12 September 2023
The Price of Transatlantic Friendship
While the citizens of most EU Member States enjoy visa-free travel to the US, citizens of Bulgaria, Romania and Cyprus do not. Following the Commission’s repeated refusal to activate the reciprocity mechanism in EU visa law to remedy this inequality in access to visa-free travel, the European Parliament asked the CJEU whether the Commission was under an obligation to do so. The Court answered in the negative, holding instead that the Commission had wide discretion in this regard. Its reasoning centers the sensitive political nature that visa retaliation vis-á-vis the US implies, while failing to instill a sense of urgency in working towards equal treatment of EU citizens. This threatens to perpetuate a situation in which the advantages of supranational integration in the context of the Schengen acquis are permanently withheld from nationals of Romania, Bulgaria and Cyprus. Continue reading >>
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16 June 2021
A Hollow Threat
On 10 June, the European Parliament passed a resolution on the application of the Conditionality Regulation and threatens to take the EU Commission to Court. However, the very peculiar ‘action for failure to act’ set out in Article 265 TFEU is not an appropriate procedure to solve the problem at issue. The Parliament should employ the more political means at its disposal to tackle a problem that is ultimately political in nature. Continue reading >>
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30 May 2020
Constitutional Innovation, Democratic Stagnation?
The recovery plan of the Commission entitled “Next Generation EU” proposes a compromise that goes beyond the ominous lowest common denominator. With a package of EUR 750bn in total, comprising EUR 250bn in loans and the rest in grants, the Commission paves the way for both forward-looking public finance and constitutional innovation. The proposals are masterpieces of high-tech legal engineering. Again, European constitutional law evolves through crisis. Yet, again, it stands to reason how far the proposed instruments will shift the European Union towards enhancing solidarity and democracy. Continue reading >>
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14 January 2020
The Junqueras Saga Continues
Notwithstanding the clear message from the ECJ, the Spanish Supreme Court has decided that the Catalan separatist leader and MEP Oriol Junqueras will not be released from prison. The contradiction between the logic of the ECJ’s judgment of December 2019 and the decision of the Spanish Supreme Court of 8 January 2020 forms a new challenge for the EU legal order, in the sense that it puts the relationship between EU law and Spanish national law under strain. Continue reading >>06 July 2019
The Bursting of a Constitutional Bubble
On stunts, bluffs, confidence tricks and other mind-boggling matters constitutional. Continue reading >>30 May 2019