The Covid-19 pandemic has revealed how far we as a European society still are from the proclaimed Union of Equality. The book explores how the promise of equal treatment can become a reality and compliance with the EU acquis relating to equality and non-discrimination can be improved. It studies enforcement and promotion aspects of the two watershed directives of 2000, the Racial Equality Directive 2000/43/EC and the Employment Equality Directive 2000/78/EC, through the lens of reflexive governance. This governance approach is proposed as having great potential in enhancing the likelihood of sustainability (or continuation) of reforms in the current candidate countries and EU Member States through its emphasis on reflexive learning processes and the cooperation between EU institutions, national authorities, and civil society actors. In order to deploy this potential, there is, however, a need for more consistent and transparent monitoring, both with regard to candidate countries as well as old and new Member States, and a reconsideration of the understanding of monitoring as such. It should be seen as helping to deconstruct own preference-formations and as a possibility to learn from successes and failures in a cooperative and recursive process. To work on these lacunae and improve learning and monitoring processes, this book identifies indicators, that are deduced from the comparative review of the implementation practice of the member states. This book is thus a contribution to the existing literature in the fields of Europeanization, governance, and the right to equality and non-discrimination.

This insightful book explores the use and application of ethics in contemporary governance and suggests necessary reforms. Following an interdisciplinary approach involving the fields of political science, law, economics, sociology, management, and philosophy, this book analyses their applicability and usefulness in everyday practices in governance, covering its five cardinal virtues—prudence, transparency, discourse, justice, and accountability. Highlighting ethical challenges in aspects of status recognition, oppression, empowerment, social care, public financing, environment protection and others in today’s interconnected world, it delves into the dynamics of administrative power in democracies and showcases how the misuse of power can be controlled through a discourse of ethics in law and governance. The book will be useful to the students, researchers and teachers of public administration, philosophy, political Science, corporate ethics, and governance other related social sciences disciplines. The book will also be an indispensable companion to social activists, advocacy groups, journalists and civil society institutions and public service training institutions.

The intersection between fiscal state aid and taxation has become more topical than ever. Mounting financial crises have left EU Member States scrambling to increase their tax revenue, balance their budgets, and attract capital. Taking advantage of these trends, multinational enterprises have lobbied for favourable tax arrangements, raising questions about the breadth of control the Commission can and should practise. To address egregious instances of favourable taxation, the Commission has tried to simultaneously use soft law and deploy Treaty rules on state aid. Fiscal State Aid Law and Harmful Tax Competition in the EU examines the use of state aid rules against national tax measures. Kyriazis's book presents a targeted investigation of these measures in two parts. The first part addresses Commission decisions and ECJ judgments of the early 2000s, which the author calls the "first wave". The second part consists of all the recent Commission decisions and investigations into tax schemes and individual tax rulings, most notably the Apple, Fiat, Starbucks, and Amazon investigations, which Kyriazis labels the "second wave". The characteristics and common threads of each wave are set out, their similarities and differences dissected, and their nexus to the EU's fight against harmful tax competition explored. Containing a thorough analysis of the legal concept of fiscal state aid under Article 107(1) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, this book will be of interest to scholars of European and International Tax law and practitioners working in the field of European competition law.

The process of integrating the internal market for goods is intrinsically bound up with the question of how to divide and exercise public power without undermining free movement. The founding Treaties allow for this debate to play out by both protecting the free movement of goods and allowing for national regulatory input. The EU legislator is also empowered to resolve persisting tensions in this field between diversity and centralization, market integration and market regulation, and as regards the question of who decides. As guarantor of the rule of law, the European Court of Justice must pay heed to such legislative input in a manner that preserves the principle of institutional balance and the hierarchy of norms. To do so, it often relies on the Legislative Priority Rule as its 'constitutional compass'. Founded on the principles of pre-emption and the presumption of constitutionality, this longstanding yet relatively unknown Rule casts exhaustive EU (product) legislation as the Court's sole norm of reference to resolve regulatory disputes, to the exclusion of Articles 34 - 36 TFEU. To avoid any resulting normative inversion, EU (product) legislation must be acknowledged as accommodating a more complex vertical distribution of power than what is often assumed. To this end, the book suggests replacing harmonization models with a new framework to better describe and assess the impact of EU legislation, and to facilitate transparent, rational, and Treaty-compliant dispute resolution.

