European Union Law

CLARIFICATIONS:

• Supranational legal order: the treaties created a customs union and by doing

that it promotes the free circulation of sectors of production, CUSTOM UNION

DIMENSION:

a) INTERNAL: MS cannot impose customs on the circulation of goods;

b) EXTERNAL: relationship between EU and other States, which are external,

borders between EU and third countries.

5. ENLARGEMENTS in EEC

In 1973: UJ, Ireland, Denmark;

In 1981: Greece;

In 1986: Spain and Portugal.

6. SINGLE EUROPEAN ACT

Under the Fointanbleu European Council summit in 1984 were instituted two

committees: Adonnino Committee (focused on European identity enforcement)

and Dooge Committee (related to political reforms). In 1985 in Milan, there was

an intergovernmental conference that led to the Single European Act.

They intended to upgrade the EEC treaty structure through the elaboration of a

broad and horizontal scheme of changes both substantive and institutional.

Delors was entrusted to formulate the core of this modifying process: the White

Paper document. The States decided to introduce relevant innovations

unanimously.

INSTITUTIONAL CHANGES:

PARLIAMENT: more powers and a new legislative procedure

 (COOPERATION), a veto power, over the accession of new Member States,

and the possibility to conclude a variety of agreements.

EUROPEAN COUNCIL: it obtain a formal recognition and, so, more powers.

 COURT OF FIRT INSTANCE (CFI): it was created for support European

 Court of Justice.

COMITOLOGY: a number of committees that help European Commission

 to prepare legislative draft proposal, through power of initiative.

SUBSTANTIVE CHENGES: two articles are introduced by the Single European Act

Art.26 TFEU: it says that an internal market is characterized by free

 movement of factors of production (goods, services, capitals and

workers).

Art.114 TFEU: Gives the power to European institutions to adopt

 “harmonization acts” and other legislative measures.

7. MAASTRICHT TREATY

Delors chaired a committee on Economic and Monetary Union in 1989, it

consisted in a three-stage plan for reaching it.

The European council held 2 Intergovernmental Conferences (IGC):

- The conference on economic integration;

- The conference on political integration.

These 2 IGCs led to the draft of the MAASTRICHT TREATY (also called TEU)

which was signed in Maastricht in 1992 and still in force since 1993.

There were originally seven titles in the TEU:

Title I provisions”

 “common

Title II, III and IV Pillar amendments to the EEC, ECSC and Erratum

 First

Treaties respectively

Title V Pillar of the Common Foreign and Security Policy

 Second

Title VI the Third Pillar of Justice and Home Affairs

 

Title VII provisions. T

 final

“This Treaty marks a new stage in the process of creating an ever

Article A:

closer union among the peoples of Europe, in which decisions are taken as

closely as possible to the citizen”.

The most important change has been the introduction of the 3 pillars structure:

1) THE COMMUNITY PILLAR: there were three communities: EURATOM, ECSC,

EEC. There is more supranational decision-making structure;

2) THE COMMON FOREIGN AND SECURITY POLICY PILLAR: external actions in

general. More intergovernmental and less supranational decision-making

structure;

3) THE JUSTICE AND HOME AFFAIRS PILLAR: included cooperation on a range of

international crime issues and various forms of judicial, customs and police

cooperation, including the establishment of a European Police Office (Europol)

for exchanging information. The decision-making process was more

intergovernmental.

Two kinds of changes:

INSTITUTIONAL CHANGES:

 Increasing European Parliament legislative power, introducing co-decision

 procedure under article 251 TEC

Giving the European Parliament the power to request the Commission to

 initiate legislation or the power to block the appointment of a new

Commission;

European Central Bank (ECB) and a European Central Bank System

 (ECBS); article 8 TEC;

Parliamentary Ombudsman, an individual who has the power of

 controlling over the EP administrative activities;

Committee of the Regions



SUBSTANTIVE CHANGES:

 Subsidiarity principle, by which different matters are divided for the aim

 of intervening between European Institutions and Member States on their

own;

European Citizenship statues, by which Member Stats’ citizens own some

 specific rights because of they come from a Community State;

Economic and Monetary Union (EMU);

 New areas of competences felt under European Community Jurisdiction.



8. ENLARGEMENTS in the EU

In 1995: Finland, Austria and Sweden.

9. TREATY OF AMSTERDAM

The Amsterdam Treaty was signed on 2 October 1997 and came into effect on

1 May 1999. It deleted obsolete provisions from the EC Treaty (TEC), adapted

others, and renumbered all the Articles of the TEU and the EC Treaty.

