Constitutional consequences of the EU membership

This scientific publication contains the presentations given in the international conference ‘The Constitutional Consequences of the EU Membership’, organized by the colleagues of the Constitutional Law Department of Law Faculty, University of Pécs, in 7-10 October 2004. The Conference was financially supported by the Hungarian National Research Found, and was a final event of the OTKA Research Programme T/308 414. Let me introduce in short the research programme called ‘Relations between the national and supranational constitutional systems and the routes of development of the Hungarian constitutional system in the light of the European accession. The members of the research team (Professor Antal ADAM, Dr József PETRÉTEI, Dr Nóra CHRONOWSKI, Dr István ILLÉSSY, Dr Péter TILK) chose the topic 3 years ago as they had realised that the approaching day of the Hungary’s accession to the EU does not alarm the Government, public authorities and society groups to make preparations for the changes of public law environment and also, to start debates on constitutional reforms regarding to the membership in a supranational organisation. The researchers aimed firstly, to analyse die constitutional consequen- ces of the EU Membership and die constitutional nature of die Union, as well as to make suggestions for domestic public law-making. The research consisted of two main themes. The first one concentrated on the supranational structures and especially on the constitutional law of the EU. Although the P1U does not have a written accepted constitution as yet (despite of the Treaty on Constitution — that still bears the notions of an international treaty and is under ratification procedure of the Member States), there are already many institutional and constitutional principles, rules and processes going on in the EU, which can be labelled as the ’EU constitutional developments’. This part of the research focused in particular on the following topics: the existence of an EU/EC-Constitution, the judicial constitutional interpretation of the existing treaties and the oudook for a written EU-Constitution in the (near) future; the function of ’the rule of law’ in European integration process, as defined in die Treaties and the case law of the ECJ; division of powers and the integration: institutional balance, separation of powers between EU and the Member States under the scope of implied powers doctrine, subsidiarity and flexibility; the problems and alternatives of democracy in the Union: international, supranational and member state level approach of European governance; European dimensions of the protection of human rights.