Constitutional pluralism is a theory for the post-sovereign European state. This only makes sense historically, emerging out of postwar European reconstruction through the repression of popular sovereignty and restraining of democracy, including through the project of European integration. It became unsettled at Maastricht and evolved from a series of irritants into a full-blown crisis in the recent decade, with sovereignty claims returning both from the bottom-up and the top-down, to the extent that we can legitimately ask whether we are now moving ‘beyond the post-sovereign state’? Constitutional pluralist literature fails to capture this in that evades material issues of democracy and political economy.

This article argues that discourses of constitutional pluralism contain a strong normative core which is made up of a series of largely unacknowledged implicit claims about legitimacy and community. This argument is illustrated by reference to various constitutional pluralist responses to the Hungarian Constitutional Court's ruling concerning the protection of constitutional identity in the context of EU asylum and refugee protection law and policy, demonstrating that whether this decision falls ‘inside’ or ‘outside’ constitutional pluralist tolerance depends on how the observer defines the minimum amount of shared substantive or procedural content that is fundamental to the EU order.

To the extent that the UK's decision to withdraw from the EU can be interpreted as a reassertion of the classic ideas of Westphalian sovereign statehood, it questions the relevance of constitutional pluralism as a resolutely ‘post-sovereign’ model of relations between state administrations and their supranational counterparts. This contribution will therefore examine the usefulness and relevance of the idea of constitutional pluralism after Brexit. It looks at the various features and relationships affected by the Brexit process analysing the relevance of constitutional pluralism to each relationship pre- and post-Brexit, concluding that, whereas Brexit clearly affects the different relationships involved, constitutional pluralism can and will remain relevant to EU/UK relations as well as within the EU, well into the future.

This article explains why autocrats love constitutional pluralism and constitutional identity. Though these concepts were developed by scholars and jurists with the best of intentions in mind, we explain why they are also attractive to and inherently prone to abuse by autocrats. We then describe how the regimes in Hungary and Poland have made use of these concepts in their drive to consolidate autocracy. We conclude that given the dangers inherent in constitutional pluralism and its susceptibility to abuse, it should be replaced with a more traditional understanding of the primacy of EU law.

Traditionally, EU state aid law has been attached to the goals of maintaining free competition and preventing the distortionary effects of Member States’ economic intervention, while social considerations have been considered immaterial to state aid control. However, in more recent years, EU state aid law has acquired a clearer ‘social dimension’, indirectly streamlining national subsidies towards social goals. The entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon, and particularly of Articles 3(3) TEU and 9 TFEU, has had an impact on the way in which social goals have been taken into account in the application of the state aid provisions. In the last decade, the European Commission has sought out a more appropriate balance between the main objective of preserving competition in the internal market on the one hand, and social objectives, also enshrined nowadays in the Treaties, on the other. This ‘social dimension’ is still underdeveloped, but emerges to varying degrees when looking respectively at the definition of state aid under Article 107(1) TFEU, at the scope of the derogations under Articles 107(2) and 107(3) TFEU and at the secondary legislation adopted for their implementation.

The European Pillar of Social Rights is a high-profile political reaffirmation of twenty social rights and principles. Its implementation deploys the full EU governance arsenal: regulations, directives, recommendations, communications, new institutions, funding actions, and country-specific recommendations. As such, the static imagery evoked by a ‘pillar’ does not capture the true nature of the initiative, which is dynamic and fluid, wide-ranging, and permeating. An equation of the Pillar with the set of twenty rights and principles it proclaims similarly fails to capture its true significance, which lies in its programmatic nature. Several important measures have already been proposed as part of this new social action plan for Europe, some of which are close to adoption. This Article analyses the meaning of the Pillar and its potential significance, by considering its content sensu largo, and its broader context. It argues that even if the Pillar cannot address all the EU's social failings, it has put a surprising social spin on the Better Regulation Agenda that was threatening to erode the social acquis, it has rekindled the EU's relationship with the International Labour Organization and Council of Europe, and it helps rebalance the EU's output by reviving the use of the Treaty's Social Title.

When courts are faced with questions regarding the territorial scope of internal legislation, they are required to engage with controversial issues pertaining to the permissible boundaries of regulatory reach, which go beyond traditional conceptions of state sovereignty and non-intervention on which the functioning of courts is normally based. This Article examines the role of the Court of Justice of the European Union (‘CJEU’) in reviewing the legality and interpretation of the extraterritorial reach of EU environmental law, including animal welfare. It assesses the extent to which judicial review by the CJEU serves as a transnational mechanism for addressing legitimacy concerns raised by the unilateral exercise of EU regulatory power beyond EU borders.

