Leading scholars of European constitutionalism highlight different facets of the constitutional discussion.

Is there a real and meaningful future for EU constitutionalism? This collection explores this question in light of recent challenges to EU constitutional law; namely the pandemic and the political schisms emerging across the European Union. The contributors explore the question through the prism of the five main pillars of EU constitutionalism: the constitutional values, the EU formal constitutional framework, its substance consisting of the EU political and economic constitution, and conclude by looking at the foundational concept of sovereignty (national and European) in a global realm. Drawing on expertise from both 'old' and 'new' Europe, it gives voice to the most fundamental question facing the Union in its second half century.

This two-volume book, published open access, brings together leading scholars of constitutional law from twenty-nine European countries to revisit the role of national constitutions at a time when decision-making has increasingly shifted to the European and transnational level. It offers important insights into three areas. First, it explores how constitutions reflect the transfer of powers from domestic to European and global institutions. Secondly, it revisits substantive constitutional values, such as the protection of constitutional rights, the rule of law, democratic participation and constitutional review, along with constitutional court judgments that tackle the protection of these rights and values in the transnational context, e.g. with regard to the Data Retention Directive, the European Arrest Warrant, the ESM Treaty, and EU and IMF austerity measures. The responsiveness of the ECJ regarding the above rights and values, along with the standard of protection, is also assessed. Thirdly, challenges in the context of global governance in relation to judicial review, democratic control and accountability are examined. On a broader level, the contributors were also invited to reflect on what has increasingly been described as the erosion or ‘twilight’ of constitutionalism, or a shift to a thin version of the rule of law, democracy and judicial review in the context of Europeanisation and globalisation processes. The national reports are complemented by a separately published comparative study, which identifies a number of broader trends and challenges that are shared across several Member States and warrant wider discussion. The research for this publication and the comparative study were carried out within the framework of the ERC-funded project ‘The Role and Future of National Constitutions in European and Global Governance’. The book is aimed at scholars, researchers, judges and legal advisors working on the interface between national constitutional law and EU and transnational law. The extradition cases are also of interest to scholars and practitioners in the field of criminal law. Anneli Albi is Professor of European Law at the University of Kent, United Kingdom. Samo Bardutzky is Assistant Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.

This book revisits, in a new light, some of the classic cases which constitute the foundations of the EU legal order and is timed to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Rome Treaty establishing a European Economic Community. Its broader purpose, however, is to discuss the future of the EU legal order by examining, from a variety of different perspectives, the most important judgments of the ECJ which established the foundations of the EU legal order. The tone is neither necessarily celebratory nor critical, but relies on the viewpoint of the distinguished line-up of contributors - drawn from among former and current members of the Court (the view from within), scholars from other disciplines or lawyers from other legal orders (the view from outside), and two different generations of EU legal scholars (the classics revisit the classics and a view from the future). Each of these groups will provide a different perspective on the same set of selected judgments. In each short essay, questions such as 'what would have EU law been without this judgment of the Court? what factors might have influenced it?; did the judgment create expectations which were not fully fulfilled?' and so on, are posed and answered. The result is a profound, wide-ranging and fresh examination of the 'founding cases' of EU law.

EU Federalism and Constitutionalism: The Legacy of Altiero Spinelli, edited by Andrew Glencross and Alexander H. Trechsel, represents the first book-length study of the travails of the implementation of federalism at the European level from the perspective of Altiero Spinelli's ideas and his political life, which were both devoted to a federally united Europe. It is also a timely publication given the protracted struggle to implement a new EU institutional architecture—the 2009 Lisbon Treaty—that is already being tested by the fallout from the global financial crisis. This fallout has brought into stark relief the tensions within the EU over the question of enhancing solidarity and federal unity or remaining a looser association of sovereign states. Hence by examining the successes and failures of federalism within the EU system, the book seeks to explain not only how the EU has reached its current impasse but also how it may fare in the future. To achieve this objective, the book takes an interdisciplinary approach that covers all three dimensions of the European project: historical, legal, and political. In this fashion, Andrew Glencross and Alexander H. Trechsel's EU Federalism and Constitutionalism: The Legacy of Altiero Spinelli offers a comprehensive and up-to-date analysis of the history, evolution, and future of federal principles and institutions in the European integration process.

This book accounts for the content and negotiation of the EU's Constitutional Treaty of 2004 as well as the failure of ratification of the treaty in France and the Netherlands in 2005. It discusses the implications of the abandonment of the treaty for the process of European integration and our understanding of that process.

A major collection of essays by a multidisciplinary panel of experts exploring the various interpretations of the European crisis and the future of the European Union.

This book provides a new understanding of the European constitution as a multidimensional process of constitutionalization, constantly interacting with Member State constitutions.

For the time being, the political project of basing the European Union on a document entitled 'Constitution' has failed. The second, revised and enlarged edition of this volume retains its title nonetheless. Building on a scholarly rather than black-letter law account, it shows European constitutional law as it looks following the Treaty of Lisbon, with the EU's foundational treaties mandating the exercise of public authority, establishing a hierarchy of norms and legitimising legal acts, providing for citizenship, and granting fundamental rights. In this way the treaties shape the relations between legal orders, between public interest regulation and market economy, and between law and politics. The contributions demonstrate in detail how a constitutional approach furthers understanding of the core issues of EU law, how it offers theoretical and doctrinal insights, and how it adds critical perspective. From Reviews of the First Edition: "...should be mandatory reading for anyone who wants to get a holistic perspective of the academic debate on Europe's constitutional foundations...It is impossible to present the richness of thought contained in the 833 pages of the book in a short review." Common Market Law Review "an enduring scholarly work, which gives an English-speaking audience important, and overdue, access to the long-standing and forever-vigorous traditions of (European) constitutional law... unhesitatingly recommend[ed]." European Law Journal "...real scholarship in the profound sense of the word..." K Lenaerts, Professor of European Law, Leuven

Immediately after the rejection of the Constitutional Treaty in France and in the Netherlands, I was tempted not to comply with a contract according to which I was expected to write on the Eu- pean Constitution within a very close deadline. “What is the sense of it now?” I tried to argue. “I cannot be obliged by a contract wi- out an object”. I was wrong at that time and we would be equally wrong now, should we read the Irish vote on the Lisbon Treaty and the Lisbon Treaty itself as the dead end for European constitutionalism. Let us never forget that the text rejected in May 2005 was not the founding act of such constitutionalism. To the contrary, it was nothing more than a remarkable passage in a long history of constitutional dev- opments that have been occurring since the early years of the Eu- pean Community. All of us know that the Court of Justice spoke of a European constitutional order already in 1964, when the primacy of Community law was asserted in the areas conferred from the States to the European jurisdiction. We also know that in the pre- ous year the Court had read in the Treaty the justiciable right of any European citizen to challenge her own national State for omitted or distorted compliance with European rules.