This book offers four stimulating views on European integration and law. Four experts in the fields of European law, private law, criminal law and company law discuss to what extent European integration has affected their respective fields of interest. In addition to this, they offer their views on the future of European integration. This makes this book indispensable to anyone interested in the European Union and its all pervasive influence on national law. The contributors are Deirdre Curtin, Jan Smits, Andr Klip and Joseph A. McCahery. This volume marks the 25th anniversary of the Faculty of Law of Maastricht University. In these 25 years, the Maastricht Faculty of Law has become a forerunner in European legal education and research. It offers the European Law School program and hosts the Ius Commune Research School.

This book examines the concept of political community beyond the Nation State and discusses its possible structure in the context of the European Union. It explores the evolution of political identity within the context of the Nation State, and considers the manner in which international organisations in general have affected the "shared understandings" which have evolved over the course of time. It concludes that it is only in the context of the European Union that the public realm of politics within the constituent Nation States has been consistently undermined. The book suggests that the notion of democracy beyond the Nation State is a feasible concept, and thereby seeks to adopt more deliberative ideas of democracy than the representative model favoured by the Nation State. Two particular factors are developed in this context: the growth "from below" of a nascent European "civil society" and the potential offered by advanced information technology in terms of facilitating the future emergence of postnational political identity, complementary to national political identity.