The unconfined power of European Union law

Certain features condition when most EU law comes into being. EU laws must compete with other laws for authority. They form part of legal regimes which are partial in scope and can cut across national legal regimes. They justify themselves by reference to a vision of political com-munity which values what individuals do together more than simply their living together. These features act as a source of conflict in two ways. They, first, endow EU law with certain qualities which act as a source of stress. These include over-responsibilisation, destabilisation and function-alism. Secondly, the concern to secure authority by legislating better to realise certain shared activ-ities leads to expertise heavily influencing both the content and incidence of EU law and to a disre-gard of those activities which link daily life experiences to wider processes of identity formation. The failure to address these features is central to the malaise and antipathy currently confronting the European Union.