NATIONAL AND CONSTITUTIONAL IDENTITY IN THE CASE-LAW OF CONSTITUTIONAL COURTS OF THE VISEGRAD GROUP

Abstract

After the inclusion of the EUʹs obligation to respect national identities of its Member States into the primary law of the European Union, the notion of national identity has become an object of the interest of constitutional courts of EU Member States. They have, at the same time, started to use the notion of constitutional identity with regard to the European integration in their case-law. The object of this article is to analyse the case-law of the constitutional courts of the Visegrad group regarding the notions of national identity and constitutional identity and to analyse the means of using these concepts in their case-law, in particular with regard to the use of the concept of national identity within the meaning of the Article 4 (2) of the Treaty on European Union in the case-law of the Court of Justice of the European Union.