After the fall of Communism in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), the newly democratized countries of this region joined two main pan-European political and legal structures: the Council of Europe and the European Union. This book shows how the Eastward enlargement of these two structures fostered the 'constitutionalization' both of the Council of Europe and of the EU. Prompted by the enlargement of the Council of Europe and the admission of a number of countries which brought unique and often more substantial problems onto the Court's agenda, the main judicial body of the Council of Europe, the European Court of Human Rights, became a quasi 'constitutional court' of Europe. This book demonstrates that this was primarily as a result of the widening of its agenda and the resulting need to make activist decisions about the compatibility of national laws with the European Convention.