Does EU Law Recognize Legal Limits to European Integration? Accommodating Diversity and its Limits

Abstract

One of the starting points of the integration of legal and constitutional orders in the European Union is that it requires unity of action. In the abstract, it is easy to answer the question whether unity of action entails the necessity of uniformity either in approach or in result, negatively. The obvious alternative to uniformity would be the accommodation of diversity. But does EU law recognize diversity as a matter of law? If so, to what extent? Does this diversity also function as a limit to integration?These are the questions which I address in this essay. The four parameters of it are therefore ‘unity of action’, ‘uniformity’, ‘accommodation of diversity’ and ‘limits to integration’. The focus is mainly the relation between these four notions. They ‘frame’ the questions and although it also provides some answers to the concrete questions, its foremost aim is to make the case for the accommodation of legitimate diversity, indicating the limits of such accommodation. In doing so, the paper outlines forms and some of the techniques of such accommodation.