European Union Law (2nd Edn) : Edited by Catherine Barnard and Steve Peers

1.
Introduction
European Union Law (2nd edn)

Edited by Catherine Barnard and Steve Peers
Publisher: Oxford University Press Print Publication Date: Jul 2017

Print ISBN-13: 9780198789130 Published online: Sep 2017
DOI: 10.1093/he/
9780198789130.001.0001
1. Introduction
Chapter: (p. 1) 1. Introduction
Author(s): Catherine Barnard and Steve Peers
DOI: 10.1093/he/9780198789130.003.0001
1 Introduction
2 The development of EU law
3 Themes
4 Conclusion
1 Introduction
For many people European Union (EU) law interferes with too
many aspects of their lives. This was summed up by the headline in a UK
paper: ‘Bog standard: Brussels demands the same toilet flush across the
Continent after discovering Brits use the most water’.1 This story has it
all: mad Brussels bureaucrats excessively regulating even how we go to
the toilet; ‘Loo couldn’t make it up’ said UK tabloid The Sun. Yet a closer
look reveals a different picture. As the European Commission pointed
out,2 toilet flushing accounts for about 30 per cent of total household
water consumption in the UK. Much of this water use is unnecessary. So
Page 1 of 12
1. Introduction
an eco-label can help buyers choose loos that will save water and money.
Eco-labelling measures already existed for washing machines and
dishwashers (among other products) and it was perfectly logical to take
steps to help people buy more efficient toilets. In a single market where
products are being sold across borders, this is best done at EU level.3 The
question, then, is who is right: The Sun or the European Commission?
The story about the loo flush raises in microcosm some of the biggest
questions facing the EU today: what should it be doing, how should it be
doing it, and how should it be communicating what it is doing. A bottom-
up approach (no pun intended) would suggest that loo flushing should be
a matter for national law; a top-down single market perspective would
suggest that the EU should intervene when the movement of goods across
borders is affected. If the EU does act, how intensive should that action
be? The eco-labelling award scheme reveals an imaginative approach to
regulation. The use of these eco-labels is (p. 2) voluntary:4 industries
apply for the label if they want to get it and the beneficial reputational
kudos that goes with it. They may choose not to. However, if they do
apply, their product needs to comply with the criteria set for each product
group (eg washing machines, fridges, and now toilets) by a Commission
Decision5 adopted under powers conferred by European Parliament and
Council Regulation 66/2010.6
Thus, contrary to popular misconception, EU rules are not all of the

command and control kind (‘all bananas must be straight’). The EU has
experimented with different types of regulation to create flexibility in the
operation of its rules. This flexibility is provided by the law and, as this
book will show, the law is central to the operation of the EU.
Indeed, the EU itself is a legal construct.7 It was born out of treaties and
its subsequent development has been marked by successive Treaty
amendments. One of the earliest major research projects on the EU
described the process of its evolution as ‘integration through law’;8 and
the Court of Justice, the supreme court of the EU, has been at the heart of
that process. Of course, law and politics go hand in hand and no lawyer
would deny the important role played by politicians in both driving
forward and shaping the development of the EU, particularly faced with
seismic geopolitical forces—the fall of the Berlin Wall, 9/11, the sovereign
debt crisis, the refugee crisis and now the decision of the British voters to
leave the EU (Brexit). Although the hegemony of law may have waned
over recent years, as problems have arisen which are not immediately
amenable to legal resolution, law remains central to the EU project. And
it is the law, set in this broader political context, which is the subject
matter of this book.
2 The development of EU law
In the early days, the EU focused upon economic integration:

the free movement of goods, persons, capital, and services,9 collectively
known as the four freedoms, along with competition law and control of
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1. Introduction
government support to industry, known as ‘state aid’.10 The basic idea

