Prof. Anneli Albi was asked to act as an expert at the European Parliament’s Constitutional Affairs Committee hearing on 7 March 2019. The hearing was entitled ‘Constitutionalism in the European Union and the constitutional interaction between the West and East of Europe’ (AFCO/8/15604), held in the framework of the Debate on the Future of Europe.

The meeting was chaired by Danuta Hübner, the Chair of the Constitutional Affairs Committee. Prof. Albi spoke on the theme ‘The Three Main Constitutional Cultures in Europe: Towards Uniformisation or Retaining Diversity?’.

The overview of the three main constitutional cultures was based on the introductory chapter of the project’s open access book with national reports (Albi A. and Bardutzky, S. ‘Revisiting the Role and Future of National Constitutions in European and Global Governance: Introduction to the Research Project’, in Albi A. and Bardutzky S. (eds.), National Constitutions in European and Global Governance: Democracy, Rights, the Rule of Law – National Reports. Volumes I and II (T.M.C. Asser Press & Springer, May 2019), available open access at https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-6265-273-6_1 )

In the final part of the presentation, Prof. Albi observed that the European Parliament Report on the State of the Debate on the Future of Europe (2018/2094(INI), 05.12.2018, available at http://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/A-8-2018-0427_EN.html), where different visions for the Future of Europe were outlined, did not include a vision for retaining the diversity of Member States’ constitutional cultures. To this end, Prof. Albi outlined the concept of ‘Substantive co-operative constitutionalism’, which was developed in Part 2 of the open access article ‘Erosion of constitutional rights in EU law: A Call for substantive co-operative constitutionalism’ in Vienna Journal of International Constitutional Law (see under Publications)

The proceedings of the hearing were livestreamed and are available to view here.