Abstract:
The essay presents a synthesis of the efforts made in view of a ‘codified’ private (civil) law at European level, from the viewpoint of the link with efforts to give European Union (EU) a constitutional basis, as a polity which goes beyond the economic-commercial area of the initial ‘common market’. The transition from the first European Communities of the 1950s to the European Union of the 1990s has led the European integration process towards new and more ambitious objectives and tasks, with the aim of strengthening Union’s institutional architecture as well as rationalizing and legitimizing its legal order, in terms of fundamental values and principles, to make it respectful of the rule of law and human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities. These evolutionary dynamics set in motion since the beginnings of the integration process for an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe, although still far from reaching the goal of a federation of Europe (such as predicted by the Schuman declaration of 9 May 1950 which officially started that process), point to the direction of empowering the Union’s political and institutional structure and character as an autonomous community of both states and citizens, ‘founded on the indivisible, universal values of human dignity, freedom, equality and solidarity’, so defined in the preamble of the Charter of fundamental rights of the Union. From this perspective, the central tenet of the paper is that a major and most fruitful integrative factor, of both theoretical value and practical effect, which sets the link between constitutionalization of European Union and Europeanisation of private law, is represented by the citizenship of the Union or, in a more emphatic and symbolic way of calling it, the European citizenship, as a ‘common citizenship’ triggering a new ‘legal subjectivity’ at European level.
Moccia, Luigi, European Private Law In-Formation (January 27, 2010). AA VV, Italy Law, Torino, Giappichelli, 2010, pp 183-207.
First posted 2016-06-15 06:24:12
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