“Only You”: The Emergence of a Temperate Mutual Trust in the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice and Its Underpinning in the European Composite Constitutional Order

This Article aims at inquiring on the relation between mutual trust and fundamental rights in the functioning of mutual recognition instruments with special reference to EU constitutionalism, suggesting the emergence of and the need to frame a ‘temperate’ vision of mutual trust. After the introduction, highlighting the focal moments of the success of mutual trust in European integration process, the Article discusses the emergence of a more temperate interpretation of mutual trust by the CJEU. It then discusses these developments in the constitutional framework of the EU, suggesting with a three-tier argumentation that only a temperate declination of mutual trust can fit the composite constitutional framework of the EU in a harmonious fashion, while at the same time guaranteeing the enforcement of the mutual recognition instruments it aims to support.