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Many political and legal philosophers compare the EU to a federal union and believe its basic laws should be subject to the standards of constitutional law, and thus find it lacking or incomplete. This book proposes a rival theory: that the substance of EU law is not constitutional, but international, and provides a close examination of the treaties and the precedents of the European courts to explore this concept further. Just like international law, EU law applies primarily to the relations between member states, who have democratically chosen to adapt their constitutional arrangements in order to share legislative and executive powers with their partners. The legal architecture of the Eur...
Updated habilitation thesis, submitted in 2003 to the Law Faculty of the University of Basel, analysing indirect discrimination in a broad and comparative context. Focuses on the development of the legal concept in EC law and its application in a great number of areas, including internal taxation of goods, freedom of establishment, sex equality, etc. Discusses demarcation issues between direct and indirect discrimination, and applying the concepts in concrete cases.
Institutional Dynamics of European Integration is devoted to the topic of the institutional law of the Communities, and contains a timely collection of essays by eminent experts. While this volume will certainly refine legal understanding of the European Union in its present complex phase of development, it also constitutes a warm personal tribute to Henry Schermers, teacher and scholar of international renown and a pioneer of European Community law.
In recent years, food law has taken on an increasingly prominent role in political discourse, with calls for a more sustainable food system challenging the legal status quo. A thorough legal perspective is thus indispensable for grasping the complexities of the EU food system and political quests for change. In the first monograph of its kind, Hanna Schebesta and Kai Purnhagen offer an authoritative and comprehensive overview of EU food legislation. Drawing on the authors' experience researching and teaching in the field, EU Food Law explores how political paradigms have shaped the development of laws in a variety of domains, including food technology, food safety, food information, food qua...
This book offers a new account of modern European constitutionalism. It uses the Irish constitutional order to demonstrate that, right across the European Union, the national constitution can no longer be understood on its own, in isolation from the EU legal order or from the European Convention on Human Rights. The constitution is instead triangular, with these three legal orders forming the points of a triangle, and the relationship and interactions between them forming the triangle's sides. It takes as its starting point the theory of constitutional pluralism, which suggests that overlapping constitutional orders are not necessarily arranged 'on top of' each other, but that they may be ar...
Over the last two decades, EU legislation has established a growing number of subsidiary bodies commonly referred to as EU decentralised agencies. Recent years have witnessed the conferral of increasingly significant powers to these bodies to the point where the successful implementation of many of the EU's policies is now dependent upon the activities of EU agencies. While EU agencies have become indispensable in terms of their practical importance, the lack of a legal basis in the EU Treaties to establish and empower new bodies as well as the lack of an adequate framework in secondary law means that there exists little control over EU agencies. This results in critical issues, such as the ...
Constitutional pluralism has become immensely popular among scholars who study European integration and issues of global governance. Some of them believe that constitutionalism, traditionally thought to be bound to a nation state, can emerge beyond state borders - most importantly in the process of European integration, but also beyond that, for example, in international regulatory regimes such as the WTO, or international systems of fundamental rights protection, such as the European Convention. At the same time, the idea of constitutional pluralism has not gone unchallenged. Some have questioned its compatibility with the very nature of law and the values which law brings to constitutional...
The discussion about energy perspectives beyond 2020, up to 2030 and eventually 2050 has started. There seems to be a verbal consensus on the necessity of ambitious climate change mitigation policies, without a convincing perspective of the necessary policy decisions to be reached in due time. Methods to achieve greenhouse gas reduction as well as energy security vary from aiming for 100% renewable energies and setting up appropriate policy frameworks to implementing a mix of renewables comprising so-called clean fossil and nuclear energy. This book provides an analysis of the different approaches and the reasons why there is no sustainable alternative to aiming for 100% renewables – and how this vision could come true. The book provides an overview and in-depth analysis of a vital debate. It describes how the present policy framework with 2020-targets for the share of renewables, for increase of energy efficiency and for greenhouse gas emissions reduction was developed and how it has been implemented so far. Furthermore, it describes and analyses the emerging debate about the future of our energy system and the necessary next steps and targets leading up to 2030.
Do independent boards of appeal set up in some EU agencies and the European Ombudsman compensate for the shortcomings of EU Courts? This book examines the operation of EU judicial and extra-judicial review mechanisms. It confronts the formal legal rules with evolving practices, relying on rich statistical data and internal documents. It covers detailed institutional arrangements, the standard of review, the types of cases and litigants, and the activity of the parties in the process. It makes visible the diverse but complementary ways in which the mechanisms enhance the authority of EU legal acts and processes. It also reveals that scarce resources and imprecise rules restrict the scope of review and hinder independent empirical investigations. Finally, it casts light on how a differentiated system of judicial and extra-judicial review can accommodate various kinds of technical and political discretion exercised by EU institutions and bodies.