Lisbon decisions of the constitutional courts in Austria, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Latvia and Poland from a comparative perspective – Democracy, sovereignty and identity – Permeability of national and supranational law – Ratification of the Lisbon Treaty and its constitutional foundations – Procedural background and legal outcome of the Lisbon decisions – Differences of institutional self-conception – Parliamentary responsibility for integration – Prior parliamentary assent to the future application of ‘dynamic treaty provisions’ – Different conceptions of national and multi-levelled democracy – Popular vote – Constitutional limits to European integration – Limits indicating the necessity of an amendment and limits protecting the inalienable substantial core of a constitutional order – German Bundesverfassungsgericht only court in Europe spelling out an eternity clause in a detailed, catalogue style manner – Judicial restraint – Ultra vires and identity review – Article 4.2 TEU as an integration clause of EU law and not a derogation clause – Comparative dialectics

On 3 November 2009 the Czech Constitutional Court gave its second ruling within a year on the Treaty of Lisbon. The Court squarely rejected the complaints against the Treaty. For scholarship the most interesting characteristic of the ruling is the way the Court distanced itself from the Lissabon-Urteil of the Bundesverfassungsgericht in such unequivocal terms that the judgment's central passages deserve a place in this issue, even though we only dispose of a provisional translation by Jan Komárek and cannot make comments available yet. As it did in the previous judgment on the Lisbon Treaty of 28 November 2008, the Czech Court again belies the established idea that eastern European constitutional courts take the Bundesverfassungsgericht as their guide.

On 26 November 2008 the Czech Constitutional Court (hereinafter Court) handed down a long-awaited opinion in which it unanimously found the Lisbon Treaty (hereinafter Treaty) to be compatible with the Czech constitutional order. The decision has drawn broad attention at all levels, be it political circles, academia or even general public. It is certainly one of the most significant decisions in the Court's history and it has EU-wide implications.

Czech Lustration Acts: basic features – Among the most far-reaching in the postcommunist countries in Europe – Challenges for the rule of law – 2001: Czech Constitutional Court upholds their validity – Case-law of the European Court of Human Rights – ‘Transition-to-democracy’ circumstances that justified their adoption have ceased to exist

Selection and nomination of constitutional justices – American model of judicial review in post-communist countries – Tensions between parliamentary supremacy and excessive activism of Constitutional Courts – Possibility of reappointment and the independence of justices – Lack of cooperation between President and Senate in the Czech Republic – Politicization of judicial nomination and democracy.