Europeanization as a Process: Thoughts on the Europeanization of Private Law

Professor Christian Joerges delivered the Second Annual Herbert L. Bernstein Memorial Lecture in Comparative Law in 2003 and this article is based on his remarks. The article is included in the inaugural volume of CICLOPs that collects the first six Bernstein lectures. Professor Joerges puts forth a three part thesis concerning the “Europeanization of Private Law”, the process by which the European Community influences the legal and political policies of its member states within a framework of transnational cooperation. Joerges first establishes the eroding importance of the idea that legal systems operating at the national level fulfill the goals of Europeanization, arguing this to be the result of Europe being a multi-level system rather than a coalition of autonomous nation-states. He then discusses how the process of Europeanization defies the conventional modes of analysis provided by three different patterns of juridification, each attempting to square Europeanization within the framework of legal science. Finally, Joerges focuses on the normative issues raised by Europeanization as process, such as the role Europeanization plays in resolving the extra-territorial effects of policies enacted by the various nation-states within the Community. Throughout his paper, the Europeanization process is described as a useful tool for the members of the Community to coordinate mutually beneficial policies but also as a hindrance to the autonomous exercise of power within the territory of each individual member; illustrated by controversial cases coming out of France, Greece, and Spain

Unity in diversity as Europe's vocation and conflicts law as Europe's constitutional form. IHS Political Science Series 122, December 2010

"Unity in Diversity" was the fortunate motto of the otherwise unfortunate Draft Constitutional Treaty. The motto did not make it into the Treaty of Lisbon. It deserves to be kept alive in a new constitutional perspective, namely the re-conceptualisation of European law as new type of conflicts law. The new type of conflicts law which the paper advocates is not concerned with selecting the proper legal system in cases with connections to various jurisdictions. It is instead meant to respond to the increasing interdependence of formerly more autonomous legal orders and to the democracy failure of constitutional states which result from the external effects of their laws and legal decisions on non-nationals. European has many means to compensate these shortcomings. It can derive its legitimacy from that compensatory potential without developing federal aspirations. The paper illustrates this approach with the help of two topical examples. The first is the conflict between European economic freedoms and national industrial relations (collective labour) law. The recent jurisprudence of the ECJ in Viking, Laval, and Rüffert in which the Court established the supremacy of the freedoms over national labour law is criticised as a counter-productive deepening of Europe‘s constitutional asymmetry and its social deficit. The second example from environmental law concerns the conflict between Austria and the Czech Republic over the Temelin nuclear power pant. The paper criticises the reasoning of the ECJ, but does not suggest an alternative outcome to the one the Court has reached. The introductory and the concluding sections generalise the perspectives of the conflicts-law approach. The introductory section takes issue with max Weber‘s national state. The concluding section suggests a three-dimensional differentiation of the approach which seeks to respond to the need for transnational regulation and governance

The Challenges of Europeanization in the Realm of Private Law: A Plea for a New Legal Discipline

http://www.iue.it/PUB/law04-12.pd

Unity in diversity as Europe's vocation and conflicts law as Europe's constitutional form

