31 May 2014
‘My dear, the Noise, the People…’: On Fears about Assemblies
The European Parliament is institutionally shielded against any tangible negative consequences of the shameful election results actually derailing vital policies. ‘Europe’, in the first place, is a way to protect the Member States from their own stupid, homophobic and racist people (among others), and the EP is the worst possible place for parochial hatred policies. The remedy against turning EP elections into xenophobic crusades of the vile would be to make the EP a full-fledged Parliament. Continue reading >>
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08 December 2013
How to turn Article 2 TEU into a down-to-Earth provision?
Coming from such an established voice advocating the protection of rule of law at the national level, Kim Scheppele’s proposal definitely enjoys sufficient legitimacy to be taken very seriously. In what follows, I look at the “problem” of democracy (1.), the “problem” with bundling infringements (2.), the problem of determining the meaning of “values” (3.), and the problem with penalties (4.). I conclude that two problems are fictitious but two others are real. Continue reading >>
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02 October 2013
Turning EU Citizenship into a Viable Tool of EU Federalism
Dozens of years after the European Economic Community turned into the European Union, we are (still) speaking of the EU as an economic organisation. The Internal Market, which was one among many in a potential palette of the tools of integration became seemly the only tool . The Union has moved on from the customs union and the four types of free movement: it is about so much more now, compared even with 20 years ago. To present the Internal Market as the only tool of European Integration is thus most probably wrong. Yet, what should the alternatives be? What else can be deployed to underpin the core of EU integration next to the internal market? It is to respond to this question that a number of leading scholars on EU citizenship gathered in Oslo on September 13–14, 2013. Continue reading >>
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13 June 2013
The EU in its most serious crisis ever (and that’s not the Euro crisis)
Following the recent fascinating exchange in the ‘pages’ of the […] Continue reading >>27 February 2012