The Constitutionalisation of a Compound Democracy: Comparing the European Union with the American Experience

Based on an interpretation of the European Union (EU) as a compound democracy, thisarticle argues that the constitutionalisation of the European Union is necessarily acontested process.. A compound democracy is defined as a union of states constituted byunits of different demographic size, political history and geographical interests, and as suchis necessarily characterized by different views on its constitutional identity. The EUexperience is analyzed from the perspective of the United States (US), which is acompound democracy by design. In both cases, constitutionalisation has been an open andcontested process. However, whereas the US process was based on a commonconstitutional framework, at least since the Civil War, and has been ordered by a supermajorityprocedure for settling disputes, the EU lacks a document that embodies a sharedlanguage and a procedure that is able to solve the disputes. As a result, the process ofconstitutionalisation in the EU, contrary to the one in the US, ends up periodically instalemate.constitutional change; constitution building; European Convention

Executive Power in the European Union: The Implications of the Euro Crisis

Introduction: The euro crisis has brought to the full affirmation of the intergovernmental approach to economic governance. Indeed, in the negotiations that led to the 1992 Maastricht Treaty emerged a clear alternative perspective to the Community method (characterized by the Commission’s monopoly of legislative initiative and legislative co-decisional power of the Council and the European parliament or EP on Commission’s proposals) for dealing with the new issues of foreign, security and economic policies (inter alia). That perspective had an intergovernmental character and soon acquired the form of a specific constitutional model or decision-making regime. Since the Maastricht Treaty, the member state governments accepted to Europeanize those issues traditionally close to national sovereignty, but at the same time they decided that their Europeanization would have not implied the strengthening of the supranational institutions (the Commission, the European Court of Justice or ECJ and the EP). Those policies have thus come to be decided within the circuit of the Council of Ministers or Council and the informal European Council. The intergovernmental decisions have taken the form of political, rather than legal, acts. If the Community method has epitomized the principle of integration through law, the intergovernmental method has advanced the alternative project of an integration based on voluntary policy coordination between national governments within Brussels’ intergovernmental institutions. The intergovernmental constitution was thus fully institutionalized by the 2009 Lisbon Treaty that has finally recognized the European Council as formal executive institution of the EU, chaired by a permanent president elected by the latter’s members

Intergovermentalism and its Outcomes: the Implications of the Euro Crisis on the European Union

The euro crisis has brought to the crisis of the intergovernmental EU not of the EU as such. The Lisbon Treaty in fact has institutionalized a dual constitution, supranational in the single market’s policies and intergovernmental in (among others) economic and financial policies. The extremely complex system of economic governance set up for answering the euro crisis has been defined and implemented on the basis of the intergovernmental constitution of the EU. The euro crisis has thus represented a test for testing the validity of the intergovernmental constitution of the Lisbon Treaty. Although the measures adopted in the period 2010-2012, consisting both of legislative decisions and new intergovernmental treaties, are of an unprecedented magnitude, they were nevertheless unable to promote effective and legitimate solutions for dealing with the financial crisis. In the context of an existential challenge, the intergovernmental approach faced a structural difficulty in solving basic dilemmas of collective action.The euro crisis has brought to the crisis of the intergovernmental EU not of the EU as such. The Lisbon Treaty in fact has institutionalized a dual constitution, supranational in the single market’s policies and intergovernmental in (among others) economic and financial policies. The extremely complex system of economic governance set up for answering the euro crisis has been defined and implemented on the basis of the intergovernmental constitution of the EU. The euro crisis has thus represented a test for testing the validity of the intergovernmental constitution of the Lisbon Treaty. Although the measures adopted in the period 2010-2012, consisting both of legislative decisions and new intergovernmental treaties, are of an unprecedented magnitude, they were nevertheless unable to promote effective and legitimate solutions for dealing with the financial crisis. In the context of an existential challenge, the intergovernmental approach faced a structural difficulty in solving basic dilemmas of collective action.Refereed Working Papers / of international relevanc

The tyranny of the familiar: why we should be wary of proposals to ‘parliamentarise’ EU decision-making

Strengthening the role of the European Parliament has often been proposed as a method for addressing the EU’s alleged democratic deficit. Sergio Fabbrini writes that while there are legitimate criticisms to be made about the intergovernmental model of European integration, any attempt to create a system approximating national parliamentary democracy at the European level would be counter-productive. He argues that what the integration project requires is a new theory that moves beyond the standoff between intergovernmental and parliamentary approaches

