European Court of Justice – The nature of European law – European Law Academia – Costa v. E.N.E.L. and Van Gend & Loos – Legal Service of the European Commission – How the constitutional discourse became dominant

Human rights – European Convention on Human Rights – European Union – United Nations – Smart sanctions – Constitutional law – French law – German law – Conflicts between legal systems – Equivalent protection – Solange

First preliminary reference of the German Federal Constitutional Court – ECB Outright Monetary Transaction Programme (OMT) – Financial crisis – Ultra vires review – Principle of democracy – Judicial dialogue – Separation of powers – National constitutional identity – Mandate of the ECB – Article 123 TFEU – Article 18.1 ESCB-Statute – Economic and monetary policy – Honeywell test partially abandoned – Pringle judgment inverted – No margin of discretion for the ECB – Necessity, and prohibition of functional misuse, under Article 267 TFEU – Comparative reasoning

On 13 February 2014, the Spanish Constitutional Court came to a final decision regarding the fate of Mr Stefano Melloni. The story of the case is worthy of attention not only from the perspective of the interaction between the Spanish Constitutional Court and the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), but also from the standpoint of the conflicting levels of rights' protection in Europe. The story of Melloni can be described in three acts: setup, confrontation, and resolution.

First, the setup: in 2011, the Spanish Constitutional Court made its first and (so far) only preliminary reference to the CJEU. The Constitutional Court was faced with a collision between the constitutional right to fair trial of persons convicted in absentia and the obligation under EU law to execute a European arrest warrant (heretofore EAW). This setup generated great anticipation, both because of the protagonists and the type of conflict, since in this case what obstructed one member state from complying with EU law was its higher level of constitutional protection for the right in question.

On 15 January 2014, the Court of Justice (hereafter ‘the Court’) delivered its judgment in Association de Médiation Sociale (hereafter ‘AMS’). AMS brought for the first time before the Court the issue of horizontal applicability in relation to a provision of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (hereafter ‘Charter’), namely Article 27 thereof, which enshrines the right of workers to information and consultation within the undertaking. The case therefore raised questions of ‘undeniable constitutional significance’, as Advocate-General Cruz Villalón had put it in his Opinion, regarding the post-Lisbon enforcement and interpretation of the Charter and, in particular, its application to disputes between private parties.