was simple but fundamental: due to closer trade-ties States would
become dependent on each other and thus the imperative to go to war
would be reduced.
However, the material scope (ie the subject matter) of EU law has been
widening beyond these issues for many years.11 For example, while the
original Treaty establishing what was then the European Economic
Community (EEC) made some reference to social policy, due to concerns
about the impact of economic integration upon social standards, the EU
has since developed a significant body of law in this area.12 Owing to
growing concern about environmental protection and consumer
protection, including the possible impact of economic integration upon
national environment and consumer law, the EU has also developed law in
these areas too.13 Even an area of law which in principle the EU largely
leaves to the Member States to regulate—health care—is significantly
affected (p. 3) by the economic integration process.14 This is the spillover
effect which Jean Monnet, one of the founding fathers of the EU project,
hoped would occur once the process of integration had started. As the
theory of neofunctionalism describes it, integration in one sector
necessitates integration in another sector to ensure that the advantage of
integration in the first sector is maximized. So Member States could
legitimately obstruct the free movement of goods due to concerns about
consumer protection or the environment.15 This necessitates
harmonization in these sectors in order to facilitate free movement of
goods.
Taking this one stage further, if exporters of goods within the EU are
really to benefit from the economies of scale offered by the single market,
then they need to enjoy the certainty offered by having a single currency.
It was this biggest step of all that was launched by the Maastricht Treaty
in 1992, which set out a framework for the EU to create an economic and
monetary union (EMU). The majority of Member States now share a
single currency, and in connection with this, the EU coordinates Member
States’ fiscal and economic policies. The intensity of this coordination has
strengthened since the single currency project began to face increasing
difficulties in light of the economic crisis, beginning in 2008, and it
became necessary for some Member States to ‘bail out’ other Member
States in order for the currency to survive.
In the same vein, the EU agreed to further integration of Member States’

economic policies and greater political control of those policies by the EU
institutions, as regards eurozone States.16 The centripetal forces at play
point to ever-greater centralization—at the very time when citizens in a
number of countries are calling for a repatriation of powers to the
Member States. This tension between the need for effective governance
of the European project while respecting State autonomy and diversity at
national level has tormented the EU since its inception. For some, this
tension is creative and leads to better solutions in the longer term,
preventing the EU from overreaching itself. For others, it has
Page 3 of 12


1. Introduction
handicapped the EU in its ability to respond to the crisis—the German

refusal to agree to Eurobonds (the joint pooling of some or all of the
eurozone States’ government debt), widely seen as an important
mechanism for resolving the crisis, is a case in point. The German refusal,
wholly comprehensible in terms of domestic politics, shows that
neofunctionalism is too simplistic a theory to describe the complex
interactions in the EU. Governments, particularly in Germany and France,
continue to call the shots when it really matters and this
intergovernmentalism is reflected in the role of the European Council,
now one of the most important EU institutions.17 In its strongest form,
objection to EU integration has led to the UK vote to leave the EU—
despite that country’s many opt-outs from EU rules.
The EU has also become a major forum for integration as regards issues
which, at first sight, are non-economic. While the EU always had a
common policy on trade with third (ie non-EU) countries, known as the
‘common commercial policy’, and many of its internal policies have a
significant external dimension (eg EU environment policy), the EU has
also taken steps towards creating a Common Foreign and Security Policy,
including defence issues.18 In addition, the EU has increasingly addressed
issues within the scope of justice and home affairs, matters traditionally
seen as lying at the heart of national sovereignty, in particular criminal
law and immigration and asylum matters.19 In practice, even these issues
have important links with economic integration, since the abolition of
border controls between most Member States has meant that it is easier
for alleged criminals to (p. 4) flee from one Member State to another, and
harder to apply a purely national policy on asylum and immigration.
Along with this widening of the material scope of EU law, the EU’s
territorial scope has widened greatly too, with its membership expanding
from six to 28 Member States (for now).20
The ever-growing impact of EU law has also been accelerated by the very
nature of EU law, because (for many Member States) EU law has a much
greater force within national legal systems than most other international
treaties.21 Indeed, there is an important debate as to whether EU law can
still be regarded as a form of international law at all, or whether it has
become sui generis (meaning, ‘in a class by itself’).22
Over the years, EU law has not just widened its material and territorial
scope, but it has also developed a complex institutional framework for the
adoption and enforcement of its law, establishing both a political and a
judicial system to that end.23 Like any complex legal system, the EU has
developed basic principles that govern the application of that system, as
well as rules which govern its administration.24 One of these key
principles is the requirement to protect human rights,25 which has
become increasingly important as (for example) EU law concerns itself
with more issues (eg criminal law and asylum) that impact upon civil
liberties,26 and as EU austerity policies (intended to address the economic
Page 4 of 12


