Maduro a "poznámka číslo 5"

Podobně jako slavná „footnote four“ z rozhodnutí Nejvyššího soudu USA v případu Carolene Products, ve které soudce Stone načrtl schéma soudního přezkumu ústavnosti, by se mohla proslavit poznámka pod čarou, kterou připojil ke svému stanovisku ve věci C-411/06 generální advokát Maduro.

Jedná se o spor mezi Komisí na jedné straně a Evropským parlamentem a Radou na straně druhé, jak jinak než o právní základ (v tomto případě nařízení o přepravě odpadů). V poznámce číslo pět (škoda, že to Madurovi nevyšlo na tu čtyřku) Maduro kritizuje přístup Soudu, podle kterého se „více zapojení Evropského parlamentu“ rovná „více demokracie“ a proto má mít při možnosti přijetí právního aktu na vícero základech přednost ten, který umožňuje "větší" zapojení Parlamentu.

Maduro konstatuje, že takový přístup nemá žádnou oporu ve Smlouvách a navíc odporuje pojetí demokracie v EU. V poznámce číslo pět pak takové pojetí Maduro načrtává:

Democracy can take a number of different forms, however, especially in the European Community. At Community level, democratic legitimacy is derived from two main sources: either the Council, in which the will of the peoples of Europe is expressed through the positions adopted by their respective governments, under the control of their national parliaments; or the European Parliament, the directly representative European institution, and the Commission, which is directly accountable to it. Directly democratic representativeness is undeniably a relevant gauge of European democracy, but it is not the only one. In particular, European democracy also entails achieving a delicate balance between the national and European dimensions of democracy, without either one necessarily prevailing over the other. This is why the European Parliament does not have the same power as national parliaments in the legislative process and, although an argument could be made for stronger powers for the European Parliament, it is for the peoples of Europe to make that decision through treaty amendment. The balance between the powers conferred on the European Parliament and the other institutions as expressed in the different legislative procedures has evolved over time and reflects the balance which the peoples of Europe have wanted between national and European means of giving legitimacy to the exercise of power at European level. To accept a general principle of preference for a legal basis which maximises the participation of the European Parliament in the decision-making process would be tantamount to altering the institutional and democratic balance laid down by the Treaty. I am well aware that this analysis leads to a prohibition in practice on cumulative legal bases: either both provisions provide for the same decision-making procedure and an error as to legal basis would be of merely formal significance and therefore of no import, subject to a possible incidence on the distribution of competence between the Community and the Member States; or they provide for different legislative procedures, which are therefore necessarily incompatible for the reasons I have just discussed, and they may not be combined.