Chapter 8. Between Sovereignty and Transnationalism: The European Union as an Incomplete “Transnational Legal Space”

2020 ◽  
pp. 216-249
2012 ◽  
Vol 61 (4) ◽  
pp. 855-879 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ming-Sung Kuo

AbstractGlobalization redefines the relationship between law and space, resulting in the emergence of transnational administrative law in a globalizing legal space. I aim to shed light on transnational administrative law by examining how administrative law relates to the process of European integration. I argue that the idea of administrative legitimation is at the core of this relationship. In the European Union, transnational administration grounds its legitimacy on the fulfilment of administrative law requirements. However, given that in the European Union, administrative legitimation is rooted in Europe's constitutional transformation, I caution against the projection of Europe's experience onto global governance.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-41
Author(s):  
Roman Kwiecień

The paper addresses the issue of a judicial forum entitled to resolve conflicts between European Union law and national constitutional rules. First and foremost, the issue is discussed under the old primacy/supremacy of EU law controversy. The author seeks to answer whether the national law, including constitutional rules, of a Member State can be ineffective owing to being contradictory to EU law. If so, by whom can national laws be held ineffective? In other words, which of the two judicial fora (national and European) have the last word in these conflicts or who is the ultimate arbiter of the constitutionality of law within the European legal space? The author argues that legal reasoning should reconcile, on the one hand, the specificity of the EU’s unique legal order and effective application of its provisions and, on the other hand, the international legal status of the Member States and their constitutions. This approach leads to the conclusion that there is no ultimate judicial arbiter within the European legal space.


Author(s):  
Bruno De Witte

When the EU becomes a party to an international legal instrument, whether bilateral or multilateral, that international agreement is incorporated automatically in the EU legal order and becomes a legality constraint within that legal order, due to the recognition, by EU law itself, of the precedence of those international commitments over secondary EU law. In the multilevel European legal space, agreements concluded by the EU also become a legality constraint for the Member States of the EU, even if they are not parties to the international instrument themselves. Ensuring compliance with the EU’s international obligations sets in motion the adoption of internal legislation to implement those international obligations or to repeal existing EU law measures that are inconsistent with them; and the Court of Justice of the European Union can review the compliance of EU secondary law (and Member State law) with the EU’s international agreements. However, the Court has self-limited this review power through the development of a doctrine on the limited direct effect of international agreements.


2012 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 403-418 ◽  
Author(s):  
Klaus Brummer

The Council of Europe (CoE) is an essential building block of the European integration process. However, the organisation is confronted with fundamental challenges relating to the erosion of its core principles, the overload of the ECHR system and the expansion of the European Union. These developments put the CoE's future in jeopardy. Yet, there are three reasons why the organisation should have a future: the CoE has the potential to become the key forum for dialogue between Europe and Russia, it could make further contributions to a European stability policy, and it could continue to build a pan-European legal space.


The article defines the main aspects of mutual influence of the legal system of Ukraine reforming processes and the extension of the legal space of the European Union (EU) from the general theoretical viewpoint. The article defines the category «legal space» as an acknowledged and regulated by law life sphere of people, organizations, states and international institutions in order to achieve the agreed and common goals. The main features of the legal space as a phenomenon of legal reality are outlined: multilevel legal regulation with the application of national and international legal acts, unification of law enforcement rules, mandatory agreement on a consensual basis of actors operating within the legal space. The factors of the EU legal space extension are emphasized. It is noted that the reforming of the legal system of Ukraine and the EU legal space extension are interconnected and complementary processes. At the core of such a relationship lies the political will of Ukraine to recognize and legitimize the norms and principles of EU law on the one hand and the desire of the EU to expand the geographical and spatial boundaries of political, legal and economic influence on the other. Based on the analysis of provisions of the bilateral cooperation acts of Ukraine and the EU, as well as using the achievements of national scientists who studied the impact of EU law on the national legal system, four main aspects of the mutual influence of transformation processes of the national legal system and the scope of the extension of the regulatory capacity of the European Union law are highlighted. In particular, it is the creation of a legal basis for the development integrated ties between Ukraine and the EU, recognition of the universal values ​​of the EU in Ukraine, and the involvement of Ukraine in European politics. It is pointed to the issue of Ukraine's full participation in the realization of common policies with the EU. It is emphasized, that the main result of active interaction between the national legal system and the EU legal space is the change of methodological approaches to the analysis of the correlation of political borders of the European Union and factual territorial scope of the European legal space, especially legal borders. That is why the modern scientific community faces a new perspective task - to ground the patterns of formation of the optimal model of Ukraine's borrowing of positive legal practices from the EU legal space, provided that the national identity is preserved in the conditions of the national legal system reforming.


