¹ Recently, a significant increase in the case-law on the identity-clause was accompanied by an impressive burst in the literature on the topic. For books entirely dedicated to the topic, see Cloots, Elke, National Identity in EU law (2015); Francois Xavier Millet, L'Union Europeenne et l'identite constitutionnelle des Etats membres (2013); Alejandro Saiz Arnaiz & Carina Alcoberro Llivinia, National Constitutional Identity and European Integration (2013); L'identite constitutionnelle saisie par les juges en Europe (Laurence Burgorgue-Larsen ed., 2011). From the German speaking literature, see Schwerpunkthema, in Susanne Baer et al., Jahrbuch des öffentlichen Rechts der Gegenwart (2015).Google Scholar

² See Benhabib, Seyla, The Rights of Others: Aliens, Residents, and Citizens (2004).Google Scholar

³ These considerations open the formidable history of postwar Europe. See Judt, Tony, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 (2006).Google Scholar

⁴ On the Motto of the EU, see Toggenburg, Gabriel N., Unity in Diversity: Searching for the Regional Dimension in the Context of a Someway Foggy Constitutional Credo, in An Ever More Complex Union 27–56 (2004).Google Scholar

⁵ More than ten years ago, it was noted that “to protect national sovereignty is passé; to protect national identity by insisting on constitutional specificity is à la mode.” Weiler, J. H. H., A Constitution for Europe? Some Hard Choices,Google Scholar

40 JCMS J. Common Mkt. Stud. 563–80, 569 (2002). On the importance of the innovation in the European vocabulary, see Claes, Monica, National Identity: Trump Card or Up for Negotation?, in National Constitutional Identity and European Integration 109, 110 et seq. (Alejandro Saiz Arnaiz & Carina Alcoberro Llivinia eds., 2013). It is telling enough that Flaubert described the concept of constitutional identity in its “Dictionary of Received Ideas” (1911) as “national or nationalistic delirium, dogmatic caprice of law professors, identity card of nation states, modern variation of the idea of sovereignty.” Laurence Burgorgue-Larsen, L'identité constitutionnelle en question, in L'identite constitutionnelle saisie par les juges en Europe 155, 155 (Laurence Burgorgue-Larsen ed., 2011).Google Scholar

⁶ In 1992, a national identity clause was first inserted in the Treaty of Maastricht. Article F (1) TEU recognized such obligation by plainly stressing that “the Union shall respect the national identities of its Member States.” Article F (1) TEU of the Maastricht Treaty was later replaced by Article 6 (3) TEU of the Amsterdam Treaty in 1997, which then gave way to Article 4 (2) TEU of the Lisbon Treaty in 2009, currently in force.Google Scholar

⁷ According to some authors, the identity clause was introduced as a counterbalance of the principle of EU law primacy. See Armin von Bogdandy & Stephan Schill, Overcoming Absolute Primacy: Respect for National Identity under the Lisbon Treaty, 48 Common Mkt. L. Rev. 1417–53 (2011); Theodore Konstadinides, Constitutional Identity as a Shield and as a Sword: The European Legal Order within the Framework of National Constitutional Settlement, 13 Cambridge Yearbook. Eur. Leg. Stud. 195, 198 (2012).Google Scholar

⁸ On the role played by the identity-clause as a constitutional price paid to the objective of a further political, economic and constitutional integration within the EU, see Claes, supra note 5, at 118; Cloots, supra note 1, at 63, 82, 179, 184.Google Scholar

⁹ The first provision in a European Treaty that explicitly mentioned national identity was Article F of the TEU (post-Maastricht version): “the Union shall respect the national identities of its Member States, whose system of government are founded on the principles of democracy.”Google Scholar

¹⁰ See Claes, supra note 5, at 118.Google Scholar

¹¹ Article 4(2) of the Treaty of Lisbon Amending the Treaty on European Union and the Treaty Establishing the European Community art. 3a, Dec. 13, 2007, 2007 O.J. (C 306) 1.Google Scholar

¹² Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union preamble, 2010 O.J. (C 83) 2, at 391.Google Scholar

¹³ The new wording of the identity clause “distances the notion of national identity in Article 4(2) TEU from cultural, historical or linguistic criteria and turns to the content of domestic constitutional orders.” Cf. von Bogdandy & Schill, supra note 7, at 1422. For an account in the same sense, see Claes, supra note 5, at 116.Google Scholar

