Thema: Europarecht

EU-Verfassungsrecht, verfassungsrechtlicher Rahmen der europäischen Integration und Mehrebenenverfassungsrecht. Umfasst EU-Institutionenrecht, Grundfreiheiten, EU-Grundrechte, verfassungsrechtliche Aspekte der EU-Mitgliedschaft und das Verhältnis zwischen EU-Recht und nationalen Verfassungsordnungen.

New Digital Gates for Fortress Europe?

On March 29th, the Permanent Representatives Committee approved the EU Council's negotiating mandate for a Regulatory proposal to digitalize the Visa procedure. Proponents argue that this move will improve security and reduce administrative costs for both EU Member States and interested travellers. However, I argue that the Draft Regulation raises many concerns about the effective protection of the fundamental rights of Schengen visa applicants. If adopted, it threatens to perpetuate the subordination of fundamental rights to security and efficiency concerns that characterizes the increasing digitalization and datafication of EU migration management operations.

18. April 2023

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Democracy, Sovereignty and Europe

Fifty years after Ireland and UK joined the EEC together in January 1973, the two states find themselves on radically different European trajectories. Both are common law countries with shared traditions of parliamentary governance and strong cultural links to the wider Anglosphere. However, in Ireland there is broad elite and popular support for maintaining alignment with the requirements of EU and ECHR law – while, in the UK, such European influences trigger a sharp allergic reaction. What explains this dramatic divergence? The answer perhaps lies partially in the differing ‘constitutional imaginaries’ of Ireland and the UK, and how EU and ECHR alignment is understood to impact on the exercise of popular sovereignty in both states.

12. April 2023

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Integration as Disintegration

50 years after accession of Ireland and the UK to the EEC and seven years after the disastrous Brexit referendum, Ireland still sits pretty in the EU, but the UK and its Constitution have been called into possibly fatal doubt, especially as regards their integrative capacity, or continuing ability to bind distinct political classes and the nations of the Union to one another. Writing in early 2023, amidst the ruins of a Brexit reality, if not the end of the Brexit delusion, this short commentary foresees – possibly foolishly – a radical future of independent nations within a loose ‘Confederation of the Isles’, wherein Ireland might share some (symbolic) competences with Scotland, England and Wales, enabling a peaceful a prosperous coexistence within the North-western European archipelago.

11. April 2023

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Short Detention, Long Shadow

Several videos show the arrest of Clara Ponsatí last Tuesday in the streets of Barcelona, a Member of the European Parliament (MEP). Separatist politicians have forcefully condemned the arrest as an ‘attack on democracy’, ‘political violence’, ‘repression’ and ‘abuse of power’, while also asserting an egregious violation of an MEP’s immunity. This piece argues that the arrest warrant issued by the Tribunal Supremo on 28 March 2023 does not hold up against established constitutional principles.

7. April 2023

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Constitutional Change in the UK – People or Party?

The UK’s membership of, and later exit from, the EU has had a dramatic effect on the UK constitution. It also provided a catalyst for further change. These demonstrate the relative ease with which the UK constitution can be modified, reinforcing the UK’s characterisation as a predominantly political, flexible constitution. This post will argue that these transformations illustrate something more fundamental that applies to all constitutions – be they predominantly codified or uncodified, with or without the ability of the courts to strike down unconstitutional legislation.

6. April 2023

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Imposing Brexit onto Northern Ireland’s Post-Conflict Governance Order

The Westphalian state provides for an all-but ubiquitous building block of governance. It stacks neatly into dominant accounts of multi-level governance, with all states being presented as nominal equals on the plain of international law. Where reasons of scale or the needs of diverse societies require, sub-state levels of governance can be introduced into the equation. Multiple states, moreover, can pool aspects of their law and decision making where they see the advantages of so doing, resulting in regional supra-national bodies such as the EU.

5. April 2023

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In Law as in Life?

On New Year’s Day in 2002, my late uncle, visiting us in Kerry at the time, walked to the local shop and came back with a pristine €5 note for everyone in the house. Spend it, keep it, do whatever you like with it; but this, he said, is history. Ireland adopting the euro as its currency marked one of the most significant divergent choices in the history of British and Irish membership of the European Union. The dense and complicated ties between the two states were otherwise reflected in so many ways across their EU membership profiles, from their coterminous application paths to shared exemptions from certain legal obligations.

4. April 2023

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Frozen

After years of inaction, the European Commission and Council jointly acted to freeze EU funds totaling more than €28.7 billion for Hungary and more than €110 billion for Poland at the end of 2022, citing rule-of-law violations. Surprisingly, the decisions were taken not just (or even primarily) using the new Conditionality Regulation designed for that purpose. Instead, they used a variety of other legal tools to which rule-of-law conditionality was attached. It remains somewhat mysterious, however, precisely which funds and what proportion of those funds have been suspended, and how those suspensions have been legally justified. This post, a shorter version of a SIEPS paper that will be published soon, describes what we know about the complex set of funding suspensions intended to make EU Member States pay for their rule-of-law violations.

4. April 2023

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A Fond Embrace?

As with any relationship, significant anniversaries offer us an opportunity to take stock. Looking backwards allows us not only to appreciate how far we have come, but also, perhaps, to reflect on the direction in which we might be heading. To date, upwards of 2,200 judgments of the Irish courts have considered EU or Community law in some form. Against this context, this short contribution reflects on the reception of EU law in the Irish courts since 1973.

3. April 2023

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Number Crunching EU Law and the Irish Legal Order

In this short piece, I will outline a few of the extremes of the Irish relationship with Europe that I have personally studied or encountered and its impact in my view. Many years ago, I wrote a dissertation on the relationship between EU law and the Irish legal order, on the unravelling dynamic since accession, focussing upon the preliminary reference data. I felt it was a deserving topic precisely because there was so little interest as to the relationship between EU law and Ireland. Ireland was uniformly always excluded from major US and EU political science studies that have been iconic in shaping views on EU integration.

30. März 2023

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