Chapter 5 looks closely into the notion of law of the Union established by the EAEU Treaty. It analyses the sources of law of the Union and proceeds with clarifying their hierarchy and legal force. It also analyses the place of direct applicability, direct effect and primacy in the EAEU pertaining to legal order autonomy. Eventually it turns to the provisions of Member States’ national legislation vis-à-vis EAEU law. The three founding Member States have been deeply involved in Eurasian integration. The process of drafting the EAEU Treaty required alignment with the generally recognised principles of international law, national legislation of Member States, taking into account international experience, but not the least with national constitutions. Therefore, in principle, tensions between the legal orders of the EAEU and its Member States should have been minimized from the outset. This chapter shows that it is not necessarily so in two case studies: Russia and Belarus. The former has had the most controversial encounters with external legal orders, including that of the EAEU, which was eventually ossified in the ensuing constitutional amendments in this regard. The latter has the strictest constitutional limitations, which have direct bearing on the EAEU legal order.

The chapter focuses on the interaction between European law and national criminal legislation, analysed in the light of the fundamental principles underpinning their relationship, especially the principle of primacy and the duty of loyal cooperation. After distinguishing between direct and indirect effects, paragraph 2 turns to the principle of primacy of EU Law. This cornerstone concept of Union Law affects domestic legislation in so far as it ‘neutralizes’ incompatible domestic criminal law through interpretation and disapplication of inconsistent provisions. This principle develops into a duty of loyalty for Member States (para. 3) which are thus bound to respect and enforce the rules and laws of the EU so as to secure the full and effective implementation of European criminal law in accordance with Art. 4 (3) TEU. Paragraph 4 examines how EU law penetrates the national legal systems of the Member States, focusing on the role of national judges that let European Law enter into the realm of national legal orders. This power represents the most relevant and disruptive manifestation of the ‘internal’ criminal effects of EU law. Selected case law will further demonstrate how EU law applies to and influences domestic criminal legal systems.

In exploring supremacy, this chapter aims to explain how the EEC became a new form of international organisation, or a supranational organisation, the only one of its kind. It will discuss the development of a supranational polity with strong independent powers and the establishment of founding principles which are key to the autonomy of the EU as we know it today. It will also highlight the attitudes of the member states. The chapter begins with a summary of the seminal case, van Gend en Loos. This case is often discussed as a revolution in EU law but recent research suggests that this decision was in fact the culmination of a gradual change in the opinion of legal scholars on how EU law should operate. The case will serve as a launch pad into discussion of the controversies that continue to give rise to lively debate on EU law and European integration. While exploring the facets of the concept, the chapter will intertwine debates about the legislative and judicial dimensions. It will also consider the theoretical and practical legal and political challenges to which it has given rise. The chapter will end with consideration of why supremacy was accepted.

It is an understatement to say that law is important in the process of European integration. Understanding the EU without understanding the particular (and peculiar) role that law has assumed in the first decades of European integration is impossible. By making it legally impossible for Member States to resist the application of both specific norms of EU law and the general objectives of European integration, EU law gets European integration ‘done’. The CJEU’s understanding of the EU legal order as something that is hierarchically superior and autonomous from national legal systems, however, irritates national legal systems, which are increasingly articulating limits to the process of ‘integration through law’. This tension has become more pronounced as the EU moves into policy domains that are politically more salient and touch on Member States’ core powersThis indicates a fragility at the core of an EU that is, fundamentally, a legal order.

This chapter introduces the major components of the Water Quality Act of 1987. The chapter guides the reader through the six major titles included in the Water Quality Act, and describes the various programs and functions. The chapter also provides in-depth discussion of the elements of the Clean Water State Revolving Fund program, including the use of leveraging, the reporting and accountability elements of the program, and mechanisms such as the Letter of Credit and the importance of state primacy.

