Two different dynamics govern the autonomy of the European Union (EU) legal order. On the one hand, autonomy seeks to define what EU law is not, i.e. it is not ordinary international law. Positively, on the other, autonomy seeks to define what EU law is, i.e. a legal order that has the capacity to operate as a self-referential system of norms that is both coherent and complete. Yet the concept of autonomy of the EU legal order in no way conveys the message that the EU and its law are euro-centric and that the Court of Justice of the European Union (the ‘Court of Justice’) seeks to insulate EU law from external influences by building walls that prevent the migration of legal ideas. Autonomy rather enables the Court of Justice to strike the right balance between the need to preserve the values on which the EU is founded and openness to other legal orders. The autonomy of the EU legal order is thus part of the very DNA of that legal order as it allows the EU to find its own constitutional space whilst interacting in a cooperative way with its Member States and the wider world.

On 21 January 2009 the Belgian Constitutional Court terminated a long-lasting dispute over the conditions for affiliation to the care insurance scheme established by the Flemish Community. What started out as a classical conflict over the division of competences in Belgium resulted in a discussion about the impact of European Community (EC) law on the constitutional autonomy of the member states. Despite the entanglement between Belgian constitutional law and EC law, the Flemish care insurance case reveals the different perspectives of both legal orders. In this case, the dialogue between the Belgian Constitutional Court and the European Court of Justice (ECJ) through the preliminary ruling procedure could not prevent reverse discrimination.

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