In its decision of 21 April 2026, the CJEU’s plenary qualified EU law as the “common legal order of a society in which pluralism prevails” (Case 769/22 Commission v Hungary, para 551). Leaving pluralism aside, this blogpost explores possible meanings of the “of” in the first part of that formula. I order them by increasing constitutional significance – and, probably, by increasing readerly disbelief. Take a break when your pulse starts racing.

My exploration presumes that the Court speaks of “European society” (Commission v Hungary, paras 494 and 554; see also sent. 63/2026 of the Italian Constitutional Court, point 8.2.5.). Moreover, it takes European society as a legitimate and meaningful concept (see here and here). Building on that, it sketches four ever more foundational understandings: European society as the social field of EU law; EU law as expressing deep structures of that society; European society as generating EU law; and European society as the source of EU law’s authority.

European Society as the Social Field of EU Law

In its first meaning, European society is the social field of EU law: the totality of social relationships it governs. This goes far beyond the formula familiar from the ECtHR’s ‘democratic society’. There, society functions as a normative standard for assessing restrictions of rights; here, it becomes the social referent of a legal order. This recasts EU law as the law of a transnational social reality.

To begin with, this is a claim about breadth. EU law was often understood as a merely functional project designed to build a market, bind Member States, and enable cooperation among public institutions. EU law can no longer be understood if reduced to that. It extends to a far broader web of social relationships: citizens, families, companies, workers, consumers, universities, judges, administrations, social groups, and political actors interact under rules, expectations, and procedures shaped by EU law. This reading conceptualizes that web as a society.

Yet, the point also has an ontological dimension. EU law does not merely extend to an already existing European social field; it has helped to produce one. European society, on this account, is the social space that has emerged from the accumulated effects of European integration. EU law has generated interdependence and expectations that did not previously exist. It plainly shapes a social reality far denser than ‘Western society’ or ‘global society’ have ever been. Over 70 years, European integration has produced a social reality of its own, conceptualized through the singular term society.

This reading builds on the ordinary meaning of society. Society denotes a web of human relations held together by a stabilizing framework – in the European case: EU law and institutions. Individuals who never meet may still be members of one society if their interdependence is mediated by such a framework. This reading does not dissolve national societies: The Court refers to Hungarian and European society (Commission v Hungary, para 554), as does the Italian Constitutional Court with European society and the Italian people (sent. 63/2026, point 8.2.5.). The point is that these national societies, after decades of their Europeanization in a common framework, are embedded in a common European one.

EU Law and the Deep Structures of European Society

The second reading builds on the first while bringing more heft: some parts of EU law articulate, shape, and protect structures foundational to European society, in the case at hand its values. Under this reading, both EU law and European society gain in social and normative relevance.

This meaning captures another important development in EU law. Modern continental legal thought puts great emphasis on constitutions and great codifications – lois, Gesetze, leggi. They express and frame a society’s deep structure. EU law has no such sources. Its foundations are set in treaties, its main instruments are regulations and directives. These are usually executive instruments which, under most constitutions, may not regulate essential matters. Accordingly, EU law appears thin: relevant for professionals but not for the texture of society.

The second understanding suggests that today, EU law’s societal significance goes beyond this. Indeed, the European legislator has started to identify regulations of deep social relevance as ‘Acts’ (Gesetze) (see, e.g. the DMA and the DSA). In the present case, EU values are playing that role. The Court links them to “the very identity of the Union” (Commission v Hungary, para 551). This ‘identity’ means that EU law prohibits insinuating that non-heterosexual persons constitute a “fundamental threat to Hungarian and European society” (Commission v Hungary, para 554). EU law does not just regulate some activities in European society; it codifies its foundational principles and draws red lines. The very purpose of the Court’s elevation of Article 2 TEU to a separate ground in infringement proceedings is to defend this foundation against ‘manifest and particularly serious breaches’. Such ‘law’ cannot be grasped as merely external regulation of society; rather, it claims to express its ethos. Hegel would qualify it as objective spirit.

This understanding is not undermined, but rather supported, by conflicts over the values of Article 2 TEU, as in the case at hand. The same point appears with even greater societal force in Europe’s response to Russia’s war against Ukraine. Many European leaders invoke these values as ‘our values’ to justify controversial decisions: confronting a nuclear power, spending enormous sums on Ukraine, and welcoming millions of refugees. European society is the collective implied in that ‘our’. EU law expresses deep structures of European society that are worth fighting for, literally. It is the law of European society in an emphatic sense.

