The ceremony was attended by representatives of the highest state authorities and public institutions.

The keynote speaker at this year’s Constitutionality Day ceremony was the President of the German Federal Constitutional Court, Prof. Dr Andreas Voßkuhle. In his speech, he presented the main features of the case law of the Federal Constitutional Court relating to the process of European integration.

Firstly, he explained that the Federal Constitutional Court has derived the principle of openness towards European law from the German Constitution. He added that the German Constitution imposes limitations to the process of European integration in order to ensure the respect for the national constitutional identity. The Constitution thus does not make it possible for Germany to accede to a European federal state, and neither does it allow for the possibility to renounce to fundamental principles of the state regulation, such as the underlying principle that Germany is a republic and a federal state, the principle of democracy, the principles of a state governed by the rule of law and of a social state, and the guarantee of human dignity and the fundamental freedoms stemming therefrom. Despite the principle of primacy of European Union law in relation to national law, the relation between the Federal Constitutional Court and the Court of Justice of the European Union is not a relation of superiority or subordination, but a relation of cooperation. The basic tool of such cooperation is the procedure for deciding on preliminary questions. The Federal Constitutional Court has admittedly not yet submitted a preliminary question to the Court of Justice of the European Union; however, in the framework of deciding on constitutional complaints it ensures constitutional supervision over the obligation of regular national courts to submit cases thereto.

The keynote speaker also drew attention to two recent decisions of the Court of Justice of the European Union in which the latter applied a very broad interpretation regarding the scope of application of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, raising the question of the importance of a national protection of fundamental freedoms. With regard to such, he underlined that in its recent decision, the Federal Constitutional Court explained that in order for the Charter to be applicable, it is not sufficient that there exists just any substantive link of a certain regulation with a mere abstract field of application of European Union law or with mere factual effects on European Union law. He also mentioned the ultra vires supervision, in conformity with which the Federal Constitutional Court must retain the competence to assess whether the authorities of the European Union have surpassed the limitations of their competences. Finally, he accentuated the need to integrate national parliaments into the process of European integration. He presented a few important decisions the Federal Constitutional Court had adopted in 2013 that refer to Germany’s cooperation in resolving the problem of over-indebtedness of European states. By these decisions, the Court reinforced the right of the parliament to be informed and to participate in the procedures of deciding on European matters, whereby the democratic character of the process of European integration is to be ensured.

Last but not least, the keynote speaker stressed that in order to ensure the protection of citizens, the development of political power in the European management system must also respect the fundamental rules of the game that proceed from national constitutions and are supervised by independent courts. His final thought was that Europe has a future only as a democratically legitimised legal community.

The Constitutional Court has traditionally marked the Constitutionality Day with a special ceremony, which is celebrated in remembrance of the day when the Constitution of the Republic of Slovenia was proclaimed on 23 December 1991.