THE JUDICIAL RELEVANCE OF THE ANCILLARY POWERS OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL COURTS IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE

This essay deals with the case law related to the ancillary powers of the Constitutional Courts in Central and Eastern Europe. The goal is to understand which is the effective relevance of these functions in the context of the activities carried out by the constitutional judges. After a brief introduction, in the second section I discuss how the ancillary functions of the Constitutional Courts can be conceived as residual categories in the legal taxonomies. In the third section, I illustrate the reasons of the diffusion of the constitutional justice in Central and Eastern Europe. The subsequent sections are devoted to the case law related to the control over presidential and parliamentary elections, the constitutionality of political parties and associations, the cases of impeachment, the legal disputes between constitutional bodies. In the last section I discuss the relevance of the ancillary functions offering some conclusions about the legal originalities of this area and about the opportunity to devolve a so extensive number of powers to the constitutional judges.