¹⁴ The “constitutionalization” of the phrasing of the identity clause go back to the so -called Christophersen clause of the ill-fated Treaty establish a constitution for Europe, as elaborated by the working group V of the Convention, chaired by Mr. Christophersen. For a detailed discussion of the genesis of Article 4(2) TEU, see Guastaferro, Barbara, Beyond the Exceptionalism of Constitutional Conflicts: The Ordinary Functions of the Identity Clause, Yearbook Eur. L. 263–318 (2012).Google Scholar

¹⁵ See Kumm, Mattias, The Jurisprudence of Constitutional Conflict: Constitutional Supremacy in Europe before and after the Constitutional Treaty, 11 Eur. L.J. 262–307 (2005).Google Scholar

¹⁶ Damian Chalmers, Gareth Davies & Giorgio Monti, European Union law: Cases and Materials 202 (2010).Google Scholar

¹⁷ For some meaningful examples, see Cloots, supra note 1, at 1.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Weiler, supra note 5, at 569.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Cloots, supra note 1, at 174.Google Scholar

²⁰ For a critique of the use of the term identity in many fields, see Niethammer, Lutz, Kollektive Identität. Heimliche Quellen einer unheimlichen Konjunktur (2000).Google Scholar

²¹ Michel Rosenfeld, The Identity of the Constitutional Subject: Selfhood, Citizenship, Culture, and Community 243 (2009). This interpretation key to constitutional identity was recently undertaken by Liav Organd. See Orgad, Liav, The Cultural Defense of Nations: A Liberal Theory of Majority Rights (1st ed. 2016).Google Scholar

²² Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (1995).Google Scholar

²³ Michel Rosenfeld, Constitutional Identity, in The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Constitutional law 756–76, 757 (2013).Google Scholar

²⁴ Rosenfeld, supra note 21, at 249.Google Scholar

²⁵ Case 294/3, Les Verts, ECR 1986-4. See also Opinion 1/76, ECR 1977-I para 12; Case C-2/88, Zwartfeld, ECR 1990-7 I; Case C-134/91, Beate Weber v. European Parliament, ECR 1993-I, p.1093, para 8.Google Scholar

²⁶ Armin von Bogdandy, Founding Principles of EU Law: A Theoretical and Doctrinal Sketch, 16 Eur. L.J. 95–96 (2010). The ECJ referred to the Treaties as the “constitutional charter of the EU” in the famous Les Verts case (ECJ Case 294/83 Les Verts v European Parliament [1986] ECR 1339, para 23) and later on referred to the “basic constitutional charter,” the “constitutional principles,” and “constitutional guarantees” of EU law. See Joined Cases C-402/05 P and C-415/05 P, Yassin Abdullah Kadi and Al Barakaat International Foundation v. Council of the European Union and Commission of the European Communities [2008] ECR I-06351 (Kadi I), paras. 5, 285, 290.Google Scholar

²⁷ Cristoph Möllers, Pouvoir Constituant—Constitution—Constitutionalisation, in Principles of European Constitutional law 169, 195 (von Bogdandy & Bast eds., 2d ed. 2010).Google Scholar

²⁸ See Kumm, supra note 15, at 263.Google Scholar

²⁹ The notion of constitutional identity already entered the German Federal Constitutional Court case law as early as 1974 in the Solange I decision, then the Federal Constitutional Court interpreted the German basic law's identity as limiting the transfer of powers at European Level in force of the principle of openness. The notion of identity laid on the background for several years, and took center stage again in 2009 in the Lisbon Judgement.Google Scholar

³⁰ Already in Solange I (BVerfG, BVerfGE 37, 271, May 29, 1974), the German Federal Constitutional Court affirmed that Article 24 of GG “does not open the way to amending the basic structure of the Basic Law, which forms the basis of its identity” (Rn. 43). For a contextualization of this decision within the German doctrinal struggle to accept the primacy of EU law, see Davies, Bill, Resistance to European Law and Constitutional Identity in Germany: Herbert Kraus and Solange in its Intellectual Context, 21 Eur. L.J. 434–59 (2015).Google Scholar

³¹ This expression was firstly used by Paolo Barile. See Barile, Paolo, Ancora su diritto comunitario e diritto interno, in 6 Studi per il ventesimo anniversario dell'Assemblea costituente 33–54 (1969).Google Scholar

