ABSTRACT
From the start, Belgium has been an ardent supporter of European integration, mostly to maximise its national interests. This is reflected in its ratification procedure, in the large majorities by which founding European treaties were approved, in the consistently favourable position of mainstream parties, in the weak parliamentary scrutiny of EU affairs, and in the position of the courts. The federalisation process, however, unintentionally aggravated the constitutional efficiency strategy by requiring all subnational parliaments to give approval to EU treaties and by establishing a centralised constitutional court. This court, despite its EU-friendly stance, has the potential to shift the strategy to a more legitimacy-oriented one. This was made clear in a one-time judgment in which the Constitutional Court, in principle, adhered to the counter-limits doctrine.
