| Abstract: |
Abstract: The European Union suffers from an empty formalistic reading of the
principle of equality when dealing with situations where different legal
orders legitimately compete, aspiring to regulate the condition of the same
persons in the same circumstances. Consequently, equality before the law is
not safeguarded in the Union, and a radical reform of the procedural reading
of the principle of equality is required. Most importantly, to live up to
being a true principle of EU law, equality in the EU needs to acquire a
substantive component which is entirely missing at the moment. This paper
looks at the procedural vistas informing the ECJ‘s attempts to address the
EU‘s fundamental problems through the redefinition of the scope ratione
materiae of EU law following the introduction of Union citizenship, only to
find the outcomes of such efforts inadequate and potentially dangerous for the
rule of law in Europe. It is suggested that a substantive approach to equality
could be employed instead, and that the idea of respect, lying just as
equality itself, at the core of the notion of citizenship †and the law as
such †could supply the missing core of the equality principle, providing the
much-needed cure for some crucial deficiencies of EU law as it currently
stands. |