1. Introduction
and financial crisis linked to EMU) have an ever-greater impact upon

social rights.27
More broadly, the constitutional and administrative law of the EU as a

whole raises questions about the nature of national sovereignty within the
EU legal order and the EU’s fidelity to basic constitutional principles,
such as the separation of powers.28 This raises even more fundamental
questions—does the EU have a constitution, following the demise of the
Constitutional Treaty in 2005,29 and if so, what sort? How does the EU’s
special brand of constitutionalism accommodate uniformity and diversity,
as well as the role of the centre and that of national and sub-national
actors? This has led to an increasingly sophisticated debate about the role
of multi-level governance (the idea that there are various interacting
authority structures at work) within the EU. But it also raises questions as
to how the EU relates to other major international bodies outside its own
sphere of influence.30 The United Nations (UN) is a prime example, as
featured in the terrorist asset-freezing cases.31 How open can and should
the EU be to these external bodies?
3 Themes
The chapters of this book are linked by overarching themes,

which can be introduced in the form of two questions: ‘What should the
EU be doing?’ and ‘How should the EU go about doing it?’
The question of what the EU should do is linked to the concept of ‘output

legitimacy’, that is, the EU proving its value to the public by showing that
it is effective in contributing to the achievement of objectives which have
wide public support (eg economic growth and job creation). The question
of how the EU should accomplish these tasks is linked to (p. 5) the
concept of ‘input legitimacy’, that is, how fair and democratic is the
process by which the EU takes decisions. These two types of legitimacy
are linked, because if the EU tries to do more things, more questions are
likely to be raised about its democratic credentials.32 Indeed, the two
forms of legitimacy might come into direct conflict, where, for instance,
an attempt to make the EU more effective by removing Member States’
vetoes over a policy area (which will make it easier for the EU to take
decisions) could be seen as a reduction in democratic legitimacy, from the
point of view of a national parliament (which will no longer have full
sovereignty over decisions in that policy area).
The consequence of successive crises (the financial crisis, the refugee

crisis, terrorism fears, and Brexit) in recent years has exacerbated the
tensions between these aspects of legitimacy. For the EU’s initial
response to these crises has pushed in opposite directions. Some have
been addressed by more EU regulation, to ensure output legitimacy: more
EU laws on banking regulation, economic governance, counter-terrorism,
immigration, and asylum; and more powers for EU bodies such as the
European Central Bank, Europol, and the EU border control agency.33 But
this reaction prompts a parallel concern about input legitimacy—in that
Page 5 of 12


1. Introduction
individual Member States (and, by extension, their voters) have even less
control over these politically sensitive issues. Conversely, the concern to
avert a possible Brexit led to a willingness by Member States and the EU
courts to reduce the rights on offer to EU citizens;34 but this was
insufficient for the majority of those voting in the Brexit referendum.
3.1 Input legitimacy
The EU has various systems in place to help achieve input legitimacy: the
doctrines of separation of powers,35 the vertical division of competences
between the States and the EU,36 and a powerful judicial system37 which
has been active in developing the ‘general principles of EU
law’ (including the principles of proportionality, the rule of law
(transparency, legality, legal certainty, and legitimate expectations), good
administration, information-related rights (freedom of information and
data protection), and procedural rights (the right to be heard, the right to
an effective judicial remedy, and additional rights of the defence)) as tools
to review the activities of the EU legislature and executive, as well as
those of the Member States when acting within the scope of EU law.38
These principles are linked to the broader system for the protection of
human rights in the EU legal order, which was restructured in 2009 to
provide for a binding EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and an
obligation for the EU to sign up to the European Convention on Human
Rights (ECHR), which resulted in a draft Treaty to this end (though the
EU courts then stalled the ECHR accession process).39 Specific tensions
between human rights and security objectives can be seen in the
regulation of immigration and asylum law (ie the entry and residence of
non-EU citizens) by the EU40 and between human rights and the power
for national authorities to decide which citizens of other EU Member
States can come into the territory and stay there.41 The protection of
human rights has become directly linked to the creation of EU
citizenship: the introduction of EU citizenship has had an impact on the
way in which the Court of Justice has viewed nationals of one Member
State who move to another Member State.42 This, in itself, has raised
further (p. 6) questions about the legitimacy of the Court of Justice within
the EU system with notions of separation of powers.
Moreover, these fundamental questions about the EU’s legitimacy raise a

further set of questions, in particular: ‘How much should the EU do, as
compared to its Member States?’ and ‘How should EU law reconcile
tensions between different objectives—particularly between economic
and non-economic objectives?’ Of course, the answers to these questions
might change over time, or be different in the various policy fields. Again,
the two questions are necessarily linked: the more that the EU gets
involved with a particular policy area, the less capacity for Member
States to make their own individual decisions about how to balance
economic and non-economic objectives in that area. These questions
could be described as raising respectively a vertical issue—the ‘division of
Page 6 of 12


