Fundamental Rights in the EU's Post-enlargement Landscape: An Exercise in Constitutional Translation?

One of the many possible definitions of European integration that draws on organizational theory suggests that the term refers to the “process of combining or adding parts or elements into a systematic whole”. ¹ With the experience of the recent enlargements, the European Union (EU) is at present a strongly plural legal system, but at the same time is striving to become an equally pronounced and distinct normative context. In other words, it is still engaged in the process of singling out the parts that constitute its systemic whole. Fundamental rights fit in the wider picture of the Union normative landscape and are customarily viewed either through the prism of European identity or citizenship ² or even as a self-standing paradigm. From either perspective, human and fundamental rights stand for a bridge between the differences and particular legal or political systems as well as identities within a polity such as the EU due to their universal appeal.