Verfassungsrechtliche Rahmenbedingungen für demokratische Regierungsführung, Gewaltenteilung, institutionelles Design und demokratische Prozesse. Umfasst die verfassungsrechtlichen Strukturen für Legislative, Exekutive und Judikative, Wahlsysteme, Föderalismus und verfassungsrechtliche Mechanismen demokratischer Rechenschaftspflicht.
Huber, Voßkuhle, Lenaerts – drei Richter des BVerfG bzw. EuGH haben sich in der Presse zu Wort gemeldet, um ihre jeweiligen Urteile im Streit um die Ultra-Vires-Entscheidung zu verteidigen. Diese Reaktionen sind nicht nur rechtlich problematisch, sie drohen auch genau das zu verspielen, was die Richter zu bewahren suchen: das öffentliche Vertrauen und ihre Autorität.
Soon, the Federal Constitutional Court will decide on the Egenberger case that raises important questions at the intersection of anti-discrimination law and religious policy. The decision is an opportunity to address critical questions to the European Court of Justice – a court that lacks dogmatic subtlety and sensitivity with regard to religion and cultural policy as an analysis of its case law shows.
Due to the pandemic, Chile's 2020 electoral calendar has been modified, delaying the most important political event of the year: the April referendum for a new constitution. While the postponement is reasonable considering the current sanitary situation, recent suggestions that there be a further postponement due to a possible post-pandemic economic crisis threaten the democratic legitimacy of the process. As argued in this post, these measures and opinions, when read together, put the government close to an authoritarian use of the constitution.
To all intents and purposes, Orbán and his government have ceased to be democratically accountable either to the Hungarian Parliament or to the citizens of Hungary. The words in that last sentence are chosen carefully and with meaning. This blogpost suggest that Article 10 TEU may provide a basis for the exclusion of Hungarian representatives from the European Council and the Council of the European Union.
Much has been written about the recent German Constitutional Court (GCC) ruling which has essentially dismantled the 2018 judgement of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) over the legality of the ECB Quantitative Easing Program. Much more will be written. I will limit myself here in analysing what I believe is the “macroeconomic” essence of the ruling.
Covid-19 makes elections hard to hold – and forced Ethiopia to reschedule its general election for the House of Representatives. It is unclear how and when the election will be held instead – a pressing issue as the canceled election was to take place only a month before the current term of office ends. Who will have the mandate to govern after this date until the Ethiopians are able to go to the polls to elect the next House of Representatives?
Kalypso Nicolaïdis has referred to managed recognition as an exercise in legal empathy mediated through conditions and limits, and resulting from the ‘eternal dance of law and politics’. The notion lends a useful lens to capture the relation between European top courts. In the version of that relation emerging from the PSPP judgment, this lens magnifies a disruption, a side effect, and an alternative course.
The Covid-19 epidemic outbreak in Serbia coincided with the beginning of the election campaign for both parliamentary and municipal elections. Soon, it became clear that what was at stake in the fight against Covid-19 was not so much saving the nation as securing the majority re-election of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party, headed by its populist leader and President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić.
Könnte ein Vertragsverletzungsverfahren in dem Ultra-Vires-Fall eine weitere Stufe des Kooperationsverhältnisses von EuGH und BVerfG sein? Es könnte den prozessualen Mantel bilden, um den Dialog um den Inhalt der nationalen Verfassungsidentität der Bundesrepublik fortzuführen.
Das Ultra-Vires-Urteil aus Karlsruhe ist ein weiterer Beleg dafür, dass die Europäische Union in der derzeitigen Strukturierung der Wirtschafts- und Währungsunion nicht zukunftsfähig ist. Eine demokratisch nur dünn legitimierte, aus guten Gründen unabhängige Institution, deren Mandat die Preisstabilität betrifft, zum faktischen Garanten für das finanzielle Überleben der Mitgliedstaaten zu machen, und dieses Überleben ausgerechnet durch eine weitere Ausdehnung der Staatsverschuldung sichern zu wollen, die zudem die Unabhängigkeit der Institution gefährdet, weist in die Irre.
13. September 2025
Giovanni Capoccia
12. September 2025
Anne Peters
12. September 2025
Anne Peters