The Future of Legal Europe: Better legislation and developments in different policy areas

In his contribution on the future of legal Europe, Hans-Jürgen Hellwig first addresses the problem of how Community law is implemented at the national level. He criticises the way in which Community directives are expanded at the transposition phase (“gold-plating”) and wonders if raising the level of harmonisation in each directive might be the better option. The author then deals with the intentional non-application of Article 234 EC Treaty by a growing number of national courts. Furthermore, the author explains the problem of externally induced European legislation: he sees a risk of possible breaches in the European legal system if, for example, rules are borrowed from the United States. Finally, he critically evaluates the current consultation document of the Commission on simplifying European contract law.