ABSTRACT
The relation between European legal integration and the fundamental principles and values of the constitutions of the Member States is far from settled. This chapter examines the role played by the concept of sovereignty in building the relationship between the Community legal order and the legal order of its Member States. The concept of sovereignty had to be adapted in order to allow the States to set up or join the European Communities, but that concept has continued to hamper the full reception of Community law within the domestic legal orders of its Member States. Sovereignty is certainly part of the stock of legal principles which are conunon to the countries of Western Europe. In the political debate about 'Maastricht', a commonly used argument was that the Treaty on European Union involved such an extensive transfer of powers that the sovereign statehood of the Member States was called into question.
