Joint Workshop Integration or Absorption? Legal discourses in the enlarged Union Coordinated by Prof. Hubert Heinelt; Prof. Rainer Schmalz-Bruns, Dr. Tanja Hitzel- Cassagnes, Tobias Auberger CONNEX Network of Excellence in cooperation with Technical University Darmstadt & University of Hanover Research Group / Work Package: RG 2 & RG 6, Cross-cutting activity: Joint workshop Title of the workshop: Integration or Absorption? The development of legal discourses in the enlarged Union. Responsible persons: Prof. Dr. Hubert Heinelt (TU Darmstadt), Prof. Dr. Rainer Schmalz-Bruns (Leibniz University Hanover), Dr. Tanja Hitzel-Cassagnes(Leibniz University Hanover), Tobias Auberger (Leibniz University Hanover) Date and Place: Hanover, September 28 th to 30 th 2006
Programme: Thursday, 28.09.06 Chair: Rainer Schmalz-Bruns 14:00 16:00 Cultural Constitutionalism Ulrich Haltern, University of Hanover Constitutional Identities Agostin Menendez, University of Leon, ARENA 16:30 17:30 The Polish Constitutional Tribunal in the European Union: Integrated, Absorbed or Detached? Rafał Mańko, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Amsterdam Institute of Private Law 20:00 Dinner Friday, 29.09.06 Chair: Tanja Hitzel-Cassagnes 09:00 10:45 Supremacy of EC Law in the new Member States: An Assessment of the Case-Law in the Light of Co-operative Constitutionalism Anneli Albi, University of Kent, Law School Constitutional Monologues, Constitutional Dialogues or Constitutional Cacophony? European Arrest Warrant Saga in Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic Zdenek Kühn, Charles University Prague, Law School
11:15 13:00 European Civic Culture and Neutralisation of Ethnonationalism Jiri Priban, Cardiff University, Cardiff Law School Enlargement and the Constitutional Discourse in the EU: Contributions by the new Member States Wolfgang Weiß, Oxford Brookes University, Law Department Lunch-break Chair: Tobias Auberger 14:30 15:30 The Practice of Applying the Stability and Growth Pact Contestation, Interpretation and Legal Adjustment Uwe Puetter, Central European University, Budapest, Center for Policy Studies 16:00 17:00 The Activation of Citizenship: Gender Equality in the European Employment Strategy Thomas Pfister, Queens University Belfast 20:00 Dinner Saturday, 30.09.06 Chair: Nadja Meisterhans, University of Hanover 9:00 10:45 Dark Legacies Patricia Chiantera-Stutte, University of Bari The Invisible Constitution: Making Meaning Account-able for Democratic Politics Antje Wiener, Queens University, Belfast 11:15 13:00 EU-Enlargement and Legal Conflicts. Principled or Incidental? Tobias Auberger/Tanja Hitzel-Cassagnes, University of Hanover Procedural Law within the European Union Hubert Heinelt, Darmstadt University of Technology End of Workshop
Participants Albi, Anneli, University Kent Auberger, Tobias Chiantera-Stutte, Patricia, University of Bari Haltern, Ulrich, Hitzel-Cassagnes, Tanja, Hubert Heinelt, TU Darmstadt Kühn, Zdenek, Charles University Law School, Prague Mańko, Rafał, Amsterdam Institute of Private Law, Universiteit Van Amsterdam Meisterhans, Nadja, Leibniz University Hanover Menendez, Agostin, ARENA / Universidad de Léon Pfister, Thomas, Queens University, Belfast Priban, Jiri, Cardiff Law School, Cardiff University Puetter, Uwe, Center for Policy Studies, Central European University Budapest Schmalz-Bruns, Rainer Weiß, Wolfgang, International Law and Public Law, Brookes University, Oxford Wiener, Antje, Queens University, Belfast A.Albi@kent.ac.uk t.auberger@ipw.uni-hannover.de chianterastutte@email.it LS.Haltern@jura.uni-hannover.de t.hitzel-cassagnes@ipw.uni-hannover.de heinelt@pg.tu-darmstadt.de kuhnz@prf.cuni.cz R.T.Manko@uva.nl n.meisterhans@ipw.uni-hannover.de a.j.menendez@arena.uio.no t.pfister@qub.ac.uk Priban@cardiff.ac.uk Puetteru@ceu.hu r.schmalz-bruns@ipw.uni-hannover.de wweiss@brookes.ac.uk a.wiener@qub.ac.uk