2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 137-144
Author(s):  
A. N. Surkov ◽  
S. V. Melnik ◽  
E. V. Chernykh

In this article, one of the most urgent topics of the development of legislation on consumer rights protection in the UK is being considered. UK legislation on the protection of consumer rights, especially in connection with the forthcoming withdrawal of Britain from the European Union has a number of features. The law "On the Rights of Consumers", adopted in 2015, made it possible to analyze and highlight a number of features in the field of consumer protection in the UK, namely, the allocation of absolutely new standards applicable to the new type of services-digital content. By researching this topic, the author shows the emerging contradictions between the legislation of the European Union and the United Kingdom in the field of consumer protection, where the UK, against the backdrop of Brexit, analyzing the new Directives adopted by the European Union to retain a single legal space tends to unify the norms of the law "On the Rights of Consumers".


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 286-310
Author(s):  
Oleh Petryshyn ◽  
Maryna Petryshyna ◽  
Oleh Hyliaka ◽  
Taras Didych

Abstract In this article, the authors, collaboratively and based on their experience of related research (normative-legal activity of local self-government (Petryshyna, 2011), general theoretical problems of law-making and norm-making (Didych, 2018), problems of reception of foreign experience of reforming local self-government (Petryshyn, 2014), and pressing problems of decentralization reform (Hyliaka, 2015)) investigate the features and the shortcomings of the system of normative-legal acts of local self-government of Ukraine. These include: the problems of the legal status and the nature of the modern system of normative legal acts of local self-government, its normative-legal consolidation; the issues of practical law-making by bodies and officials of local self-government through the prism of the heritage of the Soviet system of local self-government; the shortcomings in the reforms undertaken since independence; the ongoing decentralization and associated reforms as well as existing concepts and plans aimed at the integration of Ukraine into European legal space and the European Union in particular. The result of the study was the identification of a number of substantiated features of the system and general recommendations aimed at the improvement of the overall state of local self-government and its law-making activity in the context of the current and future related reforms in Ukraine.


Author(s):  
Irēna Kucina ◽  
◽  

Rule of law is one of the fundamental values of the European Union. Over time, Court of Justice of the European Union, national constitutional and supreme courts and legal science, which form the common European legal space, have come to a more sophisticated and refined understanding of this notion – a concept, which more or less represents a shared understanding of what the rule of law means among all Member States. European Union cannot allow any of its Member States to deviate from this principle. It must have efficient tools for preventing such acts. The purpose of the Regulation 2020/2092 of the European parliament and of the Council of 16 December 2020 on a general regime of conditionality for the protection of the Union budget (the Regulation) is to give European Union a more efficient tool for ensuring Member States compliance with the rule of law. In addition to the existing legal instruments, it provides an entirely unique mechanism, which links the EU budget to the respect for the rule of law. This article analyses the already existing mechanisms for the enforcement of rule of law and then takes an in-depth look at the new mechanism established by the Regulation. It can be concluded that the Regulation represents a compromise, which is not perfect, but still workable. Although the process established by the Regulation is political, and there are certain risks to rule of law, guidelines adopted by the Council will precisely formulate the specific mandate of both political bodies (the European Commission and the Council of the EU) and align it with the legal purpose of the procedure. It will also enable Court of Justice to decide on specific cases, albeit post factum. Therefore, this Regulation should be considered as a step forward towards more efficient enforcement of rule of law in the European Union.


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