Abstract

The Author analyses, in this essay, the relationship between the autonomy of the EU system and that of the member states as regards the national courts and in particular the Constitutional Court with respect to procedural law. The defence of two different kinds of supremacy, that of the European system and that of the member states, has been the occasion for a clash between them; this has become more relevant after the Maastricht Treaty, which has increased the competence of the EU. The Author, after having analysed the case-law of the national and the EU Courts, calls for a relationship between the constitutional and the EU judges characterised by reciprocal trust; the reciprocal recognition of the role played by the two courts is in fact the primary condition for the creation of an European constitutional area shared by all the member states.