European Integration and the Legal System

Abstract

In this paper, I chart the evolution of the European Community, combining three different perspectives. First, I examine the major features of the integration process since 1959. The evidence shows that European market and polity developed symbiotically, as the activities of economic actors, organized interests, litigators and judges, and the EC's legislative and regulatory organs became linked, creating a self-sustaining, dynamic system. Second, I provide an overview of the 'constitutionalization' of the treaty system, and survey the activities of the European Court. Among other things, constitutionalization secured property rights for transnational market actors, expanded the discretionary powers of national judges, and reduced the EC's intergovernmental character. Third, I examine in detail the impact of the adjudicating the Rome Treaty's free movement of goods provisions (Art. 28-30) on the market building and political integration.