Challenges for Economic Governance and Economic Law in Europe
| Date | 01 December 2003 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1023263X0301000401 |
| Author | W. Devroe |
| Published date | 01 December 2003 |
| Subject Matter | Editorial |
Editorial
10 MJ 4 (2003) 335
Challenges for Economic Governance and Economic Law in
Europe
§ 1. European Economic Law as a Laboratory for European Law in
General
The European Economic Community long ago evolved into a European Community
tout court, and no such thing as a European Economic Union ever materialized. An
impressive and laudable effort has been made over the last decades to confirm that
Europe is about much more than economics, and European law is more than economic
law.1
Recognized milestones in this gradual widening of European law are the 1986 Single
European Act and the 1991 Maastricht Treaty.2 Rather unsurprisingly, the subsequent
treaties of Amsterdam3 and Nice have been largely irrelevant from a perspective of
1. In fact, it always has been. One can only subscribe therefore to the following words of Judge Edward at
the occasion of his recent departure from the ECJ: ‘The freedoms guaranteed by the Treaties are not
just secondary “economic” rights to be relegated to an Annex of a new constitution. They are rights in
every sense as fundamental and important for the average citizen as those enshrined in the European
Convention.’
2. The Treaty on European Union was a somewhat hybrid instrument in this regard. On the one hand, it
established monetary union as an irreversible process and scattered references to ‘an open market
economy with free competition’ and ‘open and competitive markets’ all over the EC Treaty. See
Articles 4 (ex 3a) (1) and (2); 98 (ex 102a), 105(1), 154 (ex 129b) (2) and 157 (ex 130) (1), EC, as well
as Art. 2 of Protocol No 3 ‘on the Statute of the [ESCB] and of the [ECB]’ and the now obsolete Art.
4.2 of Protocol No 4 ‘on the Statute of the [EMI]’. On the other hand, it strengthened or created non-
economic policy areas, introduced bridging provisions requiring integration of non-economic with
economic policy goals, and symbolically dropped the second ‘E’ in ‘EEC’ as to confirm all this.
3. The strengthened constitutional position of ‘services of general economic interest’ makes for one
notable exception under the Treaty of Amsterdam. See Art. 16 (ex 7d) EC. See also the Protocol ‘on
the system of public broadcasting in the Member States’, annexed to the EC Treaty; Declarations No
13 and 37 adopted by the Conference annexed to the Final Act; and Declaration (No 1) of which the
Conference took note.
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