³² In the OMT saga, the German Federal Constitutional Court outlined a relation between ultra vires and identity review, specifying that the former is a species of the genus of the latter. See BVerfG, Case 2 BvR 2728/13, para. 153, June 21, 2016, https://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/SharedDocs/Entscheidungen/EN/2016/06/rs20160621_2bvr272813en.html. For more on this point, see Payandeh, Mehrdad, The OMT Judgment of the German Federal Constitutional Court: Repositioning the Court within the European Constitutional Architecture, 13 Eur. Const. L. Rev. 400, 414 (2017).Google Scholar

³³ The term “eternity clause” may be misleading, as constitutional identity itself is a dynamic concept, subject to transformation and reinterpretation. For this relativity of the eternal, see Jacobsohn, Gary Jeffrey, Constitutional Identity 325–26, 363 (2010); Rosenfeld, supra note 21, at 209. For a different account on this point, see the article by Monika Polzin in this special issue, where she affirms that “constitutional identity and the content of eternity clauses should not be equated.” Monika Polzin in this volume, 18 German L.J. (2017). We may agree on this assertion, but we hold eternity clauses—where present in constitutional texts—as fundamental, even if not exclusive, sources of the constitutional identity of a given Constitution.Google Scholar

³⁴ The debate on eternity clauses and unconstitutional constitutional amendments became a classic one in the postwar developments of constitutionalism. For a detailed overview of this debate, and a precious contribution to it, see Roznai, Yaniv, Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendments: The Limits of Amendment Powers (2017).Google Scholar

³⁵ Neil Murphy, Article 4(2) TEU: A Blow to the Supremacy of Union Law, 20 Trinity C. L. Rev. 94, 111 (2017).Google Scholar

³⁶ For the basis for image of constitutional identity used as a shield or a sword, see Konstadinides, supra note 7.Google Scholar

³⁷ See Kumm, Mattias, Moral Point of Constitutional Pluralism. Defining the Domain of Legitimate Institutional Civil Disobedience and Conscientious Objection, in Philosophical Foundations of European Union Law 216–46 (Julie Dickson & Pavlos Eleftheriadis eds., 2012); Julio Baquero Cruz, Legal Pluralism and Institutional Disobedience in the Eruopean Union, in Constitutional Pluralism in the European Union and Beyond 249–68 (Matej Avbelj & Jan Komárek eds., 2012).Google Scholar

³⁸ See Kumm, supra note 37, at 237.Google Scholar

³⁹ The “federal blindness” could be considered a species of the genus “constitutional blindness.” For the federal blindness, see Ipsen, Hans Peter, Als Bundesstaat in der Gemeinschaft, in Probleme des europäischen Rechts: Festschrift für Walter Hallstein zu seinem 65. Geburtstag 248–65 (Ernst Caemmerer, Hans Jürgen von Schlöchauer, & Ernst Steindorff eds., 1966).Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Schmid, Christoph U., All Bark and No Bite: Notes on the Federal Constitutional Court's “Banana Decision”, 7 Eur. Law J. 95–113 (2001); Joseph H. H. Weiler, The “Lisbon Urteil” and the Fast Food Culture, 20 Eur. J. Int'l L. 505, 505 (2009).Google Scholar

⁴¹ BVerfG, BVerfGE 37, 271, May 29, 1974.Google Scholar

⁴² See Corte Cost., 27 dicembre 1973, n. 183, Giur. it. 1973, II, 2401 (It.).Google Scholar

