The correlation of European and national identity in the doctrine and practice of the Court of Justice of the EU

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Author: Tatiana Vasilieva

DOI: 10.21128/1812-7126-2023-3-90-104

Keywords: European Union; EU Member States; European identity; national identity; European values; principles of the EU law; Court of Justice of the EU

Abstract

Identity is a multidimensional concept that allows for different interpretations. In the European Union, the concepts of European identity and national identity are used in political documents, Treaties and decisions of the Court of Justice of the EU. European identity is based on a commitment to common principles that express European values. National identity is inherent in EU Member States’ fundamental political and constitutional structures, including regional and local self-government. The concept of national identity has become prominent in European legal discourse since the mid-2000s, when the Constitutional Courts of EU Member States started to put it forward as a limitation on the excessive, in their opinion, promotion of European integration. Until recently, the Court of Justice of the EU did not use the notion of European identity in its decisions. In 2022 it used the notion of “identity” in the context of the European legal order for the first time and defined the content of a national constitutional identity that is acceptable from the point of view of EU law by not contradicting the common values of the Union. The doctrinal development of the concept of European identity, like national identity, will be determined by the development of jurisprudence clarifying the content of European legal categories and principles through dialogue between the Court of Justice of the EU and the Constitutional Courts of the EU Member States.

About the author: Tatiana Vasilieva – Doctor of Sciences in Law, Associate Professor, Chief Research Fellow, Human Rights Department, Institute of State and Law, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia.

Citation: Vasilieva T. (2023) Sootnoshenie evropeyskoy i natsional’noy identichnosti v doktrine i praktike Suda ES [The correlation of European and national identity in the doctrine and practice of the Court of Justice of the EU]. Sravnitel’noe konstitutsionnoe obozrenie, vol. 32, no. 3, pp. 90–104. (In Russian).

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