European Society Generating EU Law

The third understanding deepens the link between EU law and European society by suggesting to considering EU law (including its values) as being generated by European society. The ‘of’ in the statement ‘EU law as the law of European society’ thus gains the dimension of a subjective genitive.

Nobody has ever seen European society enact legislation. Any EU legal act has been produced by public institutions under procedures at the EU and the national level, not by society as such. What the third reading suggests is to consider the many law-generating procedures as aspects of one overarching social process. No society generates law like a person writes a text, and yet such attribution is key to modern political and legal thought.

The third reading proposes picturing EU institutions not as tucked away in some modernistic buildings but as embedded in a social field conceptualized as European society. They appear as the sites at which wider social forces, conflicts, expectations, and forms of participation are translated into law. The political processes and legal procedures are activated, populated, informed, monitored, and contested by actors from many quarters: governments, members of parliaments, national administrations, courts, companies, trade unions, social groups, NGOs, experts, journalists, academics, and not least citizens. This also holds true for the CJEU. Its decisions emerge from preliminary references by national courts, arguments by litigants and governments, academic commentary, political contestation, and the anticipation of their subsequent reception throughout European society, including on Verfassungsblog.

To be sure, this reading does not suggest that all citizens participate equally; they do not. Precisely for that reason, European society serves not only as a basis for new reconstructions of EU law but also as a critical foil. If EU law is eventually generated by European society, then all shortcomings of EU law are indicative of shortcomings of European society.

Considering European society as generating EU law does not require conceiving it as an agent in itself. Collective singulars are often used in that way: a society (or a state, a nation, or a people) expresses its will, takes a decision, and makes a step. Anthropomorphism is widespread in modern thought, as are its critiques. The third reading takes European society as a reference for reconstructing European law-making processes but not as an entity, let alone as a subject with a will, wishes, fears, or as an agent in its own right.

Taken together, the first three meanings elaborate the mutual constitution of law and society, drawing on tested institutionalist, sociological, and philosophical insights. EU law structures European society; values both express and transform that society; European society receives, contests, and regenerates EU law.

European Society as EU Law’s Source of Authority

The fourth understanding tests how far the third can be pushed. If European society generates EU law, it might be considered a source – perhaps even the source – of EU law’s authority. This would cast European society in a role that ‘the people’ play in many national constitutions. Warning bells ring.

Indeed, this is not how EU law speaks. After decades of debate over a European demos, it is telling that the Treaties do not proclaim a European people, but continue to start with His Majesty the King of the Belgians. The Member States establish the authority of the Union by a common act as High Contracting Parties, Article 1(1) TEU. They ratify and amend the foundational layer of EU law under procedures that belong to international rather than constitutional law. However, the Treaties do not merely originate from interstate agreement. The authors of the Treaties also ‘founded’ them on European values that characterize European society and form its normative texture.

That foundational claim has a weak and a strong version. The weak version goes like this: If EU law is the legal order of European society, and if Article 2 values set enforceable red lines for that society, then European society is no longer merely EU law’s environment. It becomes a justificatory ground – or source – for EU law’s authority over Europeans. This may strengthen the case for EU primacy over national constitutional law.

The strong version goes further and looks for ultimate authority. European society could only provide that if the concept synthesized the two foundations of EU law – the common act of will and the common values – as somehow equivalent to an exercise of the citizens’ original power. That is a tall order, not least as European society includes not only EU citizens but also resident third country nationals. I do not yet see a path for that argument. Nevertheless, I see a point to continue looking for it.

The point is to provide EU law with an ultimate source of authority that fits its constitutional Gestalt. European society is attractive here because it is uniquely responsive to the situation of people living in the Union, citizens and resident third-country nationals alike. It names a totality that recognizes, and even values, plurality and conflict rather than homogeneity; institutional mediation rather than direct self-government; and a position somewhat below statehood, yet far beyond international organization.

Any attempt at such a synthesis will meet incredulity. In May 2026, it is hard to imagine the Court of Justice claiming to judge ‘in the name of European society’. And yet, in its judgment of 21 April 2026, the Court seems to come close to something it has never done before: giving voice to the deepest constitutional normativity of European society. The Court is not merely applying rules to a social field; it appears, at least for a moment, as an institutional voice of that society.

This may also explain why some authors have reacted so stridently to the Court’s society judgment. Perhaps anticipating such unease, the Court itself left open a less conflictual path. In paragraph 556, it avoided the genitive altogether, qualifying EU law more cautiously as “a common legal order in a society”.

“EU law as the law of European society” opens a new horizon. The four readings developed here suggest possible paths, not doctrinal truths. Some will dismiss them as academic science fiction. Yet only a few months ago, the very idea of European society as a legal concept seemed just that.