The German Federal Constitutional Court (FCC) has found that there are no constitutional objections against the Lisbon Treaty. At the same time, the FCC imposed limitations to future integration by identifying a number of state functions that are non-amenable to integration and which have to be...

This paper provides an up-to-date overview of the gradual development of differentiated integration and the ensuing changes in the nature of European integration. It considers the dynamics of deepening and widening of the EU and proposes the metaphor of a 'European Onion' that is designed to...

A major characteristic of the European Union is its transitional or evolving nature, in particular with regard to the assignment of powers between the two main levels of government. More precisely, under current constitutional arrangements, this evolving nature takes the form of an integration...

Understanding the European Union (EU) as an autonomously constitutional entity—what this volume evocatively calls the EU’s ‘constitutional imaginary’—has been central to judicial decision-making and legal scholarship on European governance over many decades. If our aim, however, is to...

Among the many meanings given to the idea of a European ‘constitution’, perhaps the most widespread relates to the limitation and constraint of power. Missing from this conception, however, is arguably the very essence of genuinely ‘constituted’ authority: the capacity to mobilise fiscal...