Further strains or a welcome catalyst for change in the relationship. The adoption of the Lisbon Treaty and the further steps in integration that it will introduce may put the views of national constitutional courts under further strain.162 The domestic constitutional courts are thus being faced with a prima facie situation in the Lisbon Treaty, on the basis of Declaration 17, that European law is supreme even over national constitutions but such courts will undoubtedly neither be unresourceful nor reticent in response.163 Despite views to the contrary, European integration may bring national laws together in a way not originally conceived or actually foreseen. Within this new EU constitutional matrix, reading Arts. 4 and 5(2) TEU together, domestic constitutional courts – including those of Germany, Hungary and Poland – may be able, through the process of transjudicial communication, to take definitive steps along the road to harmonising their diverse formulae of the essential core of their respective national sovereignties. It has been one of the main theses of this work that all national constitutional courts are active participants in this process and that European integration is acting as a catalyst not only for a reformulation of what sovereignty means in the Union – whether at European, national or subnational level164 – but also for branches had been represented. The Convention on the Future of Europe marked a change by including national and European parliamentary representatives but not judicial ones. There was a resultingly distinct absence of judicial input into the Constitution except in the matter of issues surrounding the ECJ. In this respect, the Praesidium of the Convention set up a “discussion circle” that was given limited terms of reference before which, inter alia, the Presidents of the ECJ and the CFI were able to make submissions: European Convention, Discussion Circle on the Court of Justice, Final Report, CONV 636/03, Cercle I/13, 25 March 2003, <xxxx://xxxxxxxx.xxxxxxxxx.xx.xxx/pdf/en/03/cv00/cv00636en03.pdf>. 15 January 2009. 161 Albi & Xxx Xxxxxxxx (2004), at 761. Footnotes in the original excluded.
