Since the very conception of the European integration, there has been one core question that has attracted much attention and yet it remains contested and in a way unanswered till present. What is the legal nature of the European integration - a query about what integration stands for (the descriptive dimension), how it is to be explained and construed (the explanatory dimension) and eventually what it should stand for (the normative dimension). With the lapse of time, and as integration has evolved, various legal, political, economical and even broader intellectual streams of mutually shared beliefs, we should call them narratives, have emerged all offering their own and separate visions of what constitutes the most appropriate answer. Among them, however, the constitutional narrative has come out as a sort of master or dominant narrative whose answers have reached and persuaded the widest circle of influential stakeholders with the greatest impact on the social construction of the European integration.

The universal and regional systems of human rights protection recognize that mothers find themselves in situations which require special protection. For instance, Article 10 para. 2 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights stipulates that special protection should be accorded to mothers during a reasonable period before and after childbirth and that during such period working mothers should be accorded paid leave or leave with adequate social security benefits.

In this paper I will analyze the relation between the limitations on freedom of speech and the increasingly intense defense of “security” intended as a psychosomatic and material condition of well-being. I will consider, in particular, the evolution of the legal limitations on the freedom of speech, moving from the apparently new dilemma of the protection of self-preservation contrasting with the guarantee of individual liberties. I will describe the transition from an internal foundation of this kind of limitation, caused by the will to destroy the potential enemies of State power, to a new form of “thought control” existing in the international construction of general paradigms of “well-thinking”, in addition to those of a “well-doing.”

The question before the Court of First Instance concerned the legitimacy of the Commission's decision on a merger of two French companies incorporated under French law, Schneider Electric SA (hereafter Schneider SA) and Legrand SA (hereafter Legrand). On 16 February 2001 Schneider SA and Legrand, in accordance with the requirements on Regulation of mergers, notified the Commission of Schneider's proposal to make a public offer in respect to all the shares in Legrand held by the public. The judgment of the Court of First Instance can be considered an important step in the development of the European Commission's liability, particularly in respect to the Commission's liability in its role as watchdog of the common market. The judgment puts flesh on the skeletal set of existing principles concerning the liability of the European Community, and contributes to the creation of a systematic approach to the case law.