The unconfined power of European Union law

Certain features condition when most EU law comes into being. EU laws must compete with other laws for authority. They form part of legal regimes which are partial in scope and can cut across national legal regimes. They justify themselves by reference to a vision of political com-munity which values what individuals do together more than simply their living together. These features act as a source of conflict in two ways. They, first, endow EU law with certain qualities which act as a source of stress. These include over-responsibilisation, destabilisation and function-alism. Secondly, the concern to secure authority by legislating better to realise certain shared activ-ities leads to expertise heavily influencing both the content and incidence of EU law and to a disre-gard of those activities which link daily life experiences to wider processes of identity formation. The failure to address these features is central to the malaise and antipathy currently confronting the European Union

The Variable Influences and Dynamics of Judicial Integration in the Union

It is often stated that the Court of Justice is a highly significant actor and a single explanatory narrative accounts for its position. A more plausible explanation is that it has grown precisely because it is less significant than claimed, and, as with other forms of EU politics, there is not a single field of judicial politics but multiple, discrete ones. All are highly confined and almost all are neither politically nor legally salient. The sole exception is litigation which enables a counter-majoritarian politics to take hold in domestic arenas. If the lack of salience of the Court in other fields raises questions about its functionality, this counter-majoritarian field raises the question as to how integration process identifies the legislative failure that justifies such intervention and sets its limits

Fundamental rights and legal wrongs: the two sides of the same EU coin

This article argues that the relationship of EU fundamental rights to the rest of EU law can only be understood if the former are seen as an integral part of a general vision of what EU law is about. This vision conceives EU law as concerned to secure the government of a European political economy. In turn, it has come to shape the interpretation and incidence of EU fundamental rights with the latter conceived as a central tool for incorporating the individual into and asserting her place within the government of the European political economy. A paradox has therefore emerged. EU fundamental rights have become ever more pervasive in EU law and it is couched more frequently in their terms, but these same fundamental rights seem ineffectual to deal with the suffering caused by events such as the crisis

Designing a new UK-EU relationship and how it could be achieved

The Eurozone crisis has brought the EU’s division into two types of membership into relief, with the euro member states moving closer towards deeper fiscal and economic union, and the others, such as the UK, who remain in the single market with no wish to join the Eurozone, at risk of becoming ‘second class’ states. Damian Chalmers, Simon Hix and Sara Hobolt write that there is now a growing separation between the governance of the single market and the euro area. They propose new reforms which would protect the interests of all EU and non-member states in decision making, give national parliaments a role in proposing and approving EU legislation, and reform the single market to give more sectoral flexibility. All of these proposed reforms, they argue, could be made without Treaty changes

Alternatives to EU membership and the rational imagination

The domestic scenario following a Brexit vote is likely to be characterised by high stakes, uncertainty and fissile political debate. No off-the-peg arrangement touted for Brexit—be it Norwegian, Swiss, Turkish or Canadian—was designed to engage with such a context. Nor does it seem wise to rush to medium-term commitments which might pre-empt democratic politics and wise choices. Far more important will be the legitimacy of any institutional settlement governing this arrangement, which will provide the context for its revision and development and the space for democratic reflection over how these policies are to be governed. It will be suggested that here there is much insight to be gained from looking at regional arrangements beyond the EU

LSE Law Brexit special #4: Trade after Brexit

Leaving the European Union has been characterised as potentially one of the greatest protectionist acts in the United Kingdom’s history. The European Union has intimated that any trading relationship must offer the United Kingdom significantly worse terms of trade than it currently enjoys. Alongside this, the United Kingdom has no ambition to be either part of the customs union or the single market. This would put it on the periphery of European trade. Only a few States from the former Soviet Union would enjoy worse terms than it