Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-cfpbc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T23:22:37.263Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Basic Law at 60 – From 1949 to 2009: The Basic Law and Supranational Integration

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2019

Juliane Kokott

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Sixty years after the entry into force of the Basic Law the world is much more interdependent. The concepts of statehood and sovereignty have changed. The following contribution examines how the Basic Law, as amended and interpreted by the Federal Constitutional Court, deals with this development. As a foundational matter, the Basic Law contains a commitment towards integration, although sixty years ago integration largely was seen as a promise. Now, 60 years later, the Federal Constitutional Court is developing limits to integration and recently ruled out Germany's participation in a European Federal State and sees itself as the guardian of German sovereignty. A change of paradigms seems to have taken place. For the founding fathers and mothers, a united—possibly even federal—Europe was considered to be the solution to protect against war and relapse towards an undemocratic, terroristic regime. But now the Federal Constitutional Court feels compelled to protect democracy and the core values of the Basic Law against “too much” European integration.

Type
Special Issue: The Basic Law at 60
Information
German Law Journal , Volume 11 , Issue 1: Special issue - The Basic Law at 60 , 01 January 2010 , pp. 99 - 114
Copyright
Copyright © 2010 by German Law Journal GbR 

References

1 Grundgesetz [GG] [Constitution] Preamble (F.R.G.).Google Scholar

2 Case 6/64, Costa v. E.N.E.L., 1964 E.C.R. 585.Google Scholar

3 Lisbon Case, BVerfG [Federal Constitutional Court], 2 BvE 2/08, of 30 June 2009; citations are to the legally not binding English translation of the Federal Constitutional Court available at: http://www.bverfg.de/entscheidungen/es20090630_2bve000208en.html, para. 225.Google Scholar

4 Deutscher Bundestag / Bundesarchiv (eds.): Der Parlamentarische Rat 1948–1949: Akten und Protokolle, Vol. 9 Plenum, 443 (R. Oldenbourg 1996), (author's translation).Google Scholar

5 Lisbon Case, BVerfG, 2 BvE 2/08, of 30 June 2009, para. 229.Google Scholar

6 Id. Google Scholar

7 Art. 4 TFEU (Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union).Google Scholar

8 Lisbon Case, BVerfG, 2 BvE 2/08, of 30 June 2009, para. 240.Google Scholar

9 Winston Churchill, speech at the University of Zurich (Switzerland) on 19 September 1946, available at http://www.coe.int/t/e/com/about_coe/discourschurchill.asp (last visited 13 January 2010).Google Scholar

10 Carlo Schmid, Deutschland und der Europäische Rat, Schriftenreihe des Deutschen Rates der Europäischen Bewegung, Vol. 1 (1949) (author's translation).Google Scholar

11 Deutscher Bundestag / Bundesarchiv (eds.): Der Parlamentarische Rat 1948–1949: Akten und Protokolle, Vol. 9 Plenum, 40 (R. Oldenbourg 1996) (author's translation).Google Scholar

12 Council Decision 2002/187/JHA, 28 February 2002, setting up EUROJUST with a view to reinforcing the fight against serious crime, O.J. (L 63), 1–13.Google Scholar

13 Council Framework Decision 2002/584/JHA, 13 June 2002, on the European arrest warrant and the surrender procedures between Member States, O.J. (L 190), 1–20.Google Scholar

14 The Schengen acquis – Convention implementing the Schengen Agreement, 14 June 1985, between the Governments of the States of the Benelux Economic Union, the Federal Republic of Germany and the French Republic on the gradual abolition of checks at their common borders (“CISA”), O.J. (L 239), 19–62, Chapter III – Application of the ne bis in idem principle.Google Scholar

15 Council Framework Decision 2008/841/JHA, 24 October 2008, on the fight against organised crime, O.J. L 300, 42–45 and Council Framework Decision 2002/629/JHA, 19 July 2002 on combating trafficking in human beings, O.J. (L 203), 1–4.Google Scholar

16 Council framework Decision 2000/383/JHA, 29 May 2000, on increasing protection by criminal penalties and other sanctions against counterfeiting in connection with the introduction of the euro, O.J. (L 140), 1–3.Google Scholar

17 Council Framework Decision 2001/500/JHA, 26 June 2001, on money laundering, the identification, tracing, freezing, seizing and confiscation of instrumentalities and the proceeds of crime, O.J. (L 182), 1–2.Google Scholar

18 Council Framework Decision 2008/913/JHA, 28 November 2008, on combating certain forms and expressions of racism and xenophobia by means of criminal law, O.J. (L 328), 55–58.Google Scholar

19 Council Framework Decision 2009/315/JHA, 26 February 2009, on the organisation and content of the exchange of information extracted from the criminal record between Member States, O.J. (L 93), 23–32. Article 11 in conjunction with Council Decision 2009/316/JHA, 6 April 2009, on the establishment of the European Criminal Records Information System (ECRIS) in application of Article 11 of Framework Decision 2009/315/JHA, O.J. (L 93), 33–48.Google Scholar

20 Council Decision 2008/615/JHA, 23 June 2008, on the stepping up of cross-border cooperation, particularly in combating terrorism and cross-border crime, O.J. (L 210), 1–11.Google Scholar

21 Council Framework Decision 2002/584/JHA, 13 June 2002, on the European arrest warrant and the surrender procedures between Member States, O.J. (L 190), 1–20, recital no. 6.Google Scholar

22 Lisbon Case, BVerfG, 2 BvE 2/08, of 30 June 2009, para. 253.Google Scholar

23 Id. para. 219.Google Scholar

24 Id. para. 226.Google Scholar

25 Id. para. 228.Google Scholar

26 Maastricht case, BVerfGE 89, 155.Google Scholar

27 Lisbon Case, BVerfG, 2 BvE 2/08, of 30 June 2009, para. 237.Google Scholar

28 Id. para. 238.Google Scholar

29 Council Directive 2000/78/EC, 27 November 2000, establishing a general framework for equal treatment in employment and occupation, O.J. (L 303), 16–22.Google Scholar

30 Federal Constitutional Court, 2 BvR 2661/06.Google Scholar

31 Opinion of Advocate General Bot, 7 July 2009, in C-555/07 Kücükdeveci, not yet published in the ECR.Google Scholar

32 Klaus Vogel, Die Verfassungsentscheidung des Grundgesetzes für eine internationale Zusammenarbeit: ein Diskussionsbeitrag zu einer Frage der Staatstheorie sowie des geltenden deutschen Staatsrechts (1964).Google Scholar

33 But see Ústavní soud České republiky [Czech Constitutional Court], of 3 November 2009 (Lisbon Treaty II), Pl. ÚS 29/09, para. 110 et seq.Google Scholar

34 See Vasilios Skouris, Das Verhältnis des Europäischen Gerichtshofs zu den nationalen Verfassungsgerichten: Festvortrag anlässlich des österreichischen Verfassungstags (2009) (arguing that this would result in the introduction of a “theory of absolute relativity” for all legal acts of secondary Union law).Google Scholar

35 Deutscher Bundestag / Bundesarchiv (eds.): Der Parlamentarische Rat 1948–1949: Akten und Protokolle, Vol. 9 Plenum, 41 (R. Oldenbourg 1996) (author's translation).Google Scholar