This book re-examines the law governing the obligations of the Member States in the European Union from the perspective of the interests formulated and pursued by national governments in the EU. Member States’ interests provide the source as well as the limitations of the obligations undertaken by the Member States in the Union. From the early days of European integration, they have determined how the law frames and defines EU obligations in the Treaties, in legislation and in the jurisprudence of the EU Court of Justice. The book neither challenges directly, nor undermines the current state of the law in the EU. Instead, it introduces a framework for interpreting and analysing legal developments – both legislative and jurisprudential – from an angle which brings the legal dimension of the membership of States in the European Union closer to its political reality. By choosing Member State interest to frame its analysis of the law, the book expresses a clear intention to explore further the interactions and the potential interconnectedness of the intergovernmentalism of EU decision-making and the normative supranationalism of the application and the enforcement of Member State obligations, in particular at the national level. Analysing how diversity among the Member States, which arises from different local interests, institutional frameworks and socio-economic arrangements, is assessed and sustained in EU legislation and in the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice, the book examines the impact of EU obligations on Member State territorial authority and territoriality. Providing a new perspective on Member State interests and European Law, the book closes the widening gap between the politics and law of European integration and between its political science and legal analysis. The book is essential reading for students and scholars in the field of state law, EU law and politics.

The book examines how the interests of the member states, which provide the primary driving force for developments in European integration, are internalised and addressed by the law of the European Union. In this context, member state interests are taken to mean the policy considerations, economic calculations, local socio-cultural factors, and the raw expressions of political will which shape EU policies and determine member state responses to the obligations arising from those policies. The book primarily explores the junctions and disjunctions between member state interests defined in such a manner and EU law, where the latter expresses either an obligation for the member states to comply with common policies or an acceptance of member state particularism under the common EU framework.

The objective of this book is to examine how the legal order of Malta, the EU's smallest Member State, manages to cope with the obligations of the EU's acquis communautaire. As far as the legal obligations are concerned, size does not matter. Smaller Member States have the same obligations as the largest, yet they have to meet these same obligations with very fewer resources. This book examines how the Maltese legal system manages to fulfil its obligations both in terms of the supremacy of EU law, as well as how the substantive EU law is transposed and implemented. It also explores how Maltese courts look at EU law and how they manage, or not manage, to enforce it within the context of national law. It can serve as a model to demonstrate how EU law is being implemented in the smallest Member State and can serve as a basis to study the effectiveness of EU law into the domestic law of its Member States in general.

This collection celebrates the career of Professor Alan Dashwood, a leading member of the generation of British academics who organised, explained and analysed what we now call European Union law for the benefit of lawyers trained in the common law tradition. It takes as its starting point Professor Dashwood's vivid description of the European Union as a 'constitutional order of states'. He intended that phrase to capture the unique character of the Union. On the one hand, it is a supranational order characterised by its own distinctive institutional dynamics and an unprecedented level of cohesion among, and penetration into, the national legal systems. On the other hand, it remains an organisation of derived powers, the Member States retaining their character as sovereign entities under international law. This theme permeates both the constitutional and the substantive law of the Union. Contributors to the collection include members of the judiciary and distinguished practitioners, officials and academics. They consider the foundations, strengths, implications and shortcomings of this conceptual framework in various fields of EU law and policy. The collection is an essential purchase for anyone interested in the constitutional framework of the contemporary European Union.

The principle of loyalty requires the EU and its Member States to co-operate sincerely towards the implementation of EU law. Under the principle, the European courts have developed significant public law duties on States to deepen the reach of EU law. This is the first full-length analysis of the loyalty principle and its legal implications.

The Oxford Handbook of the European Union brings together numerous acknowledged specialists in their field to provide a comprehensive and clear assessment of the nature, evolution, workings, and impact of European integration.

Recoge: 1. From Paris to Lisbon, via Rome, Maastricht, Amsterdam and Nice. 2. Fundamental values of The European Union. 3. The "Constitution" of The European Union. 4. The legal order of The EU. 5. The position of Union law in relation to the legal order as a whole.

This book provides an analysis of key approaches to rule of law oversight in the EU and identifies deeper theoretical problems.

Small States in and outside the European Union offers a broad overview of the small states problematic in Europe. It touches upon definition issues, history, security policy, neutrality, EU institutional aspects and also includes contributors from Central and Eastern European countries. It presents a thorough analysis of different scenarios for EU institutional reform and their repercussions on the influence of small member states. The comparative results are visualized in tables. The work contains several contributions from practitioners who give insight into policy games and issues of national sensitivity not usually covered by purely scholarly publications. The European environment has changed dramatically through the processes of regional integration and rising interdependence. Relations between European states both inside and outside the EU are governed as never before by rules, norms, and fixed procedures. The book investigates the consequences of these developments on the foreign and security policy of small states. Academics and professionals from Austria, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Slovenia, Sweden, and Switzerland, as well as from the European Commission and the Council of Ministers, elaborate on these issues. Institutional regulations and traditional power politics as well as the foreign and security policy traditions of the states concerned, including the question of neutrality, are investigated. In addition, the book identifies the main interests of small states in today's Europe and offers an overview of different strategies these states apply in the realm of foreign and security policy. The book is interesting for the case studies it offers as well as for the reflections it contains regarding fundamental questions of the essence of statehood in today's Europe.

This book examines the language policies relating to linguistic rights in European Union law and in the constitutions and legal statutes of some European Union member states. In recent years, the European Union has seen an increase in claims for language recognition by minority groups representing a considerable population (such as Catalan in Spain and Welsh in the UK). Additionally, there is a developing situation surrounding the official use of English within the European Union in the aftermath of the Brexit vote. In light of these two contexts, this book focuses on the degree of legal protection afforded to linguistic groups in the European Union. It will be of interest to students and scholars of language policy, EU law, minority languages and sociolinguistics.