The STUDIA UNIVERSITATIS BABEŞ-BOLYAI issue article summary

The summary of the selected article appears at the bottom of the page. In order to get back to the contents of the issue this article belongs to you have to access the link from the title. In order to see all the articles of the archive which have as author/co-author one of the authors mentioned below, you have to access the link from the author's name.

 
       
         
    STUDIA EUROPAEA - Issue no. 2-3 / 2005  
         
  Article:   RETHINKING THE EU''''S CONSTITUTIONAL ORDER: FROM CONSTITUTIONALISM BY STEALTH TO A POUVOIR CONSTITUANT?.

Authors:  MICHAEL O’NEILL.
 
       
         
  Abstract:  The crisis over the EU''''s constitutional treaty raises critical questions about the way the Union goes about constitution-making. Despite the decision at the Laeken European Council to broaden the process beyond the narrow and top-down procedure previously monopolised by European Court Justices and the governments of the member states, the failure of the EU''''s political elite to engage the general public with the constitutional process reflects an abiding disconnection within the EU''''s body politic that contributes much to abiding legitimacy and constitutional deficits at the heart of EU politics and governance. The previous reliance on permissive consensus and performance as sources of political legitimacy, and a constitutional order built by judicial stealth and trade-offs between the member states in a cumulate series of treaty revisions, can no longer be a reliable basis for legitimising a transnational governance that must be accountable, transparent and responsive to public concerns if it is to gain the public confidence and support required for dealing with the critical problems and policy challenges brought about by globalisation. Although the EU is not a state, and unlikely ever to become a state, it is a polity whose policy-making involves distributive and redistributive decisions. As such, it does require both regime (procedural) and polity (constitutional) legitimacy rather than merely performance legitimacy in order to ensure effective and publicly accountable governance, a quality that must involve the people, not as passive recipients of modest ''''top-down'''' citizenship rights but as a pouvoir constituant.  
         
     
         
         
      Back to previous page