Verantwortung, Haftung und Kontrolle des Verfassungsstaates und der Europäischen Union im Wandel der Zeit - Responsibility, Accountability and Control of the Constitutional State and the European Union in Changing Times - Responsabilités et Contrôle de l'

The national legal rules relating to the issue of state responsibility and accountability lack often a clear systematic and conceptual framework. These rules have undergone significant changes in the course of time, which can be attributed to a great extent to the influence of EU law. At the same time, EU law makes reference to the general principles common to the laws of the Member States as to the non- contractual liability of the EU for any damage caused by its institutions or by its servants. This legal framework was not affected by the inclusion of the principle of Art 340 (2) TFEU, which has been adopted as a „right” to damages within the right to good administration in Article 41 (3) of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.

These initial considerations in conjunction with the financial crisis that threatens currently Europe have inspired the choice of the central topic of the ninth Congress of the Societas Iuris Publici Europaei (SIPE), which took place in 2013 in Krakow.

It had to be explored -inter alia- if and to what extent this crisis has influenced the law of the accountability of public authority, either at the constitutional or- in the case of the European Union- at the supranational level and which is the role of the judge – national, supranational and international – in the effort to deal with the financial, political and social reality without at the same time sacrificing the rule of law principle, which is inherent to our legal culture.
These multi-layered and complicated issues were discussed intensively by experts from both a theoretical and practical background for two days in Krakow. The volume at hand contains the revised editions of these presentations. The contributions are published in the respective language used for each presentation, which may be one of the three “official” languages of the SIPE, namely English, French and German.