I welcome the Heidelberg proposal! Several years ago – long before the Zambrano judgment confirmed the idea – I wrote a piece explaining that a “reverse Solange” idea could already be discerned from such early cases as Carpenter and Chen. Despite the doctrinal niceties that provided certain formal limits to those early cases, it was [...]
Hungarian Premier Victor Orban and his ruling party Fidesz, after having received 53% of the votes in the previous election but 68% of parliamentary seats, have transformed Hungarian institutions, effectively asserting and entrenching control over courts and the justice system, the media and the electoral system to align them with the interests of the ruling [...]
I’d like to thank Alexandra, Max, and Christoph for inviting me to participate in this fascinating exchange. As an American, I feel like the outsider here. Moreover, I have just written a book (in part from an American perspective, but also deeply grounded in integration history) that argues that the EU is best understood as [...]
As we continue to discuss the fundamental rights situation in the EU in our Verfassungsblog online symposion, we do keep an eye on law and politics in Germany – and on the world beyond our old world. I am currently in Cairo, to attend a conference on “International Law and the Periphery” where I already [...]
Die Parallelen zwischen den Notoperationen zur Euro-Rettung und einer EuGH-Grundrechtsintervention in Ungarn sind bemerkenswert: In beiden Fällen zeigen sich Konstruktionsschwächen der EU-Verträge, und die Befürworter von „mehr Europa“ fordern eine Stärkung der überstaatlichen Aufsichts- und Kontrollrechte. Diese Rückkehr zur Integrationsmethode der 1970er-Jahre ist nicht frei von Risiken. Defizite der EU-Verträge liegen auf der Hand. Bei [...]
While “safety umbrella” (German: “Rettungsschirm”) is perhaps not the word of the month, the Solange Reversed proposal suggested by the Bogdandy team makes a strong case for linking fundamental rights and citizenship. Both are type 1 norms of constitutionalism, i.e. norms which express fundamental ethical values of a community and which are therefore generally agreed [...]
In their post on Verfassungsblog, the Heidelberg research team around Armin von Bogdandy proposes to enrich the “substance” of European citizenship with the essence of fundamental rights and to let the ECJ control the observance of this substance, upon request of national courts in the member states. However sympathetic one might be towards the cause, [...]
Die Heidelberger Forschergruppe um Armin von Bogdandy schlägt in ihrem Beitrag auf dem Verfassungsblog vor, den „Kernbereich“ der Unionsbürgerschaft mit dem Wesensgehalt von Grundrechten anzureichern und dessen Einhaltung vom EuGH auf Vorlage mitgliedstaatlicher, also nationaler Gerichte überwachen zu lassen. So sympathisch man das Anliegen finden mag, begegnet es doch mehreren Einwänden grundsätzlicher Natur: Verrechtlichung statt [...]
The European Union could not be imagined without respect for fundamental rights by both the EU itself and its member states. It is certainly not possible to define the EU solely on the basis of this, but the respect for fundamental rights belongs to the very core of a European identity, without which no integration [...]
By ARMIN VON BOGDANDY, MATTHIAS KOTTMANN, CARLINO ANTPÖHLER, JOHANNA DICKSCHEN, SIMON HENTREI AND MAJA SMRKOLJ Fundamental rights protection, once a side show, has become important for the EU, as proved by the newfound treaty recognition of the EU fundamental rights charter (CFREU), and the upcoming accession to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). At [...]