The Institutional Future of the European Union

The ink of the Lisbon Treaty‟s signatories was not yet dry before the financial crisis, which took a serious turn for the worse in 2010, called that Treaty into question. The financial bankruptcy of Greece and Ireland and the serious financial difficulties of Portugal and Spain have, in fact, determined the need for us to reconsider the “EU institutional arrangement”, which was so painstakingly constructed in the course of the first decade of the century. Under the pressure, on one hand, of domestic electoral and constitutional constraints and, on the other, of the financial threat of the collapse of the euro, the EU heads of state and government have finally ended up radically reforming the EU system of economic governance. At the crucial European Council held on 24-25 March 2011, fundamental decisions were adopted, such as: the reinforcement of macroeconomic surveillance, the strengthening of the stability and growth pact, a corrective mechanism for macroeconomic imbalances, the European semester, the Euro Plus pact and the European Stability Mechanism (ESM). This new economic governance system mainly concerns the EU member states who have adopted the euro. The most striking of these innovations, the ESM, implies the establishment of a new treaty by the euro-area member states “as an intergovernmental organisation under public international law”, a treaty located outside the EU‟s institutional framework, though justified by a proposal of an amendment to Article 136 of the TFEU. Are these decisions a challenge to the integrity of the treaty-based system of the EU or do they represent a radical step forward in the integration process? This paper tries to answer this question, with a critical discussion of the two main paradigms interpreting the EU (the sui generis and the parliamentary options). It reaches the conclusion that those paradigms are unsatisfactory for explaining those decisions, thus proposing a new paradigm, defined as unionist, for interpreting the latter and fine-tuning their implications

The Euro crisis and the constitutional disorder of the European Union

The Lisbon Treaty is the outcome of several constitutional compromises. The compromise between the supranational and the intergovernmental views of the European Union (EU), the compromise between the member states engaged in building a European Monetary Union (EMU) and those allowed to opt-out from it and the compromise, within the EMU, between a centralized approach to monetary policy and decentralized economic, fiscal and budgetary policies, constrained however within the formalized rules of the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP). The euro crisis has called into question this multiple constitutional setting. The balance between supranational and intergovernmental views has been upset in favour of the former. The approval of new intergovernmental treaties has made crystal clear the separation of interests between the EMU and the opt-out member states (the United Kingdom in specific). The inefficacy of the voluntary coordination between national governments in dealing with the euro crisis has brought to an unprecedented centralization and judicialization in the governance of the common currency. In the constitutional disorder induced by the euro crisis the EU has assumed specific institutional, legal and ideological configurations.The Lisbon Treaty is the outcome of several constitutional compromises. The compromise between the supranational and the intergovernmental views of the European Union (EU), the compromise between the member states engaged in building a European Monetary Union (EMU) and those allowed to opt-out from it and the compromise, within the EMU, between a centralized approach to monetary policy and decentralized economic, fiscal and budgetary policies, constrained however within the formalized rules of the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP). The euro crisis has called into question this multiple constitutional setting. The balance between supranational and intergovernmental views has been upset in favour of the former. The approval of new intergovernmental treaties has made crystal clear the separation of interests between the EMU and the opt-out member states (the United Kingdom in specific). The inefficacy of the voluntary coordination between national governments in dealing with the euro crisis has brought to an unprecedented centralization and judicialization in the governance of the common currency. In the constitutional disorder induced by the euro crisis the EU has assumed specific institutional, legal and ideological configurations.Refereed Working Papers / of international relevanc

After the Euro Crisis: The President of Europe, A new paradigm for increasing legitimacy and effectiveness in the EU. EuropEos Commentary No. 12, 1 June 2012

The crisis in the eurozone– which became worse in Europe at the same time that the Lisbon Treaty entered in force at the end of 2009 – has presented the first test of the crisis management capabilities of the intergovernmental approach. As provided under the Lisbon Treaty, the European Council has been the true decision-making centre for the policies adopted in response to the financial crisis, with the Commission playing a technical role. This commentary finds, however, that this institutional set-up has been unsatisfactory and unable to overcome the three fundamental dilemmas of the integration process: the dilemma of veto power, the dilemma of enforcement of the agreements and the dilemma of decision-making legitimacy. While it remains to be seen whether the election of François Hollande as President of France signals the beginning of a new political cycle characterised by new ideas on the institutional future of the EU, if that were to materialise, this paper aims to contribute to the debate on those new ideas

The Executive Deficit of the European Union

The oft-repeated mantra of \u2018more coordination\u2019 won\u2019t provide a real solution to Europe\u2019s political crises unless the EU\u2019s dual executive architecture is first rationalized and democratized