1. Introduction
powers’ between the EU and its Member States—and a horizontal issue—

regarding the relative priority of economic over non-economic objectives.
In respect of the vertical question of how much should the EU do, the
Member States are inevitably conflicted. This can be seen in the field of
external relations where Member States want to maintain control over
EU external policies while at the same time aspiring to make them more
effective.43 Likewise, in the field of EU criminal law, Member States are
torn between a desire to reap the practical benefits of cooperation in
matters of criminal law and their concern about the loss of sovereignty in
this sensitive field.44 A similar dynamic applies in immigration and asylum
law.45 If the EU does act and a Member State objects, then it is the Court
of Justice which polices the boundary. Its decisions have influenced the
level of EU intervention: the more the Court checks whether the criteria
for EU action have been satisfied, the more likely it is to strike down a
measure. In practice, its review has been generally light touch, with one
notable exception, the decision in Tobacco Advertising I.46 This highlights
the tension between input and output legitimacy: if the EU wants to
deliver in a particular policy area it needs to have the powers and to
exercise them in the way that it chooses. However, this may come at the
price of national sovereignty.
What if individuals object to what the EU is doing? Do they have a voice?

If that voice means bringing a case to court to challenge the EU’s use of
its powers, the Court of Justice has made it difficult for individuals to do
so directly before the EU Courts.47 If that voice means voting in
parliamentary elections, then many think their voice is drowned out or
the politicians are not responding to what they want. In some Member
States this has led to growing support for extremist parties and in the UK,
it led to Brexit.48 The EU has failed to inspire much loyalty or love. This
may be because it is hard to love a customs union or a common market on
which much of the EU’s output legitimacy is based.
3.2 Output legitimacy
The EU’s output legitimacy is explicitly or implicitly linked to its

achievements in substantive EU law—beginning with the original core
issues of economic integration,49 as extended to economic and monetary
union,50 and to other policy areas such as health care and social policy.51
Successful delivery of these policies has been backed up by the creation—
by the Court of Justice—of a system of remedies at domestic level.52 For
some this is (p. 7) judicial activism; for others this is necessary to ensure
the effective application of the rules Member States voluntarily signed up
to.
And the EU has reinforced its internal policies through parallel action on
the external stage. Reforms to the EU’s competence in this field have
strengthened the EU’s ability to negotiate international agreements,
particularly as regards international trade.53 Paradoxically, the EU’s
success in achieving the four freedoms (free movement of goods, persons,
Page 7 of 12


1. Introduction
services, and capital) has raised fundamental questions as to the ability of

nation-states to control their own borders and keep out goods
(horsemeat), persons (large-scale immigration from the East, the Polish
plumber), and capital (foreign ownership of key industries) they do not
want.54 Nationals in some Member States want to pull the drawbridge up
and keep out all that is foreign. EU law stops their governments from
doing this.
However, the biggest challenge to the EU’s biggest claim for output
legitimacy—that it is able to deliver growth and prosperity—has come
with the financial crisis. Some blame EU policies for contributing to the
crisis in the first place; others criticize the EU’s laggardly, piecemeal
response to the crisis for making a bad situation worse. Those living in
countries in receipt of a ‘bail-out’ blame the EU/IMF (International
Monetary Fund) for the pain they are suffering as a result of the austerity
policies which have been imposed on them as a condition of receiving
financial assistance. Nevertheless, even in these countries the majority
view is that they would prefer to remain within the EU than out. This
must say something about the safety net the EU continues to offer to
many countries.
The crisis has also posed major challenges to the welfare state.
Traditionally seen as an area of national competence, EU law and policies
are increasingly having a direct or indirect impact. First, austerity
measures have led to significant cuts in pension and social welfare
provision, whether it be care for the elderly, social benefits, or health
care.
Secondly, eurozone countries which are no longer free to devalue their

currencies in order to regain competitiveness have been forced into a
cycle of ‘internal devaluation’, a euphemism for cuts to wages and labour
standards; standards which have often been the result of decades of
struggle by the trade union movement and the International Labour
Organization. This is a direct challenge to the European Social Model,
which has long been regarded as one of the proudest achievements of EU
Member States.55 This is not the first challenge to the EU’s social model.
The enlargement of the EU to include the Eastern European States
created opportunities for workers from those States but risks for workers
from wealthier States who saw their wages being undercut by EU migrant
workers.56
Thirdly, as the control on the use of public money gets tighter, there is
ever-greater pressure from the EU for States to open up the provision of
public services to competition in order to obtain value for money. For
some States, this has long been public policy; for others it is a recent
development. Increasingly the Court of Justice has been applying
pressure on national systems: it has ruled that the four freedoms and
competition rules, including state aids, apply to public services where
those services are seen as an economic activity.57 However, there has
been some sensitivity to the necessity, particularly in the case of SSGIs—
Page 8 of 12