Goals and achievements Conceptual Background: The processes of law-making within the European Union can be described in terms of ongoing disputes between a heterogeneous set of actors and institutions this process is not only characterised by a dominant role of case-law but, in general, by an increasing juridification of political interactions. That is to say, in particular, that, within political processes institutions and actors communicate predominantly in a mode of juridical reasoning referring to legal procedures and normative principles. Consequently, the juridification of political discourses is constituting deliberative processes of reason-taking and reason-giving. In a broader sense one can assert that in the framework of legal discourses, actors cannot escape structural imperatives forcing them to justify their positions and goals. It is, in particular, the structural and institutional embeddedness, and the socialising effects of this embeddedness that fosters the justification of normative convictions with reference to mutually acceptable reasons. Regarding the recent enlargements of the European Union, one might expect a changing dynamic of the discursive configuration within the Union because the institutional socialisation might highly vary with respect to the different legal cultures of the (new) European member states. Goals: Thus, one of the objectives of the workshop was to examine the role and the impact of divergent national legal backgrounds and cultures with regard to further developments of European lawmaking and application on the one hand, and to discuss potential paradigmatic and principled conflicts (similar to conflicts arising from differences between common-law and civil-law traditions for instance, or from north-south divides regarding transparency rules and equality rights, etc.). The new member states, so the expectation, might invoke different expectations, dissimilar normative principles and legal interpretations in participating in European discourses. Another intention was to focus on the generation and use of different legal policy instruments in implementing European Law, esp. in transposing the acquis communautaire into the national legal system. In this respect, the workshop particularly wanted to address questions of the handling of hard law - vs. soft law -instruments accordingly to distinct legal settings and discursive backgrounds: Is soft and hard law conceived as being equally legitimate and effective regardless national legal backgrounds, histories, cultures? Regarding the latter aspects the workshop intended to combine perspectives from RG 2 dealing with problems of democratic governance and RG 6 dealing with the assessment of policy-instruments and processes.
Achievements: The workshop papers as well as the vivid and fruitful discussion illustrated that the difficulties of integrating a set of plural normative expectations which are often ascribed to the enlargement of the European Union are far from being uniquely problems of the recent enlargement-processes. Especially the processes of European constitutionalisation, i.e., the (mutual) adjustment of the national and European legal systems fostering cooperation on the one hand while respecting the integrity of the members on the other hand, have always been, and will continue to be in an enlarged setting, problems inherent to the very structure of the European Union as a transnational polity. Considering the different case studies about the constitutional systems of the new member states, and the conceptual, normative and political studies of the European Union at stage, the workshop may provide us with the conclusion that, from a functional as well as from a normative perspective, the enlargement process can be considered to reveal underlying tensions and frictions inherent to European integration from the start. Insofar, the workshop successfully shed new light on the enlargement process and on the range of appropriate evaluation in analytical as well as in normative terms, i.e. at questions dealing with the idea of unitas in pluralitate. Planned outcome (publication, further meetings) We have planned to approach an international journal for editing a special issue on the basis of the workshop papers. Two of the papers are currently under review and hopefully going to be published in reviewed journals, while two other papers were presented as chapters of book projects. The involvement of Ph.d students Three PhD students participated in the workshop. Tobias Auberger and Thomas Pfister presented their own papers, Nadja Meisterhans chaired one panel.