Federalism in the European Union
Elke Cloots, Geert De Baere, Stefan Sottiaux - Hart Publishing Limited, 2012
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This collection reveals the Janus-faced
character of federalism in the European Union. Federalism appears in two main
forms in the EU. On the one hand, numerous formerly unitary Member States have
embarked on a path towards a (quasi-)federal governance structure. On the other
hand, the EU itself is sometimes qualified as a federal system. Significantly,
the concept of federalism has a very different, even opposite, connotation in
both contexts. When associated with Member State reform, federalism is regarded
as a technique for accommodating autonomy claims of sub-state nations. By
contrast, when federalism is used as a label for the EU itself, it is conceived
as a far-reaching way of integrating the nations of Europe. This dual appearance
of federalism in the EU context is central to the structure of the book. The
focus of this book's first set of essays is on domestic federalization
processes, more particularly on the impact of these processes on EU law and vice
versa. In a second set of contributions, the attention shifts to the question as
to whether the EU itself can be described as a federal system, and whether it
can learn from existing federations. (Series: Modern Studies in European Law -
Vol. 33)
