German Federal Constitutional Court: Constitutional Ultra Vires Review of European Acts Only Under Exceptional Circumstances; Decision of 6 July 2010, 2 BvR 2661/06, Honeywell

Extract

After the German Federal Constitutional Court's (FCC) issuance of the Lisbon decision, a judgment that is generally considered to be a verdict critical of European integration as well as a measure to widen the scope of constitutional review of EU acts, many observers wondered what would happen next. Would the German court finally begin to look for an open conflict with the EU, or would the court's bark once again be worse than its bite? This had already seemed to be the case after the Maastricht decision, the slimmer and legally more coherent predecessor of the Lisbon judgment, after which the court deliberately missed the opportunity to take a shot at the Banana conflict between the EU and the WTO.