ABSTRACT
There is little doubt that some of the most significant changes in Europe over the past 50 years have been linked to the efforts of integrating European economic, political and legal orders under the auspices of the EU and the Council of Europe. The new centrality of human rights, the creation of a common market structure, as well as the development of new inter-European understandings and communications, are all interconnected elements of a larger transformation of law in Europe. Whereas legal scholarship generally agrees on the importance of these processes, there is surprisingly little consensus on what is implied by the terminology European legal integration. A review of the relevant literature in both law and the social sciences suggests that the term covers a plurality of processes and subject-matters, ranging from basic analysis of the European institutions and their competences to the impact of supranational law-making on national ways of producing law, even national ways of life.1 Moreover, it appears that European legal integration remains a highly political process where the distinction between the scientific analysis and the political agenda of European integration is not particularly clearcut. Indeed, as can be observed across the considerable literature on the subject, European legal integration provides an enduring challenge to social scientists and lawyers, who have not yet been able to establish the integration processes as a coherent scientific object. This might indeed present the first ‘paradox’ of studying European legal integration.
