Egypt’s parliament votes in support of expelling Israel’s ambassador

[Sheilbh]

EU law can not infringe on the basic human rights of our constitution. And as most EU law is only implemented via a normal law, not via international treaty, it has a lower rank than the constitution anyway.

It was a German case in the 70s that established the principle that you can't use a national constitution against EU law.  The court basically said that if there's a conflict between EU law and a national constitution then the EU law stands because it's a totally separate legal order.  It can't be challenged or nullified by national law of any kind including constitutions.  I think this is even more important now.  Imagine if Hungary's new constitution made EU law different or inapplicable in Hungary, or if you could, in effect, opt out of or vary EU law by a constitutional amendment.  It'd be chaos and make a mockery of the entire point of the EU.

But they've also said that if you have to change a constitutional rule to give effect to EU law then the courts have that right and must do it.  Since then national courts have followed that, though I think the German Constitutional Court's followed it but has had some reservations - for example to do with human rights.

I'm sure you're right on human rights.  But that could change actually.  The EU's planning to accede to the Convention on Human Rights, once they've done that I imagine the way for a German or any other citizen to challenge an EU act on human rights grounds would be via Strasbourg rather than through a national court.