose has been to...