The Internal Market Ideal

The Internal Market Ideal honours the pathbreaking work of Professor Stephen Weatherill, Jacques Delors Professor of European Law at the University of Oxford since 1998. For more than three decades, Professor Stephen Weatherill has been the dominant figure in internal market debates, shaping the European Union's Internal Market both at Oxford and internationally. Looming large in fields as disparate as consumer protection and sports law, his voice has guided how relevant laws and regulations are understood and how their varying virtues and pitfalls are perceived. A reference to his seminal work The Internal Market as a Legal Concept (OUP, 2016), the present volume is not simply a celebration of Weatherill's life, but also an examination of the legal issues surrounding the semi-integrated market of the European Union. Across nineteen essays, the collection presents a vision of the European Union not yet achieved; that is, a Union which benefits from economic growth and pursues non-economic objectives, whilst carefully balancing respect for Member States' autonomy and the European Union's self-sufficiency. An invaluable resource for students, researchers, practitioners, and policy makers in the field of European Law, The Internal Market Ideal, is a must read for anyone wishing to learn more about the illustrious life and work of Professor Stephen Weatherill.

The Internal Market Ideal is an essay collection honouring Professor Stephen Weatherill. A reference to his seminal work The Internal Market as a Legal Concept (OUP, 2016), this volume celebrates Weatherill's scholarship and examines the legal issues surrounding the semi-integrated market of the European Union.

1: The Internal Market as a Legal Concept 2: Finding the Internal Market in the Treaty 3: The Law, Politics, and Economics of the Internal Market 4: Principal Themes and Structure 5: The Internal Market 6: The Internal Market 7: The Personal Scope 8: Justification 9: Creativity in the Gap Between Negative and Positive Law: The Principle of Conferral Unleashed 10: Abuse 11: Fundamental Rights and National Identity in the Internal Market 12: The Internal Market as a Site of Diversity 13: The Legislative Dimension: Harmonization 14: Legislative Competence More Broadly 15: Pre-emption 16: Conclusion.

While the internal market has been at the heart of the European project from the very beginning, it has rarely been the subject of sustained and comprehensive scholarly examination in its entirety. In the face of profound legal, political and policy pressures, this timely Research Handbook reflects on the cutting-edge issues, horizontal themes and the big questions which illuminate the shape of the internal market. It places the law and policy of the internal market within the context of the financial crisis and the existential questions this has raised for future European integration.

Evidence taken before Sub-committee B (Internal Market)

How can the concept of abuse of European Union law – which can be defined as undesirable choice of law artificially made by a private citizen – generate so much disagreement among equally intelligent individuals? Seeking to transcend the classical debate between its supporters and adversaries, the present study submits that the concept of abuse of EU law is located on three major fault-lines of EU law, which accounts for the well-established controversies in the field. The first fault-line, which is common to all legal orders, opposes legal congruence (the tendency to yield equitable legal outcomes) to legal certainty (the tendency to yield predictable legal outcomes). Partisans of legal congruence tend to advocate the prohibition of abuses of law, whereas partisans of legal certainty tend to oppose it. The second fault-line is specific to EU law and divides two conceptions of the regulation of the internal market. If economic integration is conceived as the promotion of cross-border competition among private businesses (the paradigm of 'regulatory neutrality'), choices of law must be proscribed as abusive, for they distort business competition. But if economic integration is intended to promote competition among Member States (the paradigm of 'regulatory competition'), choices of law by EU citizens represent a desirable process of arbitrage among national laws. The third and final fault-line corresponds to the tension between two orientations of the economic constitution of the European Union, namely the fear of private power and the fear of public power. Those who fear private power most tend to endorse the prohibition of abuses of law, whereas those who fear public power most tend to reject it. Seen in this way, the concept of abuse of EU law offers a forum in which fundamental questions about the nature and function of EU law can be confronted and examined in a new light. In May 2013, the thesis that this book was based on won the First Edition of the European Law Faculties Association Award for Outstanding Doctoral Thesis.

Il libro costituisce un’introduzione al diritto del mercato interno europeo ed illustra e analizza l’evoluzione della disciplina del mercato interno e le sue caratteristiche e categorie giuridiche principali (Cap. 1 – Raffaele Torino), la libera circolazione delle merci (Cap. 2 – Federico Raffaele), la libera circolazione delle persone (Cap. 3 – Filippo Palmieri), la libera prestazione dei servizi e il diritto di stabilimento (Cap. 4 – Arianna Paoletti) e la libera circolazione dei capitali e dei pagamenti (Cap. 5 – Ilaria Ricci).

This edited collection explores the legal foundations of the single market project in Europe,and examines the legal concepts and constructs which underpin its operation. While an apparently well-trodden area of EU law, such is the rapid evolution of the European Court's case law that confusion persists as to the meaning of core concepts. The approach adopted is a thematic one, with each theme being explored in the context of the different freedoms. The themes covered include discrimination, horizontality, mutual recognition, market access, pre-emption and harmonization, enforcement, mandatory requirements, flexibility, subsidiarity and proportionality. Separate chapters explore the link between competition law and the single market, the rapidly evolving case law on capital, and the external dimension of the single market. Contributors also address the WTO dimension, and its important implications for the single market project in Europe.