n her article ‘Rechtsstaat als Kriterium für Europa’, Pia LettoVanamo identified and defined the principle of the rule of law as a cri- I terion for Europe.1 She had first presented her thoughts on the subject at a seminar in 2000, and the text was published in 2002. I will briefly put Letto-Vanamo’s text in the context of the time when it was written and draw some comparisons with Europe’s legal landscape today. The concept of theRechtsstaat, just like the concept of the rule of law, has its origins in the early nineteenth century.2 Robert von Mohl did not invent the concept, but he made it generally known and it was adopted by 1 Pia Letto-Vanamo, ‘Rechtsstaat als Kriterium für Europa’, in Kjell Å. Modéer (ed.), Europäische Rechtsgeschichte und europäische Integration (Stockholm: Institutet för rättshistorisk forskning, 2002), 81–91. 2 For the development of the concepts Rechtsstaat and rule of law, and comparisons between them, see, for example, Neil MacCormick, ‘Der Rechtsstaat und die rule of law’, Juristenzeitung2(1984), 65–70; Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, ‘EntstehungundWandel des Rechtsstaatsbegriff ’ in id., Recht, Staat, Freiheit: Studien zur Rechtsphilosophie, Staatstheorie und Verfassungsgeschichte (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1991), 143–69; Raoul Charles van Caenegem,AnHistorical Introduction toWestern Constitutional Law(Cambridge: CUP, 1995), 15–21; Heinz Mohnhaupt, ‘Zur Geschichte des Rechtsstaates in Deutschland. Begriff und Funktion eines schwierigen Verfassungsprinzips’, Acta Facultatis Politico-Iuridicae Universitatis ScientiarumBudapestiniensis 34 (1993/94) (Budapest 1997), 39–60; Pietro Costa, ‘The Rechtsstaat, the definition of the rule of law part vi • european legal integration 287 17. The rule of law as a criterion for Europe Martin Sunnqvist
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