The Treaty of Lisbon and the Future of European Law and Policy

• Report rights infringement
• published: 16 Jul 2012
• views: 369

BOOK REVIEW THE TREATY OF LISBON AND THE FUTURE OF EUROPEAN LAW AND POLICY Edited by Martin Trybus and Luca Rubini Edward Elgar Publishing ISBN: 978 0 85793 255 6 www.e-elgar.com 'AFTER LISBON' PERSPECTIVES ON LAW AND GOVERNANCE OF THE EU An appreciation by Phillip Taylor MBE and Elizabeth Taylor of Richmond Green Chambers What are the powers held by the European Union post-Lisbon? What are the innovations the treaty implements, or attempts to implement? What are its shortcomings? Whatever your own answers might be, not to mention your multitude of questions, you'll find much to think about and discuss in the pages of this book, recently published by Edward Elgar who are a family business in international publishing. Of special interest to specialist EU lawyers, academics, graduate students and theorists within the EU as well as outside it, the book is a compilation of learned articles and essays from no less than 25 contributors, all offering special insights, information and analysis from their respective areas of expertise. Mainly legal scholars and academics from the European Union itself, they range from -- to cite just two examples -- Erkki Aalto, who among other things, is a defence counsellor at the Permanent Representation of Finland to the EU and at the Mission of Finland to NATO in Brussels... to Julian Nowag, a researcher in competition law currently at the Law Faculty at Oxford. The editors, Martin Trybus and Luca Rubini, are respectively Director and Deputy Director of the Institute of European Law at the University of Birmingham. Also worthy of note is the preface by Gisela Stuart, who writes on the European Union and the Rule of Law. As MP for Edgbaston, Birmingham, Stuart, was one of the 13 people who drafted the Constitutional Treaty and offers a few trenchant words on the distinction that needs to be drawn between 'Europe' -- a geographical and historical entity and the European Union, 'a post-World War II construct of currently 27 nation states.' Her remarks include the observation that 'democratic checks and balances are missing in the Union' She concludes that 'if the European Union wants to survive, it has to anchor itself in the democratic institutions of the nation state, not try to replace them.' To these comments, we would be tempted to add the opinion of the editors that it is 'a pity that with the Treaty of Lisbon, the word "community" has disappeared from EU jargon'. As you will have by now concluded, this book is a mine of considered, diverse, learned and often contrary and controversial insights and opinions from leading experts in European law and policy. One of the basic themes throughout however, is that because of the Lisbon Treaty's shortcomings, another major treaty will be inevitable in the future. For EU lawyers and researchers into the complexities of the Treaty of Lisbon, this extensively footnoted book offers interesting background perspectives and should be considered a must-have acquisition, especially with its abundance of research materials, including tables of legislation and of cases. There's also a detailed index which facilitates and simplifies use. The publication date is cited as at 2012.