Some horizontal changes:

• Community pillar: incorporation into the Community Pillar of a large part of

the former Third Pillar on free movement of persons, covering visas, asylum,

immigration and judicial cooperation in civil matters. The aim of this title and

that of the amended third Pillar was to establish “an area of freedom, justice

and security” (AFSJ). Some matters covered under the remaining two pillars has

been included in the first pillar: “communitarization”, meaning a more

supranational structure of the EU;

• CFSP pillar: no big changes with the exception of the Secretary General of the

Council who was also nominated as “High Representative” for the CFSP to

assist the Council Presidency, it’s a sort of Minister of Foreign Affairs for the EU;

• PJCC pillar renominated “Police and Judicial Cooperation in Criminal Matters”

(PCJJ): its aim is to provide citizens with a high level of safety within an area of

freedom, security, and justice, by developing “common action” in three areas:

police cooperation in criminal matters, judicial cooperation in criminal matters,

and the prevention and combating of racism and xenophobia.

10. NICE TREATY AND THE EURO

The Treaty of Nice was signed by European leaders on 26 February 2001 and

came into force on 1 February 2003.

In 2000 was also concluded the Nice Charter, a charter of fundamental rights

for the EU, which was a soft law document, then, with Lisbon Treaty in 2007, it

will acquire legal force. One of the most important changes dealt with the

adoption of the common currency, the EURO, by some MS on the 1st January

2002, within the Economic and Monetary Union; not all Member States have

adopted the EURO (UK, Ireland, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary,

Denmark, Poland, Romania, Sweden). In 2004 there was an enlargement which

brought 10 States within the EU, which are : Czech Rep., Estonia, Cyprus,

Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Malta, Poland, Slovenia, Slovakia. The Nice Treaty

modified only the first pillar (the Community Pillar) extending the co-decision

procedure to other matters, instead the second and the third pillars were not

modified.

11. THE CONSTITUTIONAL TREATY

The Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe (TCE) was an unratified

international treaty intended to create a consolidated constitution for the

European Union (EU). It would have replaced the existing European Union

treaties with a single text, given legal force to the Charter of Fundamental

Rights, and expanded Qualified Majority Voting into policy areas which had

previously been decided by unanimity among MS. In December 2001, the

Laeken European Council was created in order to discuss over a reform process

to be taken, which had to be contained in the so called “Constitutional Treaty”.

This reform process had to be intended as a “constitutionalization” of the EU,

meaning that the “treaty system” adopted until that moment had to be

abandoned, in order to create a Constitution which had to contain all the

previsions about EU.

The Laeken European Council was composed of:

Representatives from national governments (3)

 National parliaments (2)

 Parliament (2)

 Commission (2)

 Accession countries

 Chairman (1) d’Estaing as

 Giscard

Vice-chairmen (2) Amato and Dehaene

 

We can highlight 4 parts of the Constitutional Treaty:

- Part I: basic objectives, fundamental rights, institutional division of power;

- Part II: Charter;

- Part III: policies and functions;

- Part IV: final provisions.

The Treaty was signed on 29 October 2004 by representatives of the then 25

member states of the European Union and it was later ratified by 18 member

states. The rejection of the document by French and Dutch voters in May and

June 2005 brought the ratification process to an end.

12. LISBON TREATY

The Treaty of Lisbon was created to replace the Constitutional Treaty and was

forged by Member States and Community institutions.

The Treaty was signed on 13 December 2007 and entered into force on 1

December 2009.

By the end of 2007, the IGC produced a document, initially named the Reform

Treaty, but then called the Lisbon Treaty, which has been ratified by each MS

(Unanimity Principle), but Ireland, in a first referendum, decided to withdraw

from the Treaty; with a second referendum, in Ireland, Irish citizens wanted to

ratify the Treaty. The reluctance of Czech president to ratify the document

because there were some provisions which went against the Czech Constitution

so many statements has been cut down by the Czech Constitutional Court.

The Lisbon Treaty has seven Articles, of which Article 1 TEU amends the Treaty

on European Union and contains core principles governing the EU (EU replaces

EC and it had legal personality) and CFSP, Art. 2 amends the EC Treaty

renamed TFEU. The TEU and the TFEU have the same legal value; EU is no

more founded on the “pillars structure”.

Art.1 TEU



Art.2 TFEU



Further enlargements:

- 2007: Bulgaria and Romania;

- 2013: Croatia.

9. ASYMMETRIES in the membership: the case of UK.

Examples of Asymmetry.

• Economic and monetary union. Not all MS have euro, they are called

“Eurosceptic” countries: UK, Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, Czech Republic,

Hungary, Romania, Sweden, Poland, etc.

• Schengen area in migration matters. The Schengen Convention covers an

agreement finalized to support free circulation across member states

territories. Some States did not undertaken it with the consequence that is not

possible talking about free circulation over there.

•UK case: United Kingdom always had a special status within EU context.

Its position affects a particularly complicated issue due to the 2016

referendum about Brexit.

In 2017 U