1. Introduction
social services of general interest (eg home care for the elderly)—that EU
law should not interrupt the provision of quality services. So EU law has
carved out some exceptions to the rules.58
This tension between the economic and non-economic objectives of the

EU can be seen played out in other areas too. For example, in the field of
environmental law, where initially (p. 8) there was a perceived conflict
between environmental and economic objectives, EU law now attempts to
reconcile these objectives, either by trying to strike a balance between
competing environmental and economic objectives or by integrating
environmental and economic objectives through market-based
mechanisms and other innovative regulatory approaches, in particular as
regards climate change.59
4 Conclusion
The EU has fundamentally changed the relationship between

States and their citizens. It has also delivered reforms in major policy
areas and improved the daily quality of life for individuals—just think
about low-cost air travel; and the ready availability of abundant, good,
varied food (pasta, panettone, pancetta). However, national politicians
have been woefully bad at explaining the benefits of EU membership; and
very quick to blame the EU for things that go wrong.
The EU, too, has also been poor at making a successful case for its own
existence (and financial skulduggery has sullied its own image and
undermined trust in the EU). The justification for the existence of the EU
based on delivering peace in Europe no longer seems relevant to younger
generations. So a case based on output legitimacy needs to be made all
the more strongly for the EU to have legitimacy. And when the EU fails to
deliver on this, this precipitates a crisis in confidence in the EU: ‘What
has the EU ever done for me?’
But let’s consider the counter-factual. What if the EU ceased to exist,

would there be a need for an equivalent body? In a highly interrelated
globalized world with two power blocs, the US and China, and with the
other BRICs (Brazil, Russia, and India) coming up fast behind, European
States would need to form some kind of unit to get their voice heard on
the global stage. It may be that if the EU had to be recreated, it wouldn’t
look the same as it does now. But it is very likely that some pan-European
body would be created (as can be seen with newly created customs
unions emerging across the globe, such as the one between Russia,
Belarus, and Kazakhstan, and the East African Community). The question
then is, what would the European version look like—and how different
would it be from the EU we have today? The aim of this book is to help
readers understand what the EU is and why. They can then decide for
themselves whether it is a good thing—or not.
Page 9 of 12


1. Introduction
Notes:
1
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2480829/Bog-standard-Brussels-
demands-toilet-flush-Continent-discovering-Brits-use-
water.html#ixzz2llsEoH4v.
2
https://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/eco-labels-for-loos-stopping-cash-
going-down-the-toilet/.
3
A Commission study estimates that even with only 10 per cent market
penetration for eco-label toilets, the cumulative savings for households
alone across the EU would exceed £330 million (€388.5 million). With 20
per cent market penetration, that figure would roughly double. Pro rata
that would mean roughly £70 million in the UK, with at least as much
again saved by non-household users.
4
http://ec.europa.eu/environment/ecolabel/information-and-contacts.html.
5
See eg Commission Decision 2013/641 establishing the ecological
criteria for the award of the EU eco-label for flushing toilets and urinals
(OJ [2013] L299/38).
6
OJ [2010] L27/1.
7
This phrase was used by the then British Attorney General, Dominic
Grieve, in a newspaper interview http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/
politics/10469453/Dominic-Grieve-were-a-changing-nation-but-Im-an-
optimist.html.
8
M Cappelletti, M Seccombe, and JHH Weiler (eds), Integration through
Law (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1985).
9
For details, see chapters 11–16.
10
See respectively chapters 17 and 18.
11
For a more detailed overview of the development of the EU, see chapter
2.
12
For details, see chapter 20.
13
For details, see chapters 22 and 23.
14
15
For details, see chapters 12 and 16. For more on the concept of
neofunctionalism, see chapter 2.
16
17
18
On all of these issues, see chapter 24.
Page 10 of 12


