Rivers and roads dominate this portion of the Peutinger Table, a Late-Antique/medieval map of the Roman Empire. Imagining the imperial realm as smooth and flowing, the map fits an uncertain topography on a straight roll of parchment. It presents the Empire as a set of linear, connected spaces – Rome is where all roads and rivers lead. Space is condensed, bodies of water and land masses stretched and shrunk, and cities arranged schematically rather than mapped precisely.

Article 45 and Article 49 provide for the free movement of workers and self-employed people, and the free movement of companies, throughout the EU. To overcome discrimination, legislation has been adopted addressing the rights of workers concerning matters such as tax, social advantages, languages, the mutual recognition of qualifications and requiring even private employers and social partners to treat all EU citizens equally. The case law goes even further than this, addressing all kinds of measures which discourage cross-border pursuit of an occupation, something which has had a great impact on professional football and its restrictive transfer rules. European company law has been similarly turned upside down by ruling in Centros that companies can choose their state of incorporation, a decision which led to the death of the real-seat theory of company law.

This chapter considers judicial review of the EU Institutions and bodies. Acts are subject to review if there is no formal competence to adopt them; the use of a power for a purpose other than that for which it was granted; a manifest error of assessment; a breach of rights of process; or infringement of the Treaties or any rule of law relating to their application, such as fundamental rights. Privileged applicants – the Member States, Parliament, the Commission and Council – have unlimited standing to challenge a measure. Semi-privileged applicants – the Court of Auditors, European Central Bank and Committee of the Regions – may bring an action to protect their institutional prerogatives. All other parties may only challenge acts addressed to them; regulatory acts which entail no implementing measures and are of direct concern to them; and all other acts which are of direct and individual concern to them. Parties can also sue EU Institutions for damages where three conditions are met: the EU Institution has infringed a rule of law intended to confer rights on them, that breach is sufficiently serious and there is a direct causal link between the breach and the loss sustained.

This book explores the cultural meanings of rivers over a broad span of time (c. 300–1100). The regional focus is on Northwestern Continental Europe (France, Germany, and Benelux), on the territories that were the core of Roman Gaul and of Merovingian and Carolingian Francia. During these centuries, several fundamental redefinitions of culture, community, and economy took place: the transformation of the Roman Empire and the rise of the earliest Germanic kingdoms; the centralizing push of the Carolingian imperial government, especially under the aegis of Charlemagne; invasion and retrenchment during the Viking Age; and the emergence of new cultural, religious, and political communities around the year 1000, with a corresponding intensification of river use.

This chapter considers infringement proceedings, normally brought by the Commission against a Member State before the Court of Justice for not complying with EU law. Actions can only be brought against the State. However, the State is responsible for the legal acts and administrative practices of any State agency. There are three stages to the proceedings. The first is an informal stage where the Commission sees if there is a case to answer and, if so, seeks resolution with the State. In the second, the Commission issues a letter of formal notice, setting out the breach and what compliance requires. In the third, the Commission issues a reasoned opinion giving a reasonable period for compliance. The case only goes to the Court if there is no resolution by the end of the third stage. The Commission can also go to the Court to seek damages against the State in two circumstances: the State has failed to transpose a Directive or it has failed to comply with an earlier judgment of the Court. The sanction will usually take the form of a lump sum and penalty payments, which are recurring daily fines that continue as long as the breach.

In Van Gend en Loos and Costa, the Court stated that EU law was an autonomous legal order which limited the sovereignty of member States. These EU law qualities prevent other laws determining central elements of EU law (‘autonomy of EU law’); grant precedence to EU law over national law (‘primacy of EU law’); allow EU law alone to determine when there is a conflict between it and national law and the consequences of that (‘pre-emption’); and require national authorities to ensure that the EU legal system functions effectively and its authority is sustained (‘fidelity principle’). Historically, most national courts have accepted the authority of EU law over national law, subject to three constraints. First, EU law should not violate fundamental rights recognised in their respective constitutions. Secondly, if it generates significant consequences for the national democracy, the EU law must not be clearly ultra vires. Thirdly, a number of courts will not accept EU law primacy on matters that go to that State’s constitutional identity, most notably those issues over which that court believes national parliaments have the necessary democratic pedigree.

Many stories about river miracles and wonders were repeatedly told, retold, and transformed as part of the process of establishing and understanding discussions about moral values, sanctity, and socioeconomic behaviors. This chapter looks at some of these, following the stories over time and space. The section “Reversing the Rivers,” framed around a specific set of narratives involving the bodies of saints, tackles medieval ideas about what is “natural” and the ways that saints were understood as capable of both sustaining and reversing the natural. The chapter ends with an exploration of a series of stories that stretches into the 1100s and 1200s, encouraging readers to imagine themselves transported both backwards to the Edenic past and forward to a future salvation.

This representation of Noah’s Ark at Chartres (built between 1194 and 1220) imagines the ark as a bridge across the waters. The boat fully fills the frame so that the ship’s structure resembles a stone bridge, very similar to the extant Romanesque bridge that crosses the Danube at Regensburg. The rainbow of the Covenant shines down onto the ark from the heavens, visually serving as a kind of covering for the ship, whose hull bears a striking resemblance to the low riverine ships favored in earlier centuries by the Vikings.

This chapter focuses on popular culture as seen by the late antique church, in particular as visible through the sermons of Caesarius of Arles. First the key features of Caesarius’ opus are introduced, along with the methodological problems it poses for scholars, including a close discussion of Serm. 1. Caesarius’ ideological programme is discussed, including his use of the concepts of rusticitas and imperitia. The bishop’s concern with the bodily habitus of his congregation is considered next, then his attack on scurriltas, singing and dancing as key features of popular culture. This chapter therefore considers popular culture both substantively and discursively, while exploring the ways in which Caesarius and the church sought to appropriate elements of this popular culture, while at the same time seeking to oppose it, in an ongoing dialectic.

This chapter focuses on the idea of rivers as frontier or boundary, beginning with stories from Late Antiquity, and including a discussion of the ways that river frontiers are porous and permeable. A case study of the monastery of Prüm shows the complexity of these dynamics. The main focus of the chapter is on the impact of the Viking raids on medieval monastic writers, and how their stories about this moment created a new view of rivers as sites of danger and disruption. Then, the chapter explores ways that rivers were seen as sites of destruction and oblivion – an alternate to the idea of rivers and memory explored in the previous chapter. Finally, it looks at how monastic communities reinvented their histories in the wake of the Viking attacks, and how this helped them in turn to reimagine and restore their relationships with rivers.

Union citizenship was created to provide a closer bond between the European Union and the nationals of the Member States. It provides a frame for rights to move and reside throughout the EU, and to work and live in conditions of equality and non-discrimination within a host Member State. Union citizens also have the right to be accompanied by their families when they move, even if the family members are not Union citizens themselves. The very power and scope of these rights can make them controversial. The question of whether and when Union citizens should have access to benefits, whether their same-sex family arrangements should be recognised in Member States that do not allow same-sex marriage themselves, and the extent to which Member State nationality law is constrained by the fact that each Member States national is also a Union Citizen, have all been the subject of much discussed case law.