• Juridification and judicialization of European integration emerges as a dominant pattern: the ECJ acts as a central agent in shaping harmonization, rights regimes, and substantive EU law, with extensive cross-referencing to human-rights jurisprudence and court-driven convergence [12], [13], [15], [16], [17], [19], [20].

• Institutional design and governance: scholarship emphasizes how negotiation, parliament, council, and representation structures shape policy outcomes, procedural legitimacy, and integration trajectories (SEA, parliament, council, permanent representations) [1], [2], [3], [5], [7], [18].

• Constitutionalism and rights in European integration: constitutional drafting, human-rights regimes, and constitutional instrumentation influence both national and supranational legal orders [5], [12], [15], [16], [17], [19].

• Regulation, tools, and effectiveness: regulation as instrument, the tools and processes for enforcing EC law, and debates about the reach and effectiveness of regulatory governance [6], [11], [14], [20].

• External policy orientation and regional dynamics: policy outside of core economic integration, such as Mediterranean policy and state roles in the EC, illustrating cross-border influence on integration [1], [8], [10], [18].