EU budget – Founding vision of budgetary integration – Budget of citizens and not only of states – Corrections, rebates and national net balances – Convention on the Future of Europe – Comprehensible and transparent budget as a prerequisite for democratic legitimacy – Treaty of Lisbon reforms – Post-Lisbon fragmentation leading to a ‘budgetary galaxy’ – Differentiated budgetary integration likely to endure – Final Report of the Monti High Level Group on Own Resources – Necessity for future reforms to take account of the broader galaxy – Return to a citizen-oriented approach – The Union method

European Court of Justice – European Parliament – Accountability through the budgetary process – Fostering the European Court of Justice’s democratic legitimacy through financial accountability – Accountability for how the European Court of Justice organises the institution and conducts its procedures – Efficiency versus quality as yardsticks to assess the Court’s performance – The European Parliament’s ambivalent practice of focusing solely on judicial efficiency – Proposals how the Parliament could take the quality of the European Court of Justice’s judicial process into account when assessing the Court – A different use of judicial statistics – Inciting quality-oriented reforms such as the introduction of amicus curiae participation and bilingual (French/English) deliberations

Fundamental rights – EFTA Court – Multilevel normative frameworks of human rights protections – General and unwritten principles of EEA law – Impact of the EU Charter on EEA fundamental rights – The European Convention on Human Rights as the dispositive normative basis for the EFTA Court’s resolution of a case – Fundamental rights operationalising the principle of homogeneity between EEA and EU law – Restriction of a fundamental freedom to further an aim based on fundamental rights.

Judicial cooperation – Italian Constitutional Court – National Constitutional Courts’ attitude towards preliminary reference to the European Court of Justice – First and second preliminary reference of the Italian Constitutional Court in indirect proceedings – Constitutional review of national legislation inconsistent with EU law – Relationship between EU law and constitutional concerns – Added value of Constitutional Courts in protecting constitutional identity – Multilevel protection of fundamental rights – EU Framework agreement on fixed-term work and European Court of Justice case law – Italian legislation on fixed-term work – Italian legislation on recruitment in State schools – Abuse arising from the use of successive fixed-term employment contracts – Judicial defence of workers’ rights – Cooperation between judges and legislators – Balancing between social rights and budgetary constraints – Mascolo case – Taricco case

United Kingdom Supreme Court – Brexit – European Communities Act 1972 – British unwritten Constitution – Theories of the unwritten Constitution – Royal prerogative – Constitutional instruments – Higher law – Process of withdrawal from the European Union – Rule of recognition – H.L.A. Hart – A.V. Dicey – John Finnis – ‘Rule of recognition’ – Theory of sovereignty – Common law Constitution – John Laws