Department of Law
Library of the School of Law

2024-06-09

2024

Dimitriadis Georgios

Γεώργιος Γεραπετρίτης, Καθηγητής, Νομική Σχολή, Εθνικό & Καποδιστριακό Πανεπιστήμιο Αθηνών
Θεοδώρα Αντωνίου, Καθηγήτρια, Νομική Σχολή, Εθνικό & Καποδιστριακό Πανεπιστήμιο Αθηνών
Αικατερίνη Ηλιάδου, Αναπληρώτρια Καθηγήτρια, Νομική Σχολή, Εθνικό & Καποδιστριακό Πανεπιστήμιο Αθηνών
Νικόλαος Παπασπύρου, Αναπληρωτής Καθηγητής, Νομική Σχολή, Εθνικό & Καποδιστριακό Πανεπιστήμιο Αθηνών
Εμμανουήλ Περάκης, Αναπληρωτής Καθηγητής, Νομική Σχολή, Εθνικό & Καποδιστριακό Πανεπιστήμιο Αθηνών
Βασιλική Χρήστου, Επίκουρη Καθηγήτρια, Νομική Σχολή, Εθνικό & Καποδιστριακό Πανεπιστήμιο Αθηνών
Νικόλαος Σημαντήρας, Επίκουρος Καθηγητής, Νομική Σχολή, Εθνικό & Καποδιστριακό Πανεπιστήμιο Αθηνών

The Member States’ Constitutional Identities in Light of EU Law

English

The Member States’ Constitutional Identities in Light of EU Law

Over the last couple of decades, constitutional identities have gained momentum, not only in politics, but also in law. The idea of raising identity respect to a foundational level made its debut appearance by way of a provision in the Treaty on European Union in the version put into force by the 1992 Treaty of Maastricht to receive its most elaborate formulation by the 2007 Treaty of Lis-bon. The Member States’ supreme courts followed suit and started appealing to their constitutional identities in an effort to defend what they idiosyncratically perceived as their deepest jurisprudential sensitivities against intrusive policies advanced by the EU. It is against these background assump-tions that I have struggled throughout the entire research done for this thesis to come up with a comprehensive theory of judicial identity-review at the level of the European Union that could be powerful enough to settle any identity disputes between the EU and the Member States.
Before I do that, I first reflect on the values served by paying respect to identities and particular-ly constitutional identities within federal constitutional settings such as the EU’s in the first place, and then I shift my analysis on how such an abstract conceptualization as a constitution’s identity can be discovered and treated in actual policy-making. My analysis is essentially divided into three distinguishable areas where species of a constitution’s identity can be found: Constitutional affilia-tions, constitutional interpretations, and constitutional amendments. These sources offer valuable insights about why there are strong reasons against constitutional change drawn from a constitu-tion’s origins, concepts, and aspirations, seen through the prism of a narrative, all of whom lend a constitution its continuing legitimacy as well as an imprint of identity.
The final Chapter of this thesis is devoted to a field I have singled out as a potential battleground between the EU and Greece’s constitutional identity: Religion in the public square. Privatization of religion, by way of a clear delineation between a public and a private sphere, is only one way of settling any disputes that arise in law-and-religion controversies, and certainly a narrow one. Leav-ing little if any room for maneuver for these Member States (including, at least allegedly, Greece) who see things differently is probably in breach of the EU’s duty to respect their constitutional identities. I conclude with a proposition that respecting the Member States’ constitutional identities in the law-and-religion as well as other sensitive fields is, contrary to standard constitutional think-ing, not endangering the EU law’s consistent application; rather, it guards against fragmentation by sanctioning a mechanism of bounded differentiation and variation.

Law and Legislation

Constitutional Law
European law

constitutional law, EU law, federalism, constitutional identity, review mechanism, law and religion

No

0

No

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https://pergamos.lib.uoa.gr/uoa/dl/object/3400768/file.pdf

https://pergamos.lib.uoa.gr/uoa/dl/object/3400768