23 April 2018
What’s (still) Wrong with Glyphosate? On Pesticides, Public Trust and Parliamentary Scrutiny
The Glyphosate saga that had been troubling farmers, regulators, activists and corporations for almost seven years, finally came to an end with the renewal of the authorization for the infamously notorious pesticide in December 2017. Or did it? Reacting to the widespread institutional and societal concern generated by the uncertainty over Glyphosate’s safety, the European Parliament has set up a special committee on the authorization procedure for pesticides, which held its first working meeting in Brussels on April 12th, 2018. With this, the first renewal of Glyphosate’s authorization became a major case of politicization of science in the European Union. Continue reading >>
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25 February 2018
EU Leaders’ Agenda: Who’s Afraid of Reforms?
Last Friday’s ‘informal’ meeting of the European Council was a key moment in what its President, Donald Tusk, proudly calls his Leaders’ Agenda. Tusk wanted the event to prove that the heads of government are in charge of the EU constitutive process, and to prevent either the European Parliament or the Commission from seizing the initiative. As such it misfired. Continue reading >>12 September 2017
Is the European Parliament Missing its Constitutional Moment?
Over the years, step by step, the European Parliament has won a share of real constitutional power. At times, Parliament has had a decisive influence on the constitutive development of the European Union. At other times, MEPs have found it just as difficult as the European Council has done to make constitutional sense of a Union which is an uneasy compromise between federal and confederal elements. If EU governance is congenitally weak it may be because its institutions are unable to manage the dichotomy between supranational and intergovernmental. Today, circumstances have thrown the European Parliament a golden opportunity to take a major step in the federal direction – but it looks as though MEPs are going to retreat again. Continue reading >>26 March 2017
European parliamentary sovereignty on the shoulders of national parliamentary sovereignties: A Reply to Sébastien Platon
We are really grateful that the Verfassungsblog has been one of the very first forums engaging the discussion on the "Treaty on the democratization of the governance of the euro area" (T-Dem). While the proposal has emerged in the framework of the current French presidential campaign, and is now widely debated in this context, it has been primarily thought of as a contribution to the ongoing transnational conversation over the future of the European Union. As authors of the proposal, we first wish to thank our colleague Sébastien Platon for launching an interesting discussion about the T-Dem. Continue reading >>
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13 March 2017
Democratizing the Euro Area without the European Parliament: Benoît Hamon’s “T-Dem”
On the 10th March, the official candidate of the Socialist Party for the French presidential elections, Benoît Hamon, outlined his programme for the European Union. This programme, whilst being against austerity and in favour of more flexibility as regards EU requirements in terms of public budgets and public debts, comes with a treaty proposal, the draft treaty on the democratization of the governance of the euro area (dubbed « T-Dem »). This treaty, which was prepared by the candidate together with the superstar economist Thomas Piketty (who has joined his team) is supposed to bring more democracy to the governance of the Euro area. However noble (and necessary) this ambitious idea might seem, the way this draft treaty has been engineered raises not only political but also legal questions. Continue reading >>
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14 December 2016
The End of the Grand Coalition and the Significance of Stable Majorities in the European Parliament
A few years ago, the German Constitutional Court had to rule on the significance of stable majorities in the European Parliament. Such majorities were not terribly significant, was the conclusion reached by the Court – at least not important enough to justify a three percent threshold for elections to the EP, laid down in German federal law. Under the constitutional conditions of the moment, the Court explained, the formation of a stable majority was not needed in the EU ‘for electing and continuously supporting a government capable of acting’. These past few weeks, a crisis has been unfolding in Brussels and Strasbourg that may turn out to be an interesting test case for the German Court’s analysis. Continue reading >>
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22 June 2016
The EU General Data Protection Regulation: Powerful Tool for Data Subjects?
Two months ago, the European Parliament and the Council have enacted the European General Data Protection Regulation as the result of a 4 years running legislative procedure. For a long time, it was uncertain whether the regulation could be passed at all: Not only has there been considerable opposition by EU Member States, but there have also been about 4.000 amendments by Parliament, accompanied by an enormous engagement of lobby groups. Continue reading >>
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23 September 2015
Where do we stand on the reform of the EU’s Court System? On a reform as short-sighted as the attempts to force through its adoption
Last October, the CJEU has proposed to double the number of judges at the General Court to help tackling its growing workload. The legislative process this proposal is currently undergoing appears to be marred by a pattern of procedural irregularities whose only aim seems to be the speedy adoption of the reform and – more troublingly – may also be construed as a joint advocacy strategy designed to systematically eliminate any opportunity for a public, well informed and evidence-based debate. Should this reform go through (as it appears likely), damaging evidence might yet come to light and the authority and legitimacy of relevant EU institutions will be further undermined at a time where they have little to spare. Continue reading >>
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