Common Market Law Review 

Abstract: The main endeavor of the Court of Justice has precisely been to remove or reduce the differences just mentioned. In other words, the Court has sought to "constitutionalize" the Treaty, to fashion a constitutional framework for a quasi-federal structure in Europe. The Court is likely to extend the area of problems it feels should be solved by the political institutions, but in other areas it will undoubtedly go on feeling that it can, or rather must, exercise guidance. There are essentially two such areas. The first includes a number of issues the Council is obliged or empowered to regulate under the Treaty but did not regulate on purpose, so as to avoid for as long as possible their adjustment to Community criteria. The second area is a result of the Single Act. The words of Article 8a have by now rung all over the world.

Abstract: According to the conclusions of the Florence European Council of June 1996, the main objectives of the Intergovernmental Conference were to bring the Union closer to its citizens, to strengthen its capacities for external action and to make its institutions more efficient and democratic given the coming enlargement.1 Thus, comparing this with the scope of the revision clause in Article 48(2) (ex N(2)) TEU after Maastricht, the Conference had undertaken an ambitious venture. The polit ical environment, however, was not found favourable to such substantial aims. Due to the diverging interests of the negotiators, a large volume of complex and confusing provisions, protocols and declarations emerged. This left European integration without the coherence, transparency, effectiveness and democratic legitimacy needed to meet its objectives for the coming century.2 Although the result appears to be poor at first sight, Amsterdam was not a complete failure or "non-event".3 At least three achievements justify qual-

Abstract: The present article examines the function of the revised identity clause in Article 4(2) TEU. By focusing on the fundamental political and constitutional structures of Member States, Article 4(2) TEU provides a perspective to overcome the idea of absolute primacy of EU law and the underlying assumption of a hierarchical model to understand the relationship between EU law and domestic constitutional law. The revised identity clause in Article 4(2) TEU not only demands respect for national constitutional identity, a notion determined through a close interplay of domestic constitutional law and EU law, but can be understood as permitting domestic constitutional courts to invoke, under certain limited circumstances, constitutional limits to the primacy of EU law. At the same time, Article 4(2) TEU, in tandem with the principle of sincere cooperation contained in Article 4(3) TEU, embeds these constitutional limits into an institutional and procedural framework in which domestic constitutional courts and the Court of Justice interact closely as part of a composite system of constitutional adjudication

Abstract: It is tempting to understand the progress of European integration as a process of growing centrality of human rights in the European legal order: human rights as being ever more important for the ever closer union. The story has been told many times: although human rights did not figure in the original Treaties, they steadily gained in importance from the late 1960s on.1 This process appears to have accelerated recently. A most prominent piece of evidence is European Council’s decision at its Cologne summit that a human rights charter should be drafted for the European Union because “[P]rotection of fundamental rights is a founding principle of the Union and an indispensable prerequisite for her legitimacy.. . .There appears to be a need . . . to establish a Charter of fundamental rights in order to make their overriding importance and relevance more visible to the Union’s citizens.”2 The group entrusted with the task of developing a charter presented a “Draft Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union” on 21 September 2000.3 The solemn declaration of such a charter,4 whatever its provisional or its final legal status, might be part of an ongoing process that has the potential