Abstract

In view of the coming into force of the European Constitution, this work offers a reflection of a general nature on the effects that Community integration is liable to produce on the forms and instruments for the safeguarding of basic freedoms on the national level. In particular, it aspires to make a contribution to the determination of the extent to which the process of European integration tends to translate into the progressive abandonment of the model of constitutional justice as the 'jurisdiction of freedoms' to the advantage of a widespread control of the constitutionality of laws. In this perspective, two orders of considerations lead to the conclusion that the 'proprium' of the safeguarding of rights in the European ambit is to be found in the passage of the office of guardian of fundamental freedoms from the Court to the ordinary judge: on the one hand, the abandonment of the Weimer-style model of the safeguarding of rights pivoting on a fear of the jurisprudential gutting of the legislative State subject to the rule of law and a consequent lack of confidence in the regards of judges and, on the other hand, the intrinsic inadequacy of the clauses in the matter of enforceability and the level of the protection of rights to limit the generalised recourse to the European Constitution as the parameter for determining the constitutionality of laws. A fresh involvement of the national constitutional courts is imposed by both the need for the integration of sense and value imposed by the European Constitution, and for the enforcement of the highest degree of guarantee. The answer, then, is not the abandonment of control centred on the laws, but the creation of an integrated model of reticular constitutional justice on a European basis.