The European Union's values - enshrined in Article 2 TEU - have come under severe pressure in several Member States. In response, the Court of Justice has set a spectacular development in motion. With its ruling in Associação Sindical dos Juízes Portugueses it activated the Union's common values and positioned Article 2 TEU at the very heart of its jurisprudence. Turning Article 2 TEU into an operational, judicially applicable provision, the Court has begun to assess the Member States' constitutional structures against these yardsticks. Since then, the jurisprudence has evolved with remarkable speed. EU Values Before the Court of Justice provides a first comprehensive study of the judicial mobilisation of Article 2 TEU. It starts by developing the foundations of this emerging jurisprudence in empirical, doctrinal, and theoretical terms. In this book, Spieker seeks to advance a new understanding of Article 2. He argues that the provision should be understood as having a dual character that resonates between two dimensions, namely an EU dimension limited to the EU legal order and a 'Verbund' dimension that extends to the common whole of the Union and its Member States. Article 2 plays different roles in these two spheres - as thick constitutional core of the EU legal order and as thin constitutional frame for the 'Verbund'. This dual character should guide the provision's future judicial development. The book sets out to explore the multifaceted potential of Article 2 TEU in each of these two dimensions. As such, it goes far beyond the current focus on illiberal developments in Member States and strives to broaden our horizon for the judicial mobilisation of EU values. The book closes by assessing the risks of placing an activated Article 2 into the hands of Luxembourg judges and proposes ways to recalibrate the jurisprudence.

This article seeks to explore whether the EU system of fundamental rights protection allows room for constitutional pluralism. By looking at recent developments in the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union (the Court of Justice), it is submitted that the Court has answered that question in the affirmative, thereby respecting the diversity of the cultures and traditions of the peoples of Europe as well as their national identities. The application of the Charter does not rule out a cumulative application of fundamental rights. That being said, pluralism is not absolute, but must be weighed against the indivisible and universal values on which the European Union is founded.Logically, the question that arises is how we order pluralism. In this regard, I shall argue that it is not for the Court of Justice to decide when an EU uniform standard of fundamental rights protection is to replace (or coexist with) national standards. That decision is for the EU political institutions to adopt, since they enjoy the necessary democratic legitimacy to determine the circumstances under which the exercise of a fundamental right is to be limited for reasons of public interest.However, this deference to the EU political branches does not mean that EU legislative decisions are immune from judicial review. On the contrary, cases such as Schwarz and Digital Rights demonstrate that the Court of Justice is firmly committed to examining whether those legislative choices comply with primary EU law, and notably with the Charter. In this regard, when interpreting the provisions of the Charter, the Court of Justice - in dialogue with national courts and, in particular, constitutional courts - operates as the guarantor of the rule of law within the EU, of which fundamental rights are part and parcel. It is thus for those courts to make sure that each and every EU citizen enjoys a sphere of individual liberty which must, as defined by the Charter, remain free from public interferences.

Examining the growing issue of EU Member States' defiance in the face of EU law, this volume outlines the development and history of this crisis, and offers a theoretical and comparative analysis of the difficulties the EU is facing in their attempts to enforce Member State to comply with European integration, suggesting solutions for the future.

Scientific Study from the year 2020 in the subject Politics - Topic: European Union, , language: English, abstract: The book treats the role, status and nature of the European Union in the contemporary international relations, with special emphasis on the value corpus and potential of the European Union in relation to other actors on the global political stage. In this context, the operationalization and rationalization of the nature of the European Union, i.e. its postmodern determination and the deeply planted modern core, composed of 27 sovereign member states, is being established. The book also analyzes the institutional and political architecture of the Lisbon Treaty, especially in the area of EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy, as well as the legal implications of this Treaty for the further development and transformation of the EU into a political union. The book also discusses the status and role of the EU in relation to the BRICS grouping and their external and internal value capacity, in the context of the contemporary international liberal order, taking into account the new global deviations, such as the rise of populism and illiberalism in Europe and the world. Immediately after that, the EU’s relations with China are analyzed, taking into account the Chinese ‘project of the century’, embodied in the ‘Belt and Road Initiative’, considered as a process of expansion of Chinese influence in the global context. In the context of the EU’s establishment as an actor in international relations, special attention is paid to the imperial past of its member states, especially since out of 27 EU member states, 10 of them are former colonial empires. Hence, conclusions are drawn about the possibilities for deepening the cooperation between the EU member states with their former colonies (today sovereign states), but this time in the favor of the European Union's global goals and interests. Finally, the book analyzes the EU’s projections on the creation of a new, post-American international context, according to its ‘ideological baggage’ composed of the values of multilateralism, regionalism and institutional creativity, as a ‘community of values’, firmly constituted on the power of law, instead of on the right of force.

Who are the Europeans? How do they think? What values do they hold dear? What binds them and what divides them? This atlas summarizes the outcomes of the European Values Study, combined with results from the World Values Survey, two projects that have measured values over the past three decades. The European Values Study project is run by researchers from 33 countries and is administered by Tilburg University, the Netherlands. The Atlas presents European ideas and beliefs in the form of graphs, charts and maps. Values such as democracy, freedom, equality, human dignity and solidarity are held by almost all Europeans, but the survey points to differing views about marriage, religion, work and such topics as euthanasia, happiness, sexuality and death. This unique Atlas covers all European nations from Iceland to Turkey, from Portugal to the Ukraine. It graphically illustrates the rich diversity that is Europe.