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First published in 1997. Article 224 is one of the most powerful Articles of the Treaty of Rome, allowing a member state to take unilateral measures and to suspend some or all its Treaty-based obligations in times of what can loosely be described as serious internal turmoil or external threat. It is for this reason that the very next Article of the Treaty, Article 225, allows the Commission or a member state to challenge invocation of Art.224, before the European Court of Justice (ECJ), on grounds of improper use. In practice, the use of Art.224, by a member state presents multiple problems. The obvious connection with defence and security issues has inhibited the ECJ which still has not given and authentic interpretation of this Article. As the recent former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) cases (Greek referral for the embargo on FYROM) indicate, unless the use of Art.224 is blatantly flippant, the ECJ is not in a position to challenge a member state's unilateral measures.

This title provides a comprehensive article by article commentary of the EU's citizenship directive. In doing so it offers readers a 'one-stop' guide to a fundamental legislative act that governs the right of European Union citizens and their family members to travel to or take up residence in other member states of their choosing.

In response to the rise of authoritarianism in Poland and Hungary, several prominent scholars have called upon the EU to intervene in order to protect its constitutional values. One of the strongest albeit controversial arguments in favour of an intervention is that the EU is a form of transnational 'militant democracy'. This chapter partly agrees with this assessment. The post-WWII European 'constitutional imagination' is shaped by the interwar collapse of the European legal and political order. This led to the development of a new form of post-fascist constitutionalism founded upon a 'fear of the people'. Within post-fascist constitutionalism, 'Europe' promises to save the European peoples from themselves. Nevertheless, this type of constitutionalism is not dominant in all the Member States. At least two other varieties of constitutionalism influence the EU Member States – 'evolutionary constitutionalism' and 'post-communist constitutionalism' – both of which have an ambiguous, yet intimate, relationship to the project of European integration.

To contribute to the debate as to whether volunteering is an outcome of democratization rather than a driver of it, we analyze how divergent democratization pathways in six countries of the former Soviet Union have led to varied levels of volunteering. Using data from the European Values Study, we find that Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia—which followed a Europeanization path—have high and increasing levels of civil liberties and volunteering. In Russia and Belarus, following a pre-emption path, civil liberties have remained low and volunteering has declined. Surprisingly, despite the Orange Revolution and increased civil liberties, volunteering rates in Ukraine have also declined. The case of Ukraine indicates that the freedom to participate is not always taken up by citizens. Our findings suggest it is not volunteering that brings civil liberties, but rather that increased civil liberties lead to higher levels of volunteering.

Healthcare has only slowly appeared on the European Union's (EU) policy agenda. EU involvement in policies concerning the organization, financing and the provision of diagnosis, care and cures to ill people developed along three fragmented tracks: (a) EU public health policies concerning the well-being of all people; (b) the application of the free movement principle to national healthcare systems in particular by the EU's Court of Justice (CJEU); and (c) the austerity packages and the stricter EU surveillance of national budgets since the debt crises. The key questions of this special issue are whether this fragmented EU involvement has now developed into a distinct European healthcare union, and if so what its driving forces have been. Thus, it explores how European integration in healthcare has moved forward despite widespread reluctance. It also examines the underexplored political dynamics and implementation of CJEU case law. The conclusion is that a fragile European healthcare union is emerging. A distinct area of EU health law has come into existence, whereas an institutional structure has given a voice to health expertise. A certain commonality in patients' rights has also emerged. The EU's budgetary surveillance deeply intrudes into healthcare policies, but here the involvement of health actors has remained limited. The European Commission and the CJEU have played an important role in the European integration of healthcare policies, but reluctance towards EU intrusion into national healthcare systems left an emphatic mark on CJEU case law, its codification in EU law and its implementation. Variants of the multiple streams approach appeared to be helpful to explain this evolution. ; Healthcare has only slowly appeared on the European Union's (EU) policy agenda. EU involvement in policies concerning the organization, financing and the provision of diagnosis, care and cures to ill people developed along three fragmented tracks: (a) EU public health policies concerning the well-being of all people; (b) the application of the free movement principle to national healthcare systems in particular by the EU's Court of Justice (CJEU); and (c) the austerity packages and the stricter EU surveillance of national budgets since the debt crises. The key questions of this special issue are whether this fragmented EU involvement has now developed into a distinct European healthcare union, and if so what its driving forces have been. Thus, it explores how European integration in healthcare has moved forward despite widespread reluctance. It also examines the underexplored political dynamics and implementation of CJEU case law. The conclusion is that a fragile European healthcare union is emerging. A distinct area of EU health law has come into existence, whereas an institutional structure has given a voice to health expertise. A certain commonality in patients' rights has also emerged. The EU's budgetary surveillance deeply intrudes into healthcare policies, but here the involvement of health actors has remained limited. The European Commission and the CJEU have played an important role in the European integration of healthcare policies, but reluctance towards EU intrusion into national healthcare systems left an emphatic mark on CJEU case law, its codification in EU law and its implementation. Variants of the multiple streams approach appeared to be helpful to explain this evolution.

"In 2018, the total global e-commerce market worth roughly USD 7.7 trillion. Despite the size of this economy and its extraordinary growth rate, many multinational companies paid little tax in the countries in which they did business. This is not a problem that can be ignored. Digital companies grow much faster than other firms. In 2006, technology companies accounted for 7% of the top 20 market capitalisation of EU companies, by 2017 this had grown to 54%. Digital companies rely less on physical presence utilising intellectual property, enabling companies to set up a business far away from their consumers, where some of the actual economic activity takes place. Most concerning is the fact that, on average, digitalised businesses face an effective tax rate of only 9.5% compared to 23.2% for traditional business models.1 Consequently, there is widespread concern from governments and the public about the low level of income tax paid by companies operating in the digital economy."

"European Union (EU) macro-regional strategies, such as the ones composed for the Adriatic Ionian, Alpine, Baltic Sea and Danube regions, aim to improve transnational cooperation and coordination in a 'territorially defined' setting. These strategies propose an integrated framework for cooperation involving a wide range of EU member states, regional organisations, sub-national authorities, civil society organisations as well as non-EU partner countries. The contributors question whether macro-regional strategies are helpful instruments for improving actor-policy linkages at the European, member/partner countries, and sub-national levels, and whether the objective of social, economic and territorial cohesion can be fulfilled through these strategies"--