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Publishers Abstract:
Federalism in the European Union is an important volume that confronts these very questions from a federal paradigm. The book is a collection of 17 essays and is based on the proceedings of the workshop of the same title that was held in Belgium at the Faculty of Law of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven on May 12 and 13, 2011. The book proceeds from the succinct observation that federalism in the European Union is 'Janus faced' (p.2). When used in a national context, the concept usually means granting greater autonomy to sub-state entities, but when applied to the European Union it often brings with it the notion of greater integration and less national autonomy. The first part of the volume addresses the question whether the European Union can be described as a federal system and what it can learn from existing federations, while the second part focuses on federalism within Member States and the impact of these processes on EU law and vice versa. On a general note, the contributions are well written and make for stimulating reading. The reader is struck though by the difference in the length of the various contributions, but admittedly this is to be expected given the large number of contributions to the volume and the diverse topics covered. In the rest of this review each of the two parts will be considered in turn, before a general appraisal is offered.
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