The European Union's values - enshrined in Article 2 TEU - have come under severe pressure in several Member States. In response, the Court of Justice has set a spectacular development in motion. With its ruling in Associação Sindical dos Juízes Portugueses it activated the Union's common values and positioned Article 2 TEU at the very heart of its jurisprudence. Turning Article 2 TEU into an operational, judicially applicable provision, the Court has begun to assess the Member States' constitutional structures against these yardsticks. Since then, the jurisprudence has evolved with remarkable speed. EU Values Before the Court of Justice provides a first comprehensive study of the judicial mobilisation of Article 2 TEU. It starts by developing the foundations of this emerging jurisprudence in empirical, doctrinal, and theoretical terms. In this book, Spieker seeks to advance a new understanding of Article 2. He argues that the provision should be understood as having a dual character that resonates between two dimensions, namely an EU dimension limited to the EU legal order and a 'Verbund' dimension that extends to the common whole of the Union and its Member States. Article 2 plays different roles in these two spheres - as thick constitutional core of the EU legal order and as thin constitutional frame for the 'Verbund'. This dual character should guide the provision's future judicial development. The book sets out to explore the multifaceted potential of Article 2 TEU in each of these two dimensions. As such, it goes far beyond the current focus on illiberal developments in Member States and strives to broaden our horizon for the judicial mobilisation of EU values. The book closes by assessing the risks of placing an activated Article 2 into the hands of Luxembourg judges and proposes ways to recalibrate the jurisprudence.

A comparative and comprehensive account of the jurisprudence of constitutional conflict between the Court of Justice and national courts with the power of constitutional review. This monograph addresses the incidences of, and reasons for, constitutional clashes in the application and enforcement of EU law. It aims to determine how the principle of primacy of EU law works in reality and whether the jurisprudence of the courts under analysis supports this concept. To this end, the book explores the three areas of constitutional conflict: ultra vires review, identity review, and fundamental rights review. The book substantiates the descriptive and strengthens the normative contributions of the theory of constitutional pluralism in relation to the web of relations in the European judicial space. By examining the influence that the jurisprudence of constitutional conflict has on the balance of powers between the Court of Justice and constitutional courts, the volume develops the judicial triangle as an analytical tool that depicts the consequences for the horizontal (constitutional courts vis-à-vis the Court of Justice) and vertical judicial relationships (Court of Justice vis-à-vis ordinary national courts; constitutional courts vis-à-vis ordinary national courts). By offering a thorough compilation of the jurisprudence of constitutional conflict in the EU, The Jurisprudence of Constitutional Conflict in the European Union improves our understanding of the principle of primacy of EU law and its limits, as well as reinforces the theory of constitutional pluralism in explaining and guiding judicial power relations and interactions in the EU.

The idea of constitutional identity has been central to the negotiation of authority between EU and national constitutional orders. Many national constitutional courts have declared that the reach of EU law is limited by certain core elements of the national constitution, often labelled 'constitutional identity'. With the rise of illiberal democracies within the EU, the idea of constitutional identity has increasingly come under criticism, being seen as easily embedded in authoritarian, nativist rhetoric and vulnerable to being abused. In The Abuse of Constitutional Identity in the European Union, Julian Scholtes provides novel insights into how European authoritarians have utilised the concept of constitutional identity to further their illiberal goals. Employing a comparative theoretical perspective, his book identifies the factors behind legitimate constitutional identity claims and critically analyses the ways in which these claims can be abused. Scholtes examines abuses of constitutional identity in three distinct theoretical dimensions: generative, substantive, and relational. The generative dimension looks at how constitutional identity claims come about, while the substantive dimension examines a claim's broader relation to a normative theory of constitutionalism. The relational dimension, on the other hand, considers how constitutional identity claims are advanced and whether they are employed as a means of constitutional dialogue or constitutional disengagement.