What will be the contours of the “post-post-Cold War” world? This chapter takes up that question by examining the defining international and domestic characteristics of this new age and assessing their similarities with previous eras. We begin by identifying three defining attributes of the Cold War: ideological clash, limited economic exchange, and nuclear arms racing between the American and Soviet-led blocs. Next, we explore the central feature of the post-Cold War era - namely, American primacy. We then examine the trends that have eroded primacy's material underpinnings and produced new domestic and International conditions — global power shifts, technological change, and sociopolitical fragmentation -- then project forward how those trends are likely to evolve over the next ten to fifteen years. Finally, we examine the extent to which those trends are distinct from, or continuous with, the conditions facing the United States during the Cold War and post-Cold War eras, and find that some important continuities remain even as meaningful discontinuities will disrupt existing patterns of international order. The chapter concludes by arguing that the post-post-Cold War world requires a new strategic approach for the United States — one guided by a principle of openness, rather than Cold War-style containment or post-Cold War-style liberal universalism.

Against weaker states and nonstate actors, powerful air forces working with competent proxy ground forces have been militarily effective in almost all cases, but their political effectiveness has varied by ambition and target. Air power was most likely to be politically effective in denial strategies against weak states but least effective when attempting to coerce nonstate actors by punishment. Air power was far more effective in breaking armies and toppling regimes than restoring political order in the aftermath of regime change. Some but not all of the strategies of the age of primacy will survive the transition to an age of great power rivalry. The persistence of small wars against nonstate actors will leave space for refinement of advisory models, close air support, and counter-network targeting. But missions that were feasible in an era of unchallenged air supremacy – CAS and persistent ISR – may become extinct against enemies possessing resilient IADS and long-range strike capabilities of their own.

Chapter 5 addresses the role of the foundational principles of EU law – primacy, direct effect, consistent interpretation and state liability – in ensuring the proper functioning of the internal market. The EU-specific principles are compared with their equivalents in public international law and in the EEA, the Energy Community, the ECAA and the Transport Community legal orders. The analysis helps to determine the implications of a possible absence of the supranational principles in the agreements exporting the acquis on the effectiveness of the acquis transferred to third countries by means of agreements operating under public international law.

Chapter 6 faces the final challenge to international courts' intervention, the fear that their intervention would lead to bad outcomes because it would change the incentives of relevant parties. It is true that domestic officials operate under the shadow of potential international intervention and this may give them bad incentives. The chapter demonstrates how the rules of admissibility used by international criminal tribunals can affect the incentive of national authorities on the one hand and individuals on the other hand. Understanding the interaction of officials on several levels helps to determine which rule of admissibility, complementarity or primacy, will lead to greater deterrence of international crimes. These admissibility rules can also determine the willingness of countries to submit to the jurisdiction of international courts, to begin with.

Art. 4(2) TEU provides that the European Union (EU) shall respect Member States’ national identities, inherent in their fundamental structures, political and constitutional, inclusive of regional and local self-government. This chapter examines the extent of this duty resting on the EU with regard to both the content and normative functions of the identity clause. Analysed against the backdrop of multilevel constitutionalism, an understanding of the identity clause as a Verbundnorm is proposed. The chapter outlines this understanding and shows how it helps untangle and explain in detail the modality and extent of the connection between the identity clause and the Member States’ constitutional identity debates. Building on this, the chapter then explains how application of the identity clause can be aimed at establishing and ensuring the functioning of the European legal system as a whole.

On the face of it, from the perspective of some orthodox EU lawyers, constitutional identity may sound like another open-ended limit to EU integration – and a limit of the worst kind. Admittedly, if over-extensively relied on and construed in a very conservative manner, identity can be a powerful weapon in the hands of constitutional court justices who would somehow transfer warfare between Member States from actual frontlines to judicial terrain. Yet this chapter argues that there are not only – or perhaps even mainly – vices attached to national constitutional identity, at least in the French approach. As long as it is used wisely, that concept may indeed have several virtuous effects at the systemic and also the substantive level. It is ultimately for the alchemists of constitutional identity (that is, constitutional courts, in conjunction with the Court of Justice of the European Union) to decide to make of that concept either a bridge between legal orders, a porous boundary, or a thick and high wall.