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Security and the Transformation of the EU Public Order

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2019

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The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the changing character of the European Union (“EU”) public order under the impact of security concerns. The EU public order has long been characterized by a tension between a more market-oriented, neo-liberal Union and a more socio-political Union. The former would be driven by the EU's four fundamental freedoms, whereas the latter would be achieved and safeguarded through the language and practice of fundamental rights. As other scholarly contributions to the issue have demonstrated, the relationship between fundamental freedoms and fundamental rights is anything but settled. It continues to be subject to many, sometimes potent, legal and political controversies. However, while the EU public order is still in pursuit of the right balance between economic freedoms and socio-political rights, it also has to reckon with another fundamental value: The value of security.

Type
Lisbon vs. Lisbon Part IV: Security and the EU Public Order
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 by German Law Journal GbR 

References

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2 A negative conception of a public order stands for minimal mandatory rules that set a limitation both on the private and public conduct within a particular polity. As such, it determines the scope of what is still legally permissible in a given polity. This conception is most common in the conflict of laws field. Its aim there is to protect the essence of a polity's legal and political order against the adverse legal institutes or policies of another polity claiming the effects in the former one. The negative conception is also used within the meaning of a public policy when the latter is relied upon as a justification for curtailment of individuals’ human rights. See, e.g., Roel de Lange, The European Public Order, Constitutional Principles and Fundamental Rights, 1 Erasmus L. Rev. 3, 8, 11 (2007).Google Scholar

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53 Id. at art. 67/3.Google Scholar

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78 Id. at para. 230. As the CJEU explained:Google Scholar

Such measures could have a particular effect on trade between Member States, especially with regard to the movement of capital and payments, and on the exercise by economic operators of their right to establishment. In addition, they could create distortions of competition, because any differences between the measures unilaterally taken by the Member States could operate to the advantage or disadvantage of the competitive position of certain economic operations although there were no economic reasons for that advantage or disadvantage.

79 See id. at para. 235 (the Court appears to be of such opinion: “[…] that regulation could legitimately be regarded as designed to attain an objective of the Community and as, furthermore, linked to the operation of the common market within the meaning of Article 308 EC”).Google Scholar

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