This chapter offers an overview of literacy development in Europe. The European Union is a political and economic union of twenty-seven Member States. Its members are industrialized nations that value inclusion and allow free movement of its citizens within the union. Good skills in reading, mathematics, and science are viewed as a prerequisite for integration in the knowledge society, but challenges remain. The chapter starts out by presenting evidence related to the spread of literacy in Europe and discusses current notions about the relationship between schooling and literacy abilities and about the role of skills for full integration in society. Furthermore, evidence is provided on the variation in reading development in different orthographies and its relationship with home and school factors. In particular, current literacy achievement levels in primary and secondary school are related to home-background factors. Finally, the chapter discusses how comparative reports on literacy development in European Member States can contribute to our understanding of reading development in Europe and inform policy decisions.

This chapter introduces and discusses the approach of each body to deference and subsidiarity, and assesses how the differences may affect convergence and fragmentation. From the margin of appreciation (MoA), typical of the European Court, to the conventionality control (CC) of the Inter-American Court, the chapter investigates all the different shades of subsidiarity and deference and put them in a comparative perspective. Moreover, through specific examples, this chapter shows how different approaches may trigger fragmentation (such as in the headscarf cases) and how convergence on the level of deference and subsidiarity may, on the contrary, foster convergence (such as in defamation cases).

IPCC reports are not produced by scientific experts disconnected from policy. They are produced within a political framework. The governmental endorsement of IPCC reports is a key element of the perceived success of the organisation. In particular, the approval of the Summaries for Policymakers makes the Member States of the IPCC active participants in the assessment process and creates ownership of their content. At first sight, the involvement of governments in the IPCC reveals a genuine exercise of co-production between science and politics. It is expected to make the reports more legitimate and policy relevant. Yet a closer look at the practices through which governmental ownership of IPCC reports is produced shows that governments may in some cases contribute to making them policy irrelevant.

When considering ways for preventing Member States from hiding behind the institutional veil of the organization, two distinct approaches can be identified. The first focuses on the position of the Member State as a subject endowed with its own distinct personality and holder of its own rights and obligations. According to this approach, when the State acts as a member within or on behalf of the organization, it continues to be bound by its obligations and may be held individually responsible for their breach. The second approach focuses on the position of the State qua member of the organization. It relies on the institutional link binding together the organization and its members to affirm that, under certain circumstances, all members should be called upon to bear the consequences of the wrongful acts of the organization in a collective way. While much of the debate on the risk of abuse of the organization’s institutional veil tends to focus on the question of collective responsibility of members, the chapter argues that in practice it is through different forms of individual responsibility that the organization’s institutional veil has been pierced or circumvented.

This chapter shows how biographical research can lead us to better understand the legal and political dynamics that prevailed in the court during the 1960s and 1970s. The chapter presents an innovative use of biographies in the sense that they are not a goal in themselves, but a means to create primary sources to study the court's institutional behaviour and its power struggle with national governments. This biographical methodology uncovered that the bench of judges which ‘revolutionized’ European law in the 1960s and 1970s was not as isolated and apolitical as existing literature had portrayed as so far. The judges could rely on a vast political network, which not only helped them in assessing how far they could push the integration process further in their rulings, but which was also useful when it came to persuading national decision-makers of the fact that the court’s rulings were in their interest. The chapter further addresses the challenges raised by the biographical approach and gives an account of the research strategies adopted to unearth empirical material on mostly unknown judges coming from different national, legal and professional backgrounds.

Chapter 3 looks at the rules of the organisation. It concludes that the European Commission’s claim that international responsibility follows the internal division of competences does not find support in international dispute-settlement practice. The book reveals that the European Union and its Member States are independently responsible for their joint obligations. The central argument is that while states are free to transfer their powers to an organisation, their international obligations are non-transferable.

This chapter conceptualises solidarity between the member states on the basis of two spectrums. The first deals with the reasons for acting in the interest of the collective. Its poles are taken up by normative and factual solidarity. Normative solidarity occurs when states display solidarity due to a political obligation. The chapter explains that such political obligations are grounded in joint commitments, how these commitments turn their participants into a unity, and that they may not only exist between individuals, but also between states. Factual solidarity occurs when a state acts in the interest of the whole because it serves its own interest. Two situations are singled out: interdependence and common destiny. The second spectrum is subsidiary in nature and relates to the kind of solidary behaviour displayed. Its poles are negative and positive solidarity. Negative solidarity occurs when the acts displayed by a state in support of the whole relate to itself. Positive solidarity occurs when a state acts in the interest of the collective by directly benefitting another state. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the relation between joint commitments and Union law.

Brussels has often been criticised as a bureaucratic monster, a supranational juggernaut, a new empire. While the terms leave much room for interpretation, they all present the EC as a threat to the political order of its member states. In reality, member states have been central to the integration process throughout its history. That is not to suggest that Brussels simply represented an extension of their interests. It is true to an extent, yet in the course of time the integration process also fundamentally transformed the member states. But there was no need for a gigantic Brussels bureaucracy to subjugate or substitute the member states. The mechanisms involved, as this chapter shows, were much more subtle. While great change occurred at the political, administrative and legal levels, it appeared to make little difference to the everyday lives of ordinary people – who in turn showed little interest in these processes. And by the time the effects finally became more obvious the basic foundations had already been laid, making it difficult to ‘turn the clock back’.

This chapter sets the scene for the volume by introducing the notion of constitutional identity for the purpose of analysis and comparison. The chapter also describes the division of the volume into three parts by explaining what each part will focus on in presenting a picture of constitutional identity in a Europe of multilevel constitutionalism.