This paper seeks to synthesise two concerns which are usually discussed separately. One concerns the much discussed democracy deficit of the European polity. In this respect, it is considered that the democratic quality of the EU needs to be discussed in conjunction with Europe's potential to...

The essays examines two strands of thought in the conceptualisation of the functions of law in the development of the project of European Union. One is the idea that the integration project could be guided by and promoted mainly "through law", eventually accompanied and complemented by political...

“Conflicts‐law constitutionalism” seeks to defend the rule of law and the idea of law‐mediated legitimacy in the postnational constellation. The idea of its “three dimensional” differentiation responds to general developments of legal systems, namely the emergence of legal frameworks...

What kind of law are Germany’s Constitutional Court and the CJEU concerned with when they decide upon European and national powers in the realms of monetary, economic and fiscal policy? Is it still possible to identify some meta-legal conceptual basis for the ordering functions attributed to...

It is perhaps a truism to note that 'the consumer' is but a role that is played by human subjects. This insight leaves us, as lawyers, with one vital question: how can or does the legal system meaningfully rationalise its encounters with the consumer? Can it, and if so to what way, shape the act...

The historical evolution of free trade has been accompanied by a plethora of debates, concerning both its positive effects and social costs. During the last decade, the subject of these disputes has markedly changed. The main objective of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)...

The defeat European constitutionalism has experienced in the French and the Dutch referendum has many reasons. The deficiency this contribution addresses is the lack sensitivity for the historical dimensions of the integration project in general and the darker legacies of law in particular....

European Studies used to be dominated by legal and political science approaches which hailed the progress of European integration and its reliance on law. The recent set of crises that struck the EU have highlighted fundamental problems in the ways and means by which European integration...

This paper is about the difficult relationship between law and governance in the European Union. The turn to governance which the Prodi Commission has forcefully propagated is a continuation of much older developments. By means of these developments the European Community (now Union) has sought...

This essay is a renewed effort to overcome the schisms between lawyers and political scientists in their conceptualisations of the European integration project. The first effort was my contribution Das Recht im Prozeá der Europischen Integration to Markus Jachtenfuchs/Beate Kohler-Koch (eds.),...