⁴³ See BVerfG, 2 BvE 2/08, para. 252, June 30, 2009, https://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/SharedDocs/Entscheidungen/EN/2009/06/es20090630_2bve000208en.html.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ See Court, Hungarian Constitutional, Case 22/2016 (XII. 5.) AB, Nov. 30, 2016, hunconcourt.hu/letoltesek/en_22_2016.pdf.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Supreme Court of Denmark, Case 15/2014, Dec. 6, 2016, http://www.supremecourt.dk/supremecourt/nyheder/pressemeddelelser/Pages/TherelationshipbetweenEUlawandDanishlawinacaseconcerningasalariedemployee.aspx.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Corte Cost., 26 gennaio 2017, n. 24, Foro it. 2017, II, 394 (It.), translated in Order No. 24 — Year 2017, Corte costituzionale, http://www.cortecostituzionale.it/documenti/download/doc/recent_judgments/O_24_2017.pdf.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ BVerfG, 2 BvR 2735/14, Dec 16., 2015, https://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/SharedDocs/Entscheidungen/EN/2015/12/rs20151215_2bvr273514en.html. The OMT saga was recently followed by a new reference for preliminary ruling in the so-called Quantiative Easing case, BVerfG, 2 BvR 859/15, Jul 18., 2017, http://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/SharedDocs/Entscheidungen/DE/2017/07/rs20170718_2bvr085915.html.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ The German Federal Constitutional Court interestingly affirmed that the identity review under German constitutional law does not violate EU law. On the contrary, it is in line with the principle of sincere cooperation and inherent in the concept of Article 4(2) TEU. See BVerfG, 2 BvR 2735/14, Rn. § 44).Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Corte Cost., 22 ottobre 2014, Foro it. 2015, I, 1152 (It.), translated in Judgment No. 238 — Year 2014, Corte costituzionale, http://www.cortecostituzionale.it/documenti/download/doc/recent_judgments/S238_2013_en.pdf.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ See Court, Czech Constitutional, Case Pl. ÚS 5/12 Slovak Pensions XVII, Jan. 31, 2012, https://www.usoud.cz/en/decisions/20120131-pl-us-512-slovak-pensions/.Google Scholar

⁵¹ The Czech Constitutional Court harshly criticized the ECJ decision, noting that “failure to distinguish the legal relationships arising from the dissolution of a state with a uniform social security system from the legal relationships arising for social security from the free movement of persons in the European Communities, or the European Union, is a failure to respect European history, it is comparing things that are not comparable.” Id. Google Scholar

⁵² ECJ, Case 26-62, Van Gend & Loos, [1963] ECR 1. On the exceptionalism of the European constitutional path, see Joseph H. H. Weiler, In Defence of the Status Quo: Europe's Constitutional Sonderweg, in European Constitutionalism Beyond the State 7–25 (Marlene Wind & Joseph H.H. Weiler eds., 2003).Google Scholar

⁵³ Article 2 states that one of the objectives of the EU is “to assert its identity on the international scene, in particular through the implementation of a Common Foreign and Security Policy, including the progressive framing of the Common Defence Policy.” A similar wording was restated in the Preamble of the TEU with the Treaty of Lisbon, stating thatGoogle Scholar

to implement a common foreign and security policy including the progressive framing of a common defence policy, which might lead to a common defence in accordance with the provisions of Article 42, thereby reinforcing the European identity and its independence in order to promote peace, security and progress in Europe and in the world.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ This process of recognition of a European identity through differentiation with other countries and their foreign policy already emerged in the Copenhagen Summit Declaration of December 14, 1973, where the (then) nine foreign ministers referred to the diversity of cultures and to a common heritage, emphasizing the rule of law, representative democracy, social justice and respect for human right as “fundamental elements of European Identity”. See Document on the European Identity, Copenhagen Summit Declaration, December 15, 1973. On this document, see Claes, supra note 5, at 115.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ For this perspective, see Armin von Bogdandy, The European Constitution and European Identity: Text and Subtext of the Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe, 3 Int'l J. Const. L. 295–315 (2005).Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Daniel Sarmiento, The EU's constitutional core, in National Constitutional Identity and European Integration 177, 187 (Alejandro Saiz Arnaiz & Carina Alcoberro Llivinia eds., 2013). According to the same author, the EU's constitutional core is founded on “three normative ideals” that “can be expressed under the generic categories of Democracy, Rights and Solidarity.” Id. at 180.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Article 2 states that “the Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities. These values are common to the Member States in a society in which pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and equality between women and men prevail.”Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Case C–402/05 P and C–415/05, P. Kadi and Al Barakaat International Foundation v. Council and Commission [2008] ECR I–6351.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Referring to the principles enshrined in the (then) Article 2 EEC, the Court held that this Article “cannot impose legal obligations on Member States or confer rights on individuals”: Case 126/86, Giménez Zaera [1987] ECR 03697, at 11Google Scholar

⁶⁰ Sarmiento, supra note 54 at 184.Google Scholar

⁶¹ Armin Von Bogdandy et al., Reverse Solange—Protecting the Essence of Fundamental Rights Against EU Member States, 49 Common Mkt. L. Rev. 489–519 (2012).Google Scholar

