Large-scale migration constitutes an unavoidable social reality within the European Union. A European polity is made possible and tangible by the individual acts of migrants crossing the internal borders, developing a transnational life and integrating into European societies. Consequently, migration has become a special feature of the self-understanding of the European Union: its existence depends upon a continuing flow of persons crossing the borders of the Member States, and also upon the management of the flows of third-country nationals knocking at its doors. To respond to this challenge, the Union has developed common European migration policies. This book is a collection of essays which aim to explore a selected number of issues related to the development of these policies. It presents the current state, and the future of European immigration law discussing the political rationales and legal competences driving the action of the Union in this area. It reflects on the cooperation of the Union with third countries and on the emergence of international migration legal norms. It illustrates the role of the European Courts and the emergence of new actors through the adoption of EU instruments.

The classic debate surrounding the prolific role of the European Union in defining spheres of competence and power relationships has long divided scholarly opinion. However, in recent years, the long-standing acquiescence to the broad powers of the Union has given way to the emerging perception of a competence problem in Europe. For a long period it was taken for granted that the European Community could act whenever its action was justified on the basis of the widely interpreted objectives of the Treaties. However this context has since changed. There is a widespread perception of a competence problem in Europe and the overabundance of provisions limiting the Union's competences is one of the most obvious marks left by the Lisbon Treaty. This book discusses the extent to which the parameters of power throughout the Union and its Member States have been recast by the recent implementation of the Lisbon Treaty and doctrines developed by the European Court of Justice. Comprised of contributions from a vast array of leading practitioners and academics in the field of EU Law, this volume assesses the debate surrounding the political identity of the European Union, and further illustrates the relevance of the Federal theory of sharing competences for the development of EU Law. Finally, the question of new potential limits to Union's competence is addressed. If anything, this broad reflection on the notion of competence in the EU law context is a way of opening up the question of the nature and contours of the political identity of the European Union.

This book revisits, in a new light, some of the classic cases which constitute the foundations of the EU legal order and is timed to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Rome Treaty establishing a European Economic Community. Its broader purpose, however, is to discuss the future of the EU legal order by examining, from a variety of different perspectives, the most important judgments of the ECJ which established the foundations of the EU legal order. The tone is neither necessarily celebratory nor critical, but relies on the viewpoint of the distinguished line-up of contributors - drawn from among former and current members of the Court (the view from within), scholars from other disciplines or lawyers from other legal orders (the view from outside), and two different generations of EU legal scholars (the classics revisit the classics and a view from the future). Each of these groups will provide a different perspective on the same set of selected judgments. In each short essay, questions such as 'what would have EU law been without this judgment of the Court? what factors might have influenced it?; did the judgment create expectations which were not fully fulfilled?' and so on, are posed and answered. The result is a profound, wide-ranging and fresh examination of the 'founding cases' of EU law.

The European Union places the 'individual' or person, 'at the heart of its activities'. It is a central concept in all of EU economics, politics, society and ethics. The 15 chapters in this innovative edited collection argue that EU law has had a transformative effect on this concept. The collection looks at the mechanisms used when 'constructing the person' in EU law. It goes beyond traditional literature on 'Europe and the Individual', exploring the question of personhood through critical and contextual perspectives. Constructing the Person in EU Law: Rights, Roles, Identities brings together contributions and debates from experts around Europe to this key question.