European Union Law as the Constitutional Edifice of Europe -with additional remarks on its Lessons and implications for Northeast Asia-

Abstract

Apparently the European Communities and the European Union seem to be all

based on ordinary or usual treaties because the Treaties establishing,

supplementing or amending the Communities and the Union fit very well the

definition of a treaty by the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of

Treaties. Nevertheless, the European Court (the highest judicial arm of the

Union) refuses to treat them in that way: in the consecutive cases brought

before it in the early 1960s, premising that the Community constitutes a new

legal order, the Court has established two principles on which the

Community/EU law stands: its direct effect and supremacy. This paper tried to

show the hybrid features of the EC or EU law, together with comments on

The Treaty of Lisbon Amending the Treaty on European Union and the

Treaty Establishing the European Community, concluded in 2007 and going

through country-by-country ratifications. And, finally, the writer thought about

some lessons we could get from the experiences of the European integration.