This article examines the changes of the Lisbon Treaty to the rules on agreeing the European Union's (EU) annual budget and multiannual financial framework. The comparative budgets literature as well as theories of agenda-setting, veto players and empowerment of the European Parliament inform the analysis of how the EU's budgetary powers changed and the likely outcomes on spending. Overall, the powers of the European Parliament are reduced, the budget becomes more inflexible and, most significantly, the rules of the Lisbon Treaty have the effect of reducing the amounts available to spend. Although the Lisbon Treaty grants the European Parliament greater influence over ordinary EU legislation, national governments seem to have used the same treaty to send the Parliament's budgetary powers in the opposite direction and to curtail EU expenditure.

This paper explores subsidiarity as a constitutional principle in international law. Some authors have appealed to a principle of subsidiarity in order to defend the legitimacy of several striking features of international law, such as the centrality of state consent, the leeway in assessing state compliance and weak sanctions in its absence. The article presents such defences of state-centric aspects of international law by appeals to subsidiarity, and finds them wanting. Different interpretations of subsidiarity have strikingly different institutional implications regarding the objectives of the polity, the domain and role of subunits, and the allocation of authority to apply the principle of subsidiarity itself. Five different interpretations are explored, drawn from Althusius, the US federalists, Pope Leo XIII, and others. One upshot is that the principle of subsidiarity cannot provide normative legitimacy to the state-centric aspects of current international law on its own. It stands in need of substantial interpretation. The versions of subsidiarity that match current practices of public international law are questionable. Many crucial aspects of our legal order must be reconsidered – in particular the standing and scope of state sovereignty.

The European Union (EU) has been through many institutional transformations since the start of the integration project in the 1950s. While much of the literature has focussed on the more dramatic changes, less attention has been paid to instances of more limited institutional change. This article maps out and then accounts for the limitedness of the EU's departure from its original ‘federal blindness’ vis-à-vis regional actors. Theories of institutional change would lead one to expect that, as integration and regionalization heightened, endogenous pressures for change would trigger greater reform than that observed. Using a novel formula to estimate the EU's aggregate regionalization levels over time, the article demonstrates that it peaked between 1986 and 2003 but has since dropped to a level below that of the 1950s. Such a finding not only corrects a widespread assumption about regionalization levels in the European polity, but also provides an explanation for the pace and scope of the observed change as well as predictions about its future sources.

European External Action Service – Treaty of Lisbon – High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy – combination with role of Vice President of the European Commission responsible for external action – Institutional balance between the Commission and the Council – Curtailment in practice of High Representative's ‘Vice Presidential’ powers – Hybrid approach toward role of EEAS: both intergovernmental and communitarian

European Union – Common Foreign and Security Policy – Changes with the abolition of the pillar structure by the Lisbon Treaty – Common Security and Defence Policy – Executive order of the EU – Between supranationalism and intergovernmentalism – The role of the High Representative – Joint political leadership – The European External Action Service as an administrative infrastructure – Constitutionalisation of foreign affairs

Subsidiarity in the Treaty on the European Union and the Protocol on the application of the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality – Multi-level governance in federal and regional states – Belgian federalism – Necessity of dialogue – Difficulty of applying subsidiarity principle in a federal system based on exclusivity

Rule of law – Constitutional principle – Meaning – Scope of Application – Justiciability – Audit of the European Union's Constitutional Framework – Lisbon Treaty

‘Foreign relations power’ (auswärtige Gewalt) in the Federal Republic of Germany strongly centralised by the Lindau Agreement in 1957 – Although the German Länder still retain some rights to act at an international level, the Federal Government is the dominant player in the foreign relations of the state – Introduction of Länder participation in European Union law-making and policy-making; new opportunities for them to perform a role in external relations – Cooperative character of German federalism confirmed

We as constitutionalists owe it to ourselves and even to the 500 million other citizens of a member state and of the Union at the same time, to come up with a legally and constitutionally readable understanding of the situation. It must not be one suffering from the split between international and domestic public law. It must not mystify the Union as a completely original structure, intelligible only in its own terms. Such understanding should encompass not only the limits but also the logic of the situation; not only its mechanics but also its evolution. It should be intelligible for the public. It should allow for the multiple dualities of loyalty, of function, of legitimacy. It should allow for shared authority. Constitutional thought is well equipped to deal with actual duality and ambivalence. These characteristics of the Union are real and are here to stay.

Introduction

Each time users connect to the internet or make a phone call, they leave ‘digital fingerprints’ which may turn out to be useful for identifying people involved in a crime or an act of terrorism. This is why there is great interest by law enforcement authorities in gaining access to traffic and location data, relying on the forced co-operation of telecommunication and internet providers. However, the effectiveness of compelling these service providers to retain such data for the purpose of fighting crime has been questioned. Moreover, data retention obligations interfere with the right to privacy of individuals, as protected by Article 8 European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR); therefore, they may be imposed only for a legitimate objective, i.e. to protect citizens' safety, and in full respect of the principle of proportionality.

German Constitutional Court decision of 30 June 2009 on the compatibility of the Lisbon Treaty with the German Constitution – Continuing sovereignty of member states under the EU Treaty – Extended constitutional limits to European integration (‘eternity clause’) under German Constitution, but these are not violated by Lisbon Treaty – Composition of European Parliament does not satisfy fundamental requirement of democracy but does not violate German Constitution since EU is not a state – Critical assessment of conceptual foundations of decision

German Constitutional Court decision of 30 June 2009 on the compatibility of the Lisbon Treaty with the German Constitution – Analysis of inconsistencies – Differences between the EU and a state – Sovereignty of the member states and Kompetenz-Kompetenz – Argument for a relative concept of sovereignty – Sovereignty and the right to withdraw – Critical analysis of BVerfG's assessment of the EU's democratic deficit and denial of the importance of the European Parliament

The Bundesverfassungsgericht was castigated for the Maastricht-Urteil by most European lawyers, especially the Germans among them. But that judgment has placed its stamp on much of the constitutional development of the Union and has allowed theories of constitutional pluralism, polycentrism, multilevel constitutionalism, Verfassungsverbund and the constitution composée to flourish. The German constitutional court is likewise being castigated for its Lissabon-Urteil. Certainly, it has put the questions of democracy, the level at which democracy is to be aggregated and articulated, and the pertaining institutional arrangements in the member states and in the Union higher on the agenda of intellectual and political engagement than they have been over the last decades. Perhaps it will be just as fruitful for European constitutional theory as the Maastricht-Urteil was.

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.

German Constitutional Court decision of 30 June 2009 on the compatibility of the Lisbon Treaty with the German Constitution – ‘Identity’ key word of the Lissabon-Urteil – The national identity clause in the current Union Treaty – Nation: people and state; diachronic and synchronic identity – Constitutional patriotism – The national identity clause in the Lisbon Union Treaty – Volksidentität and state identity – Verfassungsidentität: diachronic identity – Identité constitutionnelle de la France: synchronic identity – confidence and diffidence in the Union

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.