'Unity in Diversity' was the fortunate motto of the otherwise unfortunate Draft Constitutional Treaty. The motto did not make it into the Treaty of Lisbon. This essay argues that it deserves to be kept alive albeit in a new constitutional perspective, namely the re-conceptualisation of European law as 'new type of conflicts law'. The new type of conflicts law which the paper advocates is not concerned with selecting the proper legal system in cases with connections to various jurisdictions. It is instead meant to respond to the increasing interdependence of formerly more autonomous legal orders and to the democracy failure of constitutional states which result from the external effects of their laws and legal decisions on non-nationals. Europe has many means to compensate these shortcomings. It can derive its legitimacy from that compensatory potential without developing federal aspirations. The paper illustrates this approach with the help of two topical examples. The first is the conflict between European economic freedoms and national industrial relations (collective labour) law. The recent jurisprudence of the ECJ in Viking, Laval, and Rüffert in which the Court established the supremacy of the freedoms over national labour law is criticised as a counter-productive deepening of Europe's constitutional asymmetry and its social deficit. The second example from environmental law concerns the conflict between Austria and the Czech Republic over the Temelín nuclear power plant. The paper criticises the reasoning of the ECJ which supports the Czech pro-nuclear policy. It does not suggest an alternative legal outcome but questions the legitimacy of legal rather than political decision-making. The introductory and the concluding sections generalise the perspectives of the conflicts-law approach. The introductory section takes issue with Max Weber's national state. The concluding section suggests a three-dimensional differentiation of the approach which seeks to respond to the need for transnational regulation and governance. -- 'In Vielfalt geeint' lautete das schöne Motto des gescheiterten Konventsentwurfs für eine europäische Verfassung. In den Vertrag von Lissabon konnte es nicht übernommen werden. Der Beitrag plädiert für seine Bewahrung in der Form einer Re-Konzeptualisierung des Europarechts als eines 'Kollisionsrechts neun Typs'. Dieses neue Kollisionsrecht befasst sich nicht mit der Wahl zwischen verschiedenen Rechtsordnungen, zu denen eine Fallkonstellation Verbindungen aufweist. Es geht ihm vielmehr um den Umgang mit externen Effekten einzelstaatlich legitimierter Gesetze und Entscheidungen in anderen Rechtssystemen. Solche Effekte sind demokratisch insofern defizitär als die von ihnen betroffenen Bürger sich nicht als deren Autoren verstehen können. In der kollisionsrechtlichen (Um-)Deutung ist es der Beruf des Europarechts, diese Demokratiedefizite der Mitgliedstaaten der EU zu kompensieren. Dieses Potential begründet seine konstitutionelle Dignität und supranationalen Geltungsansprüche. Dieses Konzept wird an zwei aktuellen Exempeln illustriert. Bei dem ersten geht es um die Konflikte zwischen den ökonomischen Freiheitsrechten, die das Unionsrecht garantiert und nationalem kollektivem Arbeitsrecht. Die Rechtsprechung des EuGH in den Fällen Viking, Laval und Rüffert wird als eine kontraproduktive Vertiefung der konstitutionellen Asymmetrie der Union und ihres sozialen Defizits kritisiert. Beim zweiten Beispiel geht es um den Konflikt zwischen Österreich und der Tschechei um das Kernkraftwerk Temelín. Die Begründung des EuGH, die der Kernenergiepolitik der Tschechei Recht gibt, wird als unzulänglich bezeichnet und gleichzeitig die Legitimität einer Rechtsentscheidung, die den energiepolitischen Konflikt beenden soll, in Frage gestellt. Der einführende und der Schlussabschnitt vertiefen und erweitern den kollisionsrechtlichen Ansatz. In der Einführung geschieht dies in einer Auseinandersetzung mit dem Nationalstaatskonzept der Freiburger Antrittsrede

Free Trade with Hazardous Products? The Emergence of Transnational Governance with Eroding State Government

The historical evolution of free trade has been accompanied by a plethora of debates, concerning both its positive effects and social costs. During the last decade, the subject of these disputes has markedly changed. The main objective of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) concluded 1947, was initially the reduction of tariffs introduced by states to protect their national economy. In this respect, the agreement has been markedly successful. Since the early 1970s, however, non-tariff barriers to free trade have moved to the centre of attention. This change of focus was fostered by more intensified domestic regulation especially in the fields of health and safety, consumer and environmental protection. These concerns are of such domestic significance that they cannot simply be abandoned for the sake of free trade; however, it also is common opinion that regulations in these areas cannot be accepted, if they merely mask protectionist interests. In 1994, the international trade system adapted to this situation by transforming the GATT into the World Trade Organization (WTO). The most important reforms included an overhaul of its procedures of dispute settlement and the conclusion of special agreements concerning non-tariff barriers to free trade such as the Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS) and the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT). These agreements aim at the balancing of their main economic objective, free trade, with domestic regulatory concerns of WTO members. This bundle of regulations has certainly furthered the emergence of transnational ‘governance arrangements’. Such new forms of ‘transnational governance’ have lent renewed importance to ‘old’ legal issues: How can new forms of transnational governance be qualified legally? What can be said about their (social) acceptance and (normative) legitimacy? Can this form of governance be ‘constitutionalized’ in such a way that law can defend or even regain its function as guarantor of and yardstick for legitimate governing

Do Politics have Artefacts?

In social studies of technology, as in many other scientific disciplines, highly persuasive similes are at work: pious stories, seemingly reaped from research, suggesting certain general theoretical insights. Variously adapted, they are handed down: in the process, they acquire almost doctrinal unassailability. One such parable, which has been retold in technology and urban studies for a long time, is the story of Robert Moses’ low bridges, preventing the poor and the black of New York from gaining access to Long Island resorts and beaches. The story turns out to be counterfactual, but even if a small myth is disenchanted, it serves a purpose: to resituate positions in the old debate about the control of social processes via buildings and other technical artifacts - or, more generally, about material form and social content

Between Jürgen Habermas and Carl Schmitt: Flaws, old and new, in the project of European integration

European Integration was constructed as a political project relying for its realizations primarily on economic processes. Economic and Monetary Union as accomplished by the Maastricht Treaty were expected to consummate this endeavour. However, the whole edifice started to erode immediately after its establishment. Following financial and sovereign debt crises, EMU with its commitments to price stability and monetary politics is perceived as a failed construction precisely because of its reliance on inflexible rules. European crisis management seeks to compensate for these failures establishing regulatory machinery which disempowers national institutions and burdens in particular Southern Europe with austerity measures; it establishes pan-European commitments to budgetary discipline and macroeconomic balancing. At present the Union is in state of emergency. The prospects for the return in a constitutional condition are anything but clear