Just weeks from the election, the Slovenian opposition leader will be sent to jail on dubious corruption charges – unless the Constitutional Court intervenes this week. Slovenia will find itself in an unprecedented constitutional regression and join the notorious Hungarian and Romanian examples of apparent constitutional back-sliding.
I would go so far to say that were the European Council to make a nomination based on the sort of legal duty Kumm asserts, and were that nomination to be taken by the qualified majority vote which the treaty permits, an outvoted state would have good legal grounds for challenging the decision before the European Court of Justice. Maybe then we would see who is right and who is wrong.
Europawahlen, Bundespräsident, Migration: Was die konstitutionalistische Blogosphäre in dieser Woche interessant fand.
Thankfully the Treaties provide the basis for leaving behind the ancien régime of executive federalism and pushes towards a more democratic politics in Europe. Ironically the path to a brighter democratic future in Europe depends to a nontrivial extent on the Council acting in conformity with its duty to nominate a perhaps less than inspiring steady hand of the past as Commission President.
The European Union is entering a time of revival and renewal. It has a brand new Parliament and will soon have a new Commission, one of whose members is likely to be made responsible specifically for fundamental rights. The European Council is about to adopt strategic guidelines that will guide the Union’s future policies in the area of Justice and Home Affairs – an area of utmost importance for fundamental rights. And the Union as a whole is in the process of acceding to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights. Similar to proposals by the European Union Agency for fundamental rights (FRA), the Council of the European Union concluded on 5 June 2014 that the EU could indeed “gradually” develop a “Union internal strategy on fundamental rights, possibly through an action plan on a mid-term basis, regarding the respect and promotion of the Charter”. This opens new perspectives for the protection and promotion of fundamental rights within the EU. This is the right moment to establish an EU internal framework for fundamental rights that mirrors the existing external fundamental rights framework. It would send a strong signal to the outside world, demonstrating that the EU and its Member States are prepared to ‘walk the talk’ and thus decrease the dilemma of inconsistency between the Union’s internal and external behaviour.
Speculation over the nominee for the next President of the European Commission has been rife in newspapers, media and the blogosphere. In the face of such uncertainty, it might be reassuring to believe that, as Mattias Kumm asserts, there is an actual legal duty to appoint a particular candidate. No such luck. If there was to be legal certainty, then the authors of the treaty could quite easily have provided that clarity, including by institutionalising the Spitzenkandidat concept in the treaties. They did no such thing.
Der Bundespräsident darf politischer werden, die Bundesversammlung muss unpolitisch bleiben: Die beiden Urteile des Bundesverfassungsgerichts machen der NPD mehr als nur einen Strich durch ihr verfassungspolitisches Kalkül.
This article is available only in German.
Selbstdisziplin im Rampenlicht Kurz nachdem im Alter von fünf Jahren Diabetes bei Sonia Sotomayor festgestellt wird, ist sie zu Hause Zeuge eines heftigen Streits ihrer Eltern. An lautstarke Auseinandersetzungen ist sie zwar gewöhnt, aber diesmal ist es etwas anderes, weil sie selbst Anlass der Auseinandersetzung ist. Keiner der Eltern kann sich überwinden, der kleinen Sonia die Insulinspritzen zu verabreichen. Um dem familiären Zwist ein Ende zu bereiten, beschließt sie, es einfach selbst zu tun. Das Spritzen, aber auch das lange Warten, bis die Spritze ausgekocht und wieder abgekühlt sind, werden für Sonja Sotomayor zur Schule einer Disziplin, die sie von ... continue reading
Die Position von Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel, "jetzt alle Gespräche genau in diesem Geiste (zu führen), dass Jean-Claude Juncker auch Präsident der Europäischen Kommission werden sollte" ist nicht nur politisch angemessen, sondern europarechtlich und verfassungsrechtlich geboten.
13. September 2025
Giovanni Capoccia
12. September 2025
Anne Peters
12. September 2025
Anne Peters