Abstract
Back in 2007, I engaged in a research proposal as part of an eventually unsuccessful application for a post in a European academic institution. It bore the title “European Essentials: A contribution to contemporary constitutional culture”. Years later, having been asked to contribute to the present collective volume in honour of Albrecht Weber under the general heading “Common European Legal Thinking”, my thoughts soon went back to those few pages, as they could be viewed as a plausible exercise in common legal thinking at European scale.
As I managed to retrieve the text from my files I had a mixture of impressions: Its content appeared to me to be at the same time both old and new. On the one hand, the basic underlying idea of a normative layer of exceptional resistance, under whatever circumstances, to partial derogations of the Constitution appeared alive as ever. On the other hand, the name itself could be questioned: “Essentials” might not be the proper, indeed the most adequate, word any more. Instead, another word, that of “identity”, or better still “identities”, could aspire to better convey that same idea. Worse still: How did I manage to speak about the subject – apart from an occasional appearance – while letting the word “identity” show up hardly at all? The text might already be old from the very beginning … But I think it is time to let it – apart from small alterations – speak for itself.
The opinions expressed herein are strictly personal to the author.
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Notes
- 1.
A short number of footnotes have been added.
- 2.
Bieber and Widmer 1995.
- 3.
Pernice 1999, p. 703.
- 4.
Bogdandy 2003, p. 156.
- 5.
- 6.
von Bogdandy, Cruz Villalón and Huber 2007.
- 7.
The hundreds of “notes de recherche”, internal comparative studies undertaken within the ECJ, bear witness to it.
- 8.
Ziller 2005, p. 452.
- 9.
Häberle 1994.
- 10.
Pizzorusso 2002.
- 11.
- 12.
Herzog 2001, p. 44.
- 13.
Pernthaler 1998.
- 14.
- 15.
- 16.
Art. 2 TEU.
- 17.
- 18.
As a more recent example of abundant recourse to the notion (“essential requirements”, also “material core”) in constitutional decision making, see Czech Constitutional Court, Pl. ÚS 27/09 (Decision of 10 September 2009) – Constitutional Act on Shortening the Term of Office of the Chamber of Deputies, English version: http://www.usoud.cz/en/decisions/?tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=468&cHash=44785c32dd4c4d1466ba00318b1d7bd5
- 19.
To my knowledge it is possibly Herm.‐J. Blanke who has incorporated the notion in 2002, preferring the Latin, “Essentialia einer europäischen Verfassungsurkunde”: Blanke 2002.
- 20.
Häberle 1998.
- 21.
Cruz Villalón 1980.
- 22.
- 23.
Spanish Constitutional Court (Tribunal Constitucional), STC 91/2000 (Decision of 30 March 2000) – Paviglianiti (in Boletín Oficial del Estado núm. 107, de 4 de mayo de 2000, p. 99 et seqq.), https://www.boe.es/boe/dias/2000/05/04/pdfs/T00099-00118.pdf
- 24.
Case C‐399/11, Melloni (ECJ 26 February 2013).
- 25.
Cruz Villalón 2006, p. 525.
- 26.
See in particular, Case C‐370/12, Pringle (ECJ 27 November 2012), and the Opinion of AG Kokott of 26 October 2012 in that case.
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Cruz Villalón, P. (2015). European Essentials: A Contribution to Contemporary Constitutional Culture. In: Blanke, HJ., Cruz Villalón, P., Klein, T., Ziller, J. (eds) Common European Legal Thinking. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19300-7_2
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