Amato, Giuliano --- "Multilevel Europe and Private Law" [2008] ELECD 189; in Cafaggi, Fabrizio; Muir Watt, Horatia (eds), "Making European Private Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2008)

Book Title: Making European Private Law

Editor(s): Cafaggi, Fabrizio; Muir Watt, Horatia

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781847201980

Section: Chapter 2

Section Title: Multilevel Europe and Private Law

Author(s): Amato, Giuliano

Number of pages: 7

Extract:

2. Multilevel Europe and private law
Giuliano Amato

1. INTRODUCTION: `A MULTILEVEL GOVERNANCE'
This chapter aims at a better understanding of the European institutional
setting by examining it in the light of the wider notion of multilevel gover-
nance and, at the same time, at a better understanding of multilevel gover-
nance by using the European Union as an example of it. Against this
background the future of European private law will subsequently be explored.
As all of us know, the notion of multilevel governance is relatively recent.
Had our fathers applied it to two types of organisation which were neatly
distinct from each other in the past ­ namely international organisations and
decentralised States ­ they would have qualified both types as `multilevel', but
not with the same meaning. Decentralised States allocate public powers to
departments at different levels, each of them, by exercising a share of such
powers, consequently regulates the lives of the citizens. In international organ-
isations the relationship between the levels is sharply different. The upper
level of the organisation is entitled to adopt acts which exclusively bind the
Member States and only the States have the power to reach their own citizens
by adopting domestic acts in conformity with the decisions of the organisation.
In other words, we have examples of multilevel systems, the internal structure
of which is marked by its being crossed by the boundary between international
and constitutional law, while other multilevel systems are entirely constitu-
tional and may distribute domestic powers among ...