1. Introduction
19 For details, see respectively chapters 25 and 26.
20 For an overview of EU enlargement, see chapter 2.
21 For details, see chapter 6.
22 For details of this debate, see chapter 7.
23On the political system, see chapter 3; on the judicial system, see
chapter 10; and on the decision-making process, see chapter 5.
26 See chapters 25 and 26.
27 See chapters 19 and 20.
28 For a detailed discussion, see chapter 4.
29On the failed attempt to draw up a Constitutional Treaty for the EU, see
further chapter 2.
30 See further chapter 24.
31 See the case studies in chapters 8 and 9.
33 See chapters 19, 25, and 26.
34 See chapter 13.
39 For further details, see chapter 9.
41 For further details, see chapters 13 and 16.
Page 11 of 12


1. Introduction
48 See chapter 27.
49 For details, see chapters 11–18.
51 For details, see chapters 20–26.
56 See further F Vandenbroucke, C Barnard, and G de Baere (eds), A

European Social Union after the Crisis (Cambridge: CUP, 2017
forthcoming). For the recent EU response, see https://ec.europa.eu/
commission/priorities/deeper-and-fairer-economic-and-monetary-union/
european-pillar-social-rights_en (last accessed 6 May 2017).
57 For details, see chapters 18 and 21.
58 See chapter 21.
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1.

European Union Law (2nd edn)

Publisher: Oxford University Press Print Publication Date: Jul 2017

Chapter: (p. 1) 1. Introduction

Author(s): Catherine Barnard and Steve Peers

Thus, contrary to popular misconception, EU rules are not all of the

2 The development of EU law

In the early days, the EU focused upon economic integration:

PRINTED FROM OXFORD LAW TROVE (www.oxfordlawtrove.com). © Oxford University Press,

Subscriber: University of Groningen; date: 20 June 2020

government support to industry, known as ‘state aid’.10 The basic idea

In the same vein, the EU agreed to further integration of Member States’

PRINTED FROM OXFORD LAW TROVE (www.oxfordlawtrove.com). © Oxford University Press,

Subscriber: University of Groningen; date: 20 June 2020

handicapped the EU in its ability to respond to the crisis—the German

PRINTED FROM OXFORD LAW TROVE (www.oxfordlawtrove.com). © Oxford University Press,

Subscriber: University of Groningen; date: 20 June 2020

and financial crisis linked to EMU) have an ever-greater impact upon

More broadly, the constitutional and administrative law of the EU as a

The chapters of this book are linked by overarching themes,

The question of what the EU should do is linked to the concept of ‘output

The consequence of successive crises (the financial crisis, the refugee

PRINTED FROM OXFORD LAW TROVE (www.oxfordlawtrove.com). © Oxford University Press,

Subscriber: University of Groningen; date: 20 June 2020

3.1 Input legitimacy

Moreover, these fundamental questions about the EU’s legitimacy raise a

PRINTED FROM OXFORD LAW TROVE (www.oxfordlawtrove.com). © Oxford University Press,

Subscriber: University of Groningen; date: 20 June 2020

powers’ between the EU and its Member States—and a horizontal issue—

What if individuals object to what the EU is doing? Do they have a voice?

3.2 Output legitimacy

The EU’s output legitimacy is explicitly or implicitly linked to its

PRINTED FROM OXFORD LAW TROVE (www.oxfordlawtrove.com). © Oxford University Press,

Subscriber: University of Groningen; date: 20 June 2020

services, and capital) has raised fundamental questions as to the ability of

Secondly, eurozone countries which are no longer free to devalue their

PRINTED FROM OXFORD LAW TROVE (www.oxfordlawtrove.com). © Oxford University Press,

Subscriber: University of Groningen; date: 20 June 2020

This tension between the economic and non-economic objectives of the

The EU has fundamentally changed the relationship between

But let’s consider the counter-factual. What if the EU ceased to exist,

PRINTED FROM OXFORD LAW TROVE (www.oxfordlawtrove.com). © Oxford University Press,

Subscriber: University of Groningen; date: 20 June 2020

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Subscriber: University of Groningen; date: 20 June 2020

19 For details, see respectively chapters 25 and 26.

20 For an overview of EU enlargement, see chapter 2.

21 For details, see chapter 6.

22 For details of this debate, see chapter 7.

24 For details, see chapter 8.

25 For details, see chapter 9.

26 See chapters 25 and 26.

27 See chapters 19 and 20.

28 For a detailed discussion, see chapter 4.

30 See further chapter 24.

31 See the case studies in chapters 8 and 9.

32 For details, see chapter 2.

33 See chapters 19, 25, and 26.

34 See chapter 13.

35 For details, see chapter 4.

36 For details, see chapter 5.

37 For details, see chapter 10.

38 For details, see chapter 8.