Saturday 16 June 2007

EU CONSTITUTION: THE RUBICON OF SUPRANATIONAL


Executive Summary of the book:

This book perhaps is one of the rare of its kind, addressing a subject that might as well not be put into practice at all. As the course of developments proceeded within EU members in the first half of 2007, despite the German commitment to revive the constitutional treaty; the key member states, with the same commitment, insisted that not even the term constitution should be mentioned at all in this treaty.

After the French and Dutch refusal against the Constitution for Europe, The year of 2005, was marked as the most critical year for the political future of EU. Furthermore, in 2005, instead of “a grand European project”, the discussion was largely focused on the “great European dream”. The first deadline set for its enforcement, on 1 November 2006, had expired and it is likely that the second one- November 2007, will not arrive to enforce the first European and supra-national constitution.

The fate of this Constitution has therefore been questioned, although the EU German Presidency, in the first half of this year, returned it on the political agenda of the Union. Furthermore, as time passes, there is a conviction that the first pan-European constitution is becoming its antipode. Instead of becoming a European unifying constitutional instrument, it has already become a cause for new divisions between the member states. Today, Europe is divided constitutionally between eighteen member states, which have expressed their positive stance towards the future EU governance based on this constitution; and nine other states that are objecting it.

In the celebratory year of the 50th Anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Rome, the EU found itself in a contradictory situation: while celebrating the achievements of the half-century European economic integration, at the same time, without displaying the courage to enforce a new constitutional treaty, which would pave the road for a European political integration.

In the transition phase: from post- Nice, towards Pre- Constitutional Europe, the Post- Westphalia dilemma: nation or member states, remains. The first test of this supranational philosophy: the two “no’s” to the constitutional treaty of EU, by the citizens of two of its first founders, raised the suspicion on possibilities to federalize Europe. Although the “European Constitution”, did not introduce a classic federal model, it nevertheless created some kind of an external federation, which is more than a federal association of member states. The fears of Europeans from a new “super-state”, or a “supra-national state” and thus, the creation of one centralized Europe, are stronger than the altruist vision for a new Europe “sans frontiers”.

In 2004, a new page was opened in the political development of the Union, with a tendency for its constitutionalization. With the draft of the constitutional treaty, a new phenomenon appeared. This was not only a legal, but also a political phenomenon: a non-state entity, composed by a nation state, organized by its Constitution. By that, new concepts were introduced, such as: supranational Constitution, or European meta- constitution. Actually, this is in line with the concept of Hix’s “Constitutionalization of the EU“, or what Schwarze, qualified as “the birth of European Constitutional Order”.

But, the main EU dilemma still remains unsolved: will the Union continue to function based on their five founding treaties, or only based on a single Constitution? In between this two pro et contra approaches there are at least four possible scenarios: keeping the text as it is, (with one or more possible additions); preserving the main elements in a smaller treaty; re-opening negotiations on certain points; or abandoning it completely and wait for more favourable times to re-negotiate. No one of these options would be approved at the next European Council Summit, on 22 June 2007, rather it could be a combination of all of them.

The various scenarios were elaborated in the various analysis offered by European research and academic circuits, but also by different analysts and politicians such are: “Five Alternative Solutions”; “The EU Mini- Treaty”; “People’s Constitution of the EU”; “Plan B: How to save the European Constitution”, and “Constitution Plus”; “The five-step plan”; “Institutional Treaty”, and “Single Cooperation and Participation Act”.

In the beginning of the 21st Century, the discussions regarding the future of Europe and its political, legal and constitutional identity, continued within this basic political question in Europe. This debate continued mainly within two conceptual directions: euro-centrism and state-centrism, which in fact reflected the main theoretical directions of euro-fills and euro-sceptics. European Academic circuits began to argument the need and necessity for a European Constitution as the basis of a new political European architecture, which along with the three official stances of the three main European states, created the political basis for the future of the EU, with the main coordinates, as follows: the necessity to clarify the competences between the EU and member states; the necessity to institutionally re-structure the EU (prior to new enlargements); the aim to create a European political and cohesive structure (which would draw towards a federal model); the continuation of the protection of the European identity and traditional values; and a constitutional guarantee for basic human rights and freedoms, within the EU.

Considering this development in the process of the ratification of the Constitution for Europe, so far, the main dilemma remains: with the national ratification continue based on the defined scheme, or is the Constitution for Europe, really dead? In 2007, EU is facing with post-Westphalia dilemma: how much more time will the European states need to conclude the already begun historical process of replacing a four-century old model of Westphalia sovereignty, with a new inter-dependable one? It turned out that it was precisely the constitutional treaty of the EU, instead of inaugurating a new supranational political unity of Europe, turned into its exact opposition: in an instrument of limiting the possibility of surpassing the Rubicon of the supranational. By doing so, to keep hostage the first supra-national constitution.

By Blerim Reka, author of the book