⁶² On the primacy of EU law in relation to national constitutional law, see ECJ, Case 11/70, Internationale Handelsgesellschaft, [1970] CR 1125, para. 3; ECJ, Case 106/77, Simmenthal, [1978] ECR 629, paras. 21 et seq.; ECJ, Case 149/79, Xommission v. Belgium, [1980] ECR 3881, para. 19; ECJ, Joined Cases C-46 & 48/93, Brasserie du Pêcheur and Factorartame II, [1996] ECR I-1029, para. 33; ECJ, Case C-473/93, Commission v. Luxemburg, [1996] ECR I-3207, paras. 37 et seq.; ECJ, Joined Cases C-10/22/97, IN.CO.GE.'90 et al., [1998] ECR I-6307, paras. 11, 20 et seq.; ECJ, Case C-285/98, Tanja Kreil, [2000] ECR I-95, paras. 25 et seq.; ECJ, Case C-213/07, Michaniki, [2008] ECR I-9999, paras. 62 et seq. Google Scholar

⁶³ See ECJ, Case C-285/98 Tanja Kreil v. Bundesrepublik Deutschland [2000] ECR I-69.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Kumm, supra note 15, at 297.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ Protocol No. 17 (the “Grogan Protocol”) of the Maastricht treaty provided that “nothing in the TEU, or in the Treaties establishing the European Communities, or in the Treaties or Acts modifying or supplementing those Treaties, shall affect the application in Ireland of Article 40.3.3. of the Constitution of Ireland.” The Protocol was reaffirmed in successive treaty amendments, and is still in force, after being object of reassurances in “the Guarantees” drafted after the Irish “No” in the referendum on ratification of the Lisbon Treaty.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ For an analysis of the use of differentiated integration as a means of accommodation of constitutional identity-related conflicts in the EU, see Faraguna, Pietro, Taking Constitutional Identities Away from the Courts, 41 Brooklyn J. Int'l L. 492 (2016), http://brooklynworks.brooklaw.edu/bjil/vol41/iss2/2.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Leonard F. M. Besselink, National and Constitutional Identity Before and After Lisbon, 6 Utrecht L. Rev. 36, 44 (2010).Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Gareth Davies, Constitutional Disagreement in Europe and the Search for Pluralism 5 (Eric Stein Working Paper No 1/2010, 2010).Google Scholar

⁶⁹ For an account in this sense, see Zdenek Kühn, Ultra Vires Review and the Demise of Constitutional Pluralism: The Czecho-Slovak Pension Saga, and the Dangers of State Courts' Defiance of EU Law, 23 Maastricht J. Eur. Competition L. 185–194 (2016).Google Scholar

⁷⁰ See von Bogdandy & Schill, supra note 7, at 1419.Google Scholar

⁷¹ The abovementioned Slovak Pension saga represents a clear example of disagreement on the scope and content of the Czech constitutional identity.Google Scholar

⁷² The struggle over interpretative authority of the constitutional identity depends on the constitutional tradition of the country and may not necessarily be settled within the internal constitutional order itself. As a matter of principle, helpful indications may derive from the authority of reviewing unconstitutional constitutional amendments. Should the judiciary have such a power, then it is reasonable to accord to the judiciary a prominent role in interpreting the State's constitutional identity. On the contrary, where unconstitutional constitutional amendments are not reviewed by the judiciary, the interpretation of the member state constitutional identity should rely on different sources—political statements, parliamentary resolutions.Google Scholar

⁷³ For an overview of both constitutional system accepting and rejecting judicial review of constitutional amendments, see Gábor Halmai, Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendments: Constitutional Courts as Guardians of the Constitution?, 19 Constellations 182–203 (2012).Google Scholar

⁷⁴ von Bogdandy and Schill, supra note 7.Google Scholar

⁷⁵ However, similar objections may be raised to judicial interpretation of constitutional identities, as in these cases “defending the constitutional identity of the state and its core values turns out in many cases to a defence of some hermeneutic foible adopted by five judges against four.” See Weiler, supra note, 52 at 17.Google Scholar

⁷⁶ See Cartabia, Marta, Europe and Rights: Taking Dialogue Seriously, 5 European Constitutional Law Review, 5-31 (2009) and Marco Dani, National Constitutional Courts in Supranational Litigation: A Contextual Analysis, 23 European Law Journal 189–212 (2017).Google Scholar

⁷⁷ Id. at 17.Google Scholar

⁷⁸ See Claes, supra note 5, at 135.Google Scholar

⁷⁹ See id. at 125.Google Scholar