The European Union (EU) has been through almost two decades of near-constant constitutional crisis. The failure of the Constitutional Treaty was followed in quick succession by the struggles about the Lisbon Treaty, the Eurozone emergency, Brexit, and, recently, Corona-crisis-induced conflicts about financial solidarity. Over the course of these events, it has become clear that the EU’s constitutional development largely evades popular control. At the same time, the EU faces increasing politicization from below. While Eurosceptic forces seek to ‘take back control’ at the national level, pro-European citizens challenge the role of the states as the ‘masters of the treaties’. They reclaim what—in their view—has been illegitimately withheld from them: the right to shape the EU polity. This book advances the argument that these developments prompt the need for a theory of constituent power in the EU. The reason why European integration eludes citizen control and meets with growing discontent is that it allows constituted powers to operate as de facto constituent powers. Starting from claims to founding authority articulated in public narratives, the book explores competing models of constituent power in the EU—regional cosmopolitanism, demoi-cracy, split popular sovereignty, and destituent power—revealing their respective strengths and weaknesses. Rationally reconstructing established democratic practices of EU constitutional politics, it develops a new theory of constituent power in the EU. Addressing questions of the adequate conceptualization, allocation, agency, and institutionalization of constituent power, the book opens up the prospect of a more democratic mode of European integration.
The European Union (EU) has been through almost two decades of near-constant constitutional crisis. The failure of the constitutional treaty was followed in quick succession by the struggles about the Lisbon Treaty, the Eurozone emergency, Brexit, and, recently, corona-crisis-induced conflicts about financial solidarity. Over the course of these events, it has become clear that the EU’s constitutional development largely evades popular control. At the same time, the EU faces increasing politicization from below. While Eurosceptic forces seek to ‘take back control’ at the national level, pro-European citizens challenge the role of the states as the ‘masters of the treaties’. They reclaim what—in their view—has been illegitimately withheld from them: the right to shape the EU polity. This book advances the argument that these developments prompt the need for a theory of constituent power in the EU. The reason why European integration eludes citizen control and meets with growing discontent is that it allows constituted powers to operate as de facto constituent powers. Starting from claims to founding authority articulated in public narratives, the book explores competing models of constituent power in the EU—regional cosmopolitanism, demoi-cracy, split popular sovereignty, and destituent power—revealing their respective strengths and weaknesses. Rationally reconstructing established democratic practices of EU constitutional politics, it develops a new theory of constituent power in the EU. Addressing questions of the adequate conceptualization, allocation, agency, and institutionalization of constituent power, the book opens up the prospect of a more democratic mode of European integration.