The Many Faces of Differentiation in EU Law

Front Cover
Bruno de Witte, Dominik Hanf, Ellen Vos
Intersentia nv, 2001 - 390 pages
The introduction by the Amsterdam Treaty of the flexibility clauses, authorising a majority of Member States to cooperate more closely in areas covered by the Treaties, has been received with mixed feelings. Flexibility is by no means a new phenomenon in the EU's development. It has been on the Community's agenda already since the 1970s. The Single European Act introduced several provisions allowing for flexible approaches to the single market, whilst the Maastricht Treaty launched a differentiated approach to the EMU and social policy. In addition to these forms of differentiation in primary Community law, for many years there has also been a number of quite important, though less visible, forms of differentiation in secondary Community law. This book aims to link both levels of differentiation and seeks to unveil the many faces of differentiation in EU law. It analyses whether, and to which extent, there is a shift in European integration from a system of unity and uniformity to one of flexibility and differentiation. A first series of contributions to the book analyse a number of exemplary policy fields (EMU, social policy, environment, free movement of persons, justice and home affairs) in order to identify their degree of differentiation. A second set of contributions examine various 'horizontal' institutional matters of cross-sectoral importance. These two main parts are framed by introductory articles on the development of flexibility and by contributions drawing on the constitutional limits to differentiation. The contributions are made by Dominik Hanf, José M. de Areilza, Jean-Victor Louis, Sean Van Raepenbusch, Ludwig Kramer, Georgia Papagianni, Grainne de Burca, Ellen Vos, Linda Senden, Sacha Prechal, Wouter Devroe, Deirdre Curtin, Bruno De Witte, Eddy De Smijter en Jan Wouters.
 

Contents

Flexibility Clauses in the Founding Treaties from Rome to Nice
3
Towards Less Flexibility?
27
Differentiation and the
43
Flexibility in Social Policy
65
Differentiation in EU Environmental Policy
83
an Old Phenomenon Taking
101
Legal Principles as an Instrument of Differentiation?
131
Differentiation Harmonisation and Governance
145
Differentiation in and through Community Soft
181
Neglected Players? The Role of the National Judiciary and
201
Differentiation by Means of Partial
231
The External Relations of a Differentiated European Community
269
the Principle of Equality
301
Emerging Institutional Parameters and Organised Difference
347
from Differentiation to the Avantgarde
379
Copyright

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