The establishment of a European Union, which according to Article 1 TEU is intended to create ‘an ever closer Union among the peoples of Europe’, is being threatened from within. And the most serious threat is to the rule of law in Europe and the effectiveness and uniformity of the application of EU law in all the Member States. A first attack on the rule of law has been directed at the values that constitute the very foundations of the Union as laid down in Article 2 TEU. The immediate victim of the second attack is each citizen of the European Union who risks being prevented from exercising the rights that he or she derives from EU law on the same terms. The foregoing observations make it clear why this book is of paramount importance at this time. Explaining to the citizens of the European Union (and not only lawyers) how the goals, values, principles, competences, institutional machinery, and procedures of the European Union are shaped is nowadays an urgent task. At the turn of the 20th century, Sir William Osler noted that ‘The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism’. Too many important decisions having immense impacts on the lives of millions of people in Europe and elsewhere have arisen out of pure ignorance and ensuing dogmatism. This book helps to fill an important gap in the general knowledge of the constitutional and institutional framework of the European Union. This book will be of great value not only to scholars and students, judges and practitioners, civil servants and company lawyers, legislators, policy makers and business people. In general, all citizens wishing to find out more about the Union, its objectives and mechanisms, the decision- making practice of the European Commission and the most relevant case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union, may find an answer in the pages that follow.