The discussion of the Services Directive from 2004 onwards showed an unprecedented extent of politicisation of a single-market issue. Coinciding with the Eastern enlargement in 2004, the easing of the services freedom through the Directive raised significant redistributive issues, given the...

Under European competition law the Commission has far-reaching competences. The article asks about the conditions under which the Commission may use these rights against the member states, focusing on the most powerful provision — the right of the Commission under Article 90 to issue...

What have been the consequences of integrating the single market via mutual recognition? Did competitive deregulation result? Or were its implications less significant than expected? In this paper I analyse two previously highly regulated service sectors, insurance and road haulage, and study...

The role that the ECJ plays in European integration has been much discussed by political scientists. Less is known about how case law develops. In this contribution, I give a historical-institutionalist account and argue that path dependence explains the course that case law takes. Litigants...

Over the summer of 2012, the pending verdict of the German Federal Constitutional Court (FCC) was a topic of much speculation not only in Germany and in the European Union (EU), but also on the international level. Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF)...

Evolutionstheoretische Erklärungen technischer Entwicklung haben in der letzten Zeit an Stellenwert gewonnen. Die vorliegende Arbeit sieht zwei Schwachstellen dieser Ansätze. Zum einen fehlt eine über stochastische Prozesse hinausgehende Erklärung der Entstehung von Varianz. Zum anderen wird...

The Court of Justice of the European Union is an important motor of integration and is said to be particularly strong in those cases where the Council shows an inability to act. What is the relevance of the Court to social Europe? Europeanisation studies analyse how member states change due to...

This article analyzes the political impact of the European Court of Justice's (ECJ) case law concerning the free movement of EU citizens and their cross-border access to social benefits. Public debates about ‘welfare migration' or ‘social tourism' often fluctuate between populist hysteria...

This article reviews recent advances in the study of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and its political impact at the European and member state levels. New quantitative as well as qualitative analyses show with great empirical precision that member state preferences guide the Court. The...