The Legal Foundations of the Enlarged European Union
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Description
Viewed collectively, the chapters in this Part of the Book, entitled ‘The Legal Foundations of the Enlarged European Union,’ remind us that the term ‘legal foundations’ covers a wide range of understandings. Clearly, the particular aspect or dimension of those foundations on which one chooses to focus––and each chapter in this Part makes a choice in that respect––determines the nature of the enlargement story to be told. Before turning to the particularities that each chapter addresses, we need to underscore certain commonalities. First, each contribution acknowledges that the most interesting and fundamental questions associated with enlargement have nothing to do with ‘numbers,’ whether in the membership of the European Parliament, or in the qualified majority voting formula in the Council, or in the composition of the Commission. This is not to say that the ‘numbers’ issues may not in turn reveal problems that are, themselves, quite fundamental. Moreover, the contributions all demonstrate, albeit to differing extents, that while the contemporaneous occurrence of enlargement and the recently concluded Constitutional Convention is by no means coincidental, their relationship is far from a simple or uni-directional one. Thus, although current debates over the constitutional treaty appear to be part of the enlargement picture (and vice versa), the prospects of enlargement are not claimed to have triggered the constitutional convention, nor is the Convention described as essential to the realisation of this enlargement or future enlargements. Indeed, it was believed by many at the time, including the accession states themselves, that the 2000 IGC culminating in the Treaty of Nice had made (however contentiously) the basic institutional changes that were required to facilitate the next enlargement. At the same time, however, the prospect of enlargement has certainly rendered more urgent many of the tasks and institutional questions faced by the Convention, and in some cases has added new dimensions to existing dilemmas and challenges.
Source Publication
Law and Governance in an Enlarged European Union
Source Editors/Authors
George A. Bermann, Katharina Pistor
Publication Date
2004
Recommended Citation
Bermann, George A. and de Búrca, Gráinne, "The Legal Foundations of the Enlarged European Union" (2004). Faculty Chapters. 327.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/327
