The European court of Justice (ECJ) has the stance that EU-law, within the confines of EU competence, has primacy over national law, regardless of its source, even if it’s the national constitutions. Although generally the ECJ:s stance is accepted, sometimes it is instead the EU that has had to indirectly (through inaction) accept the conclusions of the national constitutional courts. When this happens, it can however only be noticed as the EU commission’s decision to not start infringement proceedings against the member state, and as such it appears as a legal vacuum or absence of enforced law. Inside this vacuum there is lacking enforcement of EU-law, which the member states can use as a de facto exemption from EU-law to regain or uphold national sovereignty. Thus the member states can fill the vacuum by deciding cases on the basis of their own constitutional law rather than (the unenforced) EU-law. It appears to be an in EU-law unregulated transfer of sovereignty. This paper intends to shed light on possible problems that arise in this situation due to the lack of legality and certainty that ensues from these exemptions from EU-law being upheld through the inaction of the commission rather than positive legal regulation. I will also attempt to find a coherent model for the explanation of this seemingly contradictory situation, describing it as a “sovereignty-vacuum”, an opposing but related concept to the “exemption” of Carl Schmitt. Through use of Schmitt’s political theology, I attempt to find a solution to the problem of legality with an analogy to the concept of “mercy” and “forgiveness” in the context of constitutional law. Ultimately, I propose a solution de lege ferenda that these implicit exemptions from EU-law be written down as explicit exemptions.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-501458 |
| Date | January 2023 |
| Creators | Liljeström, Leo |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Juridiska institutionen |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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