Political legitimacy derives from the peoples of the Member States and thus from the states themselves; (b) the primacy of European law: this is not 'absolute' and the Court reserves the right to block European legislation in order to protect sovereignty and 'constitutional identity', which is, moreover, enshrined in the Lisbon Treaty itself; and (c) ring-fences certain sovereign powers for the Member States: in the areas of criminal law and procedure, policing, military matters, fiscal policy (thus precluding 'economic government') and social, cultural, religious, educational and media affairs; and (5) Emphasizes that the formal creation of a European federal state and the transfer of such powers to that state would require a change in the Constitution and therefore a referendum. (Beaudouin, 2009)
Beaudouin reports that the Lisbon Treaty makes the EU "considerably more powerful by merging the three pillars, endowing the Union with legal personality, extending its competences, establishing the principle of qualified majority voting, creating the post of High Representative for the CFSP and incorporating the Charter of Fundamental Rights into the Treaty itself." (Beaudouin, 2009) Beaudouin (2009) states that the European Union "...has both federal and intergovernmental traits: 'The extent of the Union's freedom of action has steadily and considerably increased, not least with the Treaty of Lisbon, so that in some fields of policy, the European Union now has a shape that corresponds to that of a federal state, i.e. is analogous to that of a state. In contrast, the internal decision-making and appointment procedures remain predominantly committed to the pattern of an international organization, i.e. are analogous to international law; as before, the structure of the European Union essentially follows the principle of the equality of states.' (FCC press release, point 1) As Europe is not a federal state, the Council is not a second chamber, the European Parliament does not represent one people and the Commission is merely a supranational body: 'On the European level, the Council is not a second chamber as it would be in a federal state but the representative body of the masters of the Treaties; correspondingly, it is not constituted according to proportional representation but according to the image of the equality of states. As a representative body of the peoples that is directly elected by the citizens of the Union, the European Parliament is an additional independent source of democratic legitimization [...]. As a representative body of the peoples in a supranational community, which as such is characterized by a limited willingness to unite, it cannot, and need not as regards its composition, comply with the requirements that arise on the state level from the citizens' equal political right to vote. As a supranational body, the Commission need not extensively fulfill the conditions of a government that is fully accountable either to Parliament or to the majority decision of the electorate because the Commission itself is not obliged by the will of the electorate in a comparable manner.' (point 271)." (2009)
Beaudouin (2009) additionally states that even with the Lisbon Treaty "...the Union will suffer from a democratic deficit and the European Parliament will not represent one sovereign European people: 'Measured against requirements in a constitutional state, the European Union lacks, even after the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon, a political decision-making body which has come into being by equal election of all citizens of the Union and which is able uniformly to represent the will of the people [...]. Even after the new formulation of Article 14.2 TEU Lisbon [...] the European Parliament is not a body of representation of a sovereign European people. This is reflected in the fact that - as the representation of the peoples in their respectively assigned national contingents of Members - it is not laid out as a body of representation of the citizens of the Union as an undistinguished unity according to the principle of electoral equality.' (2009)
Beaudouin (2009) additionally reports Points 240 and 252 and states that the Lisbon Treaty "...is compatible with the basic law provided that state sovereignty is not waived. This judgment includes the first official definition of an inviolable boundary around sovereign competences: Sovereignty has a boundary, within which states must retain sufficient room for maneuver and which contains the policy areas of security, defense, law and...
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