The only interesting feature of the ratification process was the ruling of the German Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe. This nicely contrasted with Britain's much vaunted sovereignty system, in which its citizens had no recourse to constitutional law once its parliament had signed away legal authority by treaty. It may have been a good thing for liberty that sovereignty was effectively renounced, but its replacement is hardly a bastion of freedom. Supreme Court since 1937 is striking. The elimination of constitutional competition in the United States was formally recognized in the notorious Garcia v. San Antonio Transit Authority case, where the Supreme Court, in defiance of the Tenth Amendment, said that federalism consisted merely in the fact that the states were represented in the Congress.
Subsidiarity is a kind of surrogate for genuine federalism.
There is nothing like the precision of the original American Constitution, which at least does specify the areas of competence for the federal government and leaves the rest to the states. In Europe there is not even wording that can function as a principle for demarcating centralized authority from local. In any disputed area, the European Court will always side with Brussels. It is true that European governmental institutions are not subject to much democratic accountability. People who make this case repeat the error of Madison, in Federalist 10, on the grand scale.