The essay starts from the assumption that the efforts to cure Europe’s democracy deficits will also have to address the social problématique of the Europeanization process. This is a challenge with new dimensions. Europe had started its integrationist path as a mere economic community. In its...

This paper looks at the way in which the legal theory of the EU has evolved over the last half century. A major theme is the ongoing tension between continuity and change – between EU legal theory as continuous with national legal theory and EU legal theory as something new and sui generis....

There have been for fifty years two Europes: the Europe of the Council of Europe and the Europe of the European Union. Both organisations have grown, but their membership remains different. Both have developed international instruments for protecting Human Rights: on the one hand, the European...

Joschka Fischer's well-known speech at the Humboldt University on 12 May 2000 marked the start of a wide-ranging and unprecedented debate on the future of Europe. Subsequent developments have led us from the Nice and Laeken declarations to the establishment of a 105 members comprising Convention...

Europe continues to search for its – 'European' – social model and the, search seems to become increasingly urgent. It is no longer just the 'democratic deficit', but also and alongside it, the 'social deficit' of the EU which needs to be cured. That new concern is, in fact, a rejection of...

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The third part of the Constitution for Europe has been submitted to hard criticism. The content of this part however, is indispensable to a Constitution of the European Union as it is a consolidation of the legal bases and institutional details which are necessary to the functioning of the EU....

Is it the case that the law, in order to be fully legitimate, must not only be adopted in a procedurally correct way but must also comply with certain substantive values? In the first part of the paper I prepare the ground for the discussion of legitimacy of democratic laws by considering the...

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

This paper claims that the intuitive and widespread legitimating power of majority rule (MR)arises from the link between majority rule and the principle of equality of political opportunity. The egalitarian character of MR is established by exploring puzzles indemocratic theory, such as the...