‘Solange’, ‘Fintantoché’, ‘Tant que’ On the Local Remodelling of a Canonical German Decision in French and Italian Constitutional Debates

The German Solange jurisprudence is an integral component of the European constitutional republic of letters. However, this article contends that a singular European ‘Solange story’ does not exist. Drawing on references to the Solange-jurisprudence in Italian and French public law journals published between 1989 and 2012, this article reveals that the way these German decisions are understood and applied differ along national lines. As the Solange judgments crosses borders, the meaning ascribed to these decisions change. Karlsruhe’s Solange was not Italy’s Fintantoché nor similar to the French Tant que. Contextual constitutional factors are largely responsible for this divergence. Nevertheless, a common underlying narrative emerges: the narrative that when EU law is applied domestically, constitutional courts bear the capacity to review these laws on their conformity with the national constitution. While French and Italian scholarly engagement with Solange differed in form and contents, the Solange judgment functioned as a banner imbued with the message that it is possible to make reservations towards the primacy of EU law. In this way, the Solange jurisprudence provided the glue that pasted together divergent constitutional communities. While this article pertains to the meta-level of Solange-studies, the analysis holds broader implications and advances existing research on the migration of constitutional ideas. Specifically, it shows how the development of French and Italian domestic doctrine is accompanied, justified, criticised and, sometimes, triggered by scholarly references to a German judgment.