The Federal Constitutional Court and European Integration

Abstract:

The Federal Constitutional Court (FCC) started to deal with European integration in the 1970s. Over the past forty years it has produced quite a long line of jurisprudence on different aspects of European integration and the Europeanization of the national legal order. Though the political, economic and institutional circumstances have shifted from the protection of human rights to the protection of the democratic institutions of the nation state and the maintenance of the Union's legal order, the cornerstones of the Court's approach to European integration have remained unaltered: national legislation as a basis of European integration, the principle of conferral as an emanation of national sovereignty and the maintenance of the national constitutional identity (constitutional law based approach).