Free movement of patients has been criticised from the moment that the first patient cases reached the Court of Justice of the European Union (‘CJEU’). The moving patient supposedly increases consumerism, reduces national solidarity, and has a negative impact on the quality of healthcare provided in some Member States. This article challenges the empirical foundations of such criticisms. An empirical analysis of all patient cases before the CJEU shows that a significant number of patients required urgent treatment, that their medical condition was life-threatening, and that they were supported by their treating doctor in seeking treatment in another Member State. Moreover, free movement of patient cases regularly lead to positive changes to national healthcare systems. Therefore, the negative attitude towards free movement of patients should be reconsidered. Patients, doctors, and lawyers must think more strategically about how free movement can be used to improve the quality of healthcare in the EU.

This article explores the justifications for, and objections to, the proposed European Union ‘women on company boards’ Directive. It notes that Member State opposition to the measure had different emphases. The new, post-socialist Member States that intervened prominently questioned the Commission's understanding of the underlying social reality of gender inequality and the measure's focus on results, while the old Member States that intervened raised mainly the issue of subsidiarity and challenged the need for legislative action, and/or particularly the need for legislative action at EU level. The article further argues that the Commission weakened its case by emphasising economic rationales for the measure, and submits that a principled justification fits the proposal better. Finally, the article argues that subsidiarity-related arguments are available also to justify non-cross-border, non-economic projects, such as that of gender equality.

This article examines counter-terrorism efforts in the EU as it matures as a field of law. It sets out three critiques of EU counter-terrorism law: that of ineffectiveness, of anti-constitutionalism, and of contrariness to human rights and the rule of law. It considers these critiques in light of the development of policies and legal initiatives—against foreign terrorist fighters and against radicalisation. It concludes that there are both persistent problems, and some improvements, in the law. The EU's capacity to meet the challenges posed by terrorism and the counter-terrorism imperative, and how it does so, has global impact. The article concludes with an argument for better law-making in the EU to ensure it serves as a better exemplar of transnational law.

In recent years, pesticides have captured the attention of both policymakers and the general public. A particular focus has been the transparency of the EU-level procedure for approving active substances, spurred by controversies surrounding the active substance glyphosate. Active substances are the ingredient in pesticides with the pesticidal effect. Once an active substance is approved at EU level, the pesticide containing that active substance must be authorised by each Member State. For this purpose, the EU's 2009 Plant Protection Product Regulation divides Member States into three zones—Northern, Central, and Southern—within which, zonal rapporteur Member States evaluate applications for authorisation. National authorisation decisions are based on these zonal evaluations. This novel system governing pesticides is under-researched. Furthermore, unlike active substance approval, the transparency of pesticide authorisation escapes public and policy scrutiny. Drawing on empirical research conducted for the European Parliament, this article evaluates the transparency of the zonal pesticide authorisation procedure. It thus contributes to the literature on transparency a detailed exploration of transparency in a highly complex, decentred, and polycentric risk regulation regime. While it finds that the zonal pesticide authorisation procedure, generally speaking, does not operate transparently, it argues further that levels of transparency within the regime as a whole may vary significantly depending on multiple different factors. It introduces the concept of ‘chiaroscuro regulation’ to characterise and understand these varying levels of transparency across different elements of the regime and considers some of its implications.

Security is the meta-constitutional rationale of the European liberal project and is expressed by two tendentially self-justificatory discourses of power, which are two sides of the same coin: security and rights. The political, inherently conflictual nature of EU constitutional claims has been variously disguised through such discourses. Yet, as the process of constitutionalisation reaches a more advanced stage, in which the probability of high-intensity legal-political conflict as regards key issues of EU integration is growing, the moment has come to address conflict directly, rather than conceal it behind a veil of neutrality. Being ready for actual confrontation means dismissing the straitjacket imposed by the European liberal project. A move from self-referential to heterarchical security is thus advocated. As a result, the constellation of nation states should not be sidelined too easily and the needs and claims of the local level should be considered more carefully. In other words, the principles of primacy, autonomy, uniformity, and effectiveness of EU law ought to be conceived in relative, rather than in absolute terms. One possible way of addressing conflict is to simultaneously permit the CJEU (as well as other EU institutions) to engage more proactively with national courts and identify a common epistemic core, which ought to be upheld whenever the liberal-democratic premises of the European project are threatened.

The idea that EU treaties have become too difficult to amend is a recurring one. This Article explores changing national constitutional rules and norms in the consent stage of EU treaty making in twenty-eight Member States between 1950 and 2016, asking how parliaments, people, and courts came to be much more significant for consent, what the consequences of this shift are, and offering some tentative proposals as to how the challenges this raises could be addressed. EU treaty making has become more complex, but we argue that treaties should be more rather than less difficult to amend where concerns over two-level legitimacy rather than two-level games predominate.

This Article analyses recent developments in Union citizenship, in particular the relationship between Articles 20 and 21 TFEU. In doing so, it divides Union citizenship into a transnational and a supranational dimension with the transnational dimension having two sub-dimensions: social integration and autonomy. It is argued that we are seeing an increased emphasis on the responsibility of the individual citizen in the context of the transnational dimension and a clear linkage between the transnational and supranational dimensions. The result of these two moves is a status which continues to emphasise the relationship between the Union citizen and the communities represented by Member States, while framing this with a more prominent supranational dimension.