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Fundamental Rights as Constraints to and Triggers for Differentiated Integration
Author(s) -
Bertolini Elena,
Dawson Mark
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
swiss political science review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.632
H-Index - 30
eISSN - 1662-6370
pISSN - 1424-7755
DOI - 10.1111/spsr.12443
Subject(s) - fundamental rights , european union , context (archaeology) , law and economics , charter , political science , law , scope (computer science) , argument (complex analysis) , value (mathematics) , european integration , sociology , economics , human rights , international trade , mathematics , geography , biochemistry , chemistry , statistics , computer science , programming language , archaeology
When looking for possible constraints on Differentiated Integration, the fundamental values of the European Union (EU) seem an obvious starting point. Both the Charter of Fundamental Rights and the values articulated in Art. 2 TEU are cross‐cutting across EU states. However, while fundamental values have acted as centralising devices in other federal settings, in an EU context marked by extensive value disagreement, they may also act as pathways for differentiation. Insofar as national constitutional orders disagree on the scope of EU rights, attempts to ground EU law in fundamental values trigger inevitable interpretive conflicts across states. This paper will use the examples of asylum and the European Arrest Warrant to demonstrate this argument: while EU law may use fundamental values as a reason to harmonise EU law across states, such values may also be invoked to question the principle of mutual trust underlying the EU legal order, thereby causing rather than limiting differentiation.