Demonstrating the ways in which the micro and macro-economic constitutions of Europe have reacted to legal measures enacted to counter the economic crisis of the past decade, this innovative book takes an interdisciplinary approach in its attempt to understand and portray the metamorphosis of the European Economic Constitution. It contains contributions from leading scholars and experts in European economic law, discussing the challenges, solutions found, problems arising and possible approaches to embed the economic constitution in the broader constitutional framework of the EU. p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 10.0px Arial}
Translated by Ciaran Cronin. In the midst of the current crisis that is threatening to derail the historical project of European unification, Jürgen Habermas has been one of the most perceptive critics of the ineffectual and evasive responses to the global financial crisis, especially by the German political class. This extended essay on the constitution for Europe represents Habermas’s constructive engagement with the European project at a time when the crisis of the eurozone is threatening the very existence of the European Union. There is a growing realization that the European treaty needs to be revised in order to deal with the structural defects of monetary union, but a clear perspective for the future is missing. Drawing on his analysis of European unification as a process in which international treaties have progressively taken on features of a democratic constitution, Habermas explains why the current proposals to transform the system of European governance into one of executive federalism is a mistake. His central argument is that the European project must realize its democratic potential by evolving from an international into a cosmopolitan community. The opening essay on the role played by the concept of human dignity in the genealogy of human rights in the modern era throws further important light on the philosophical foundations of Habermas’s theory of how democratic political institutions can be extended beyond the level of nation-states. Now that the question of Europe and its future is once again at the centre of public debate, this important intervention by one of the greatest thinkers of our time will be of interest to a wide readership.
This monograph intervenes in the long-standing and controversial debate on the socio-economic orientation of the European Union. Arguing that the European economic constitution is pluralist in the sense that it does not favour any specific socio-economic paradigm, it shows that European law allows the pursuit of very different regulatory projects by the European and the national legislators. This pluralist character of the European economic constitution stands in an uncomfortable relationship with the policies currently pursued by the European Union, which are often neoliberal in their orientation. The book takes an interdisciplinary approach: it analyses the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union as interpreted and developed in the case law of the Court of Justice, its history, and its regulatory purpose in the light of conflicting socio-economic paradigms. By challenging the orthodoxy, the book makes a bold proposition that will likely resonate in both European economic law scholarship and European law in general. With the ongoing economic crisis triggering a significant interest in economic questions among legal scholars it is particularly timely and topical.
The contributors to this book are all members of EuropEos, a multidisciplinary group of jurists, economists, political scientists, and journalists in an ongoing forum discussing European institutional issues. The essays analyze emerging shifts in common policies, institutional settings, and legitimization, sketching out possible scenarios for the European Union of the 21st century. They are grouped into three sections, devoted to economics and consensus, international projection of the Union, and the institutional framework. Even after the major organizational reforms introduced to the EU by the new Treaty of Lisbon, which came into force in December 2009, Europe appears to remain an entity in flux, in search of its ultimate destiny. In line with the very essence of EuropEos, the views collected in this volume are sometimes at odds in their specific conclusions, but they stem from a common commitment to the European construction.
Behind the controversies that have marked the history of the idea of Economic Constitution emerges the highly political issue of the room for manoeuvre left to public authorities in the economic sphere. The notion thus encapsulates a fundamental tension: between democracy and rule of law, which model of legal ordering of the economy should prevail? From physiocrats to neo-liberals, from the Weimar Republic to European integration, from national constitutions to Global Governance, this collective book invites us to explore the genealogy of the controversial concept of Economic Constitution. The result of this interdisciplinary dialogue is a comprehensive reflection on the legal and political issues at stake in the current constitutionalization of the market order in Europe. Contributors are: Philippe Steiner, Guillaume Grégoire, Hugues Rabault, Peter C. Caldwell, Thomas Biebricher, Werner Bonefeld, Serge Audier, Vincent Valentin, Pieter van Cleynenbreugel, Xavier Miny, Frédéric Marty, Claire Mongouachon, Hans-Wolfgang Micklitz, Francesco Martucci, Michael Wilkinson, Hjalte Lokdam, Susanna Maria Cafaro, Peter Lindseth, Cristina Fasone, Pierre Nihoul, François Colly, Peter-Christian Müller-Graff, Tony Prosser, Damien Piron, Mahmoud Mohamed Salah, Stephen Gill, Thibault Biscahie, Sebastien Adalid, and Christian Joerges. Derrière les controverses qui jalonnent l’histoire de l’idée de Constitution économique émerge la question éminemment politique de la marge de manœuvre laissée aux autorités publiques dans la sphère économique. La notion cristallise ainsi une tension fondamentale : entre démocratie et État de droit, quel doit être modèle d’organisation et d’ordonnancement juridique de l’économie? Des physiocrates aux néolibéraux, de la République de Weimar à l’intégration européenne, des constitutions nationales à la Global Governance, cet ouvrage collectif nous invite dès lors à explorer la généalogie du concept polémique de Constitution économique. Les auteurs ouvrent alors, à travers un dialogue interdisciplinaire constant, une réflexion globale autour des enjeux juridiques et politiques du processus actuel de constitutionnalisation de l’ordre de marché en Europe.
This book is written in honour of Hans-W. Micklitz for his jubilee 70th birthday and the closure of his twelve-year term as the Chair for Economic Law at the European University Institute (EUI). Hans-W. Micklitz has gained international recognition for dedicating his extensive and fruitful career to diverse areas of law: European Economic Law, European Private Law, National and European Consumer Law, Legal Theory, theories of Private Law and Social Justice. This book is a product of the collaborative endeavors of its contributors, who all have a special connection with Hans W. Micklitz as his doctoral supervisees or research assistants. The collection of twenty chapters is to be read as the influence of Hans's dialogues in the early stage of the academic career of thirty-one young legal scholars. The volume is divided into three sections devoted to subjects that have received Hans's attention while at the EUI: EU Consumer Law (part I); European Private Law and Access Justice (part II); the CJEU between the individual citizen and the Member States (part III).
For the time being, the political project of basing the European Union on a document entitled 'Constitution' has failed. The second, revised and enlarged edition of this volume retains its title nonetheless. Building on a scholarly rather than black-letter law account, it shows European constitutional law as it looks following the Treaty of Lisbon, with the EU's foundational treaties mandating the exercise of public authority, establishing a hierarchy of norms and legitimising legal acts, providing for citizenship, and granting fundamental rights. In this way the treaties shape the relations between legal orders, between public interest regulation and market economy, and between law and politics. The contributions demonstrate in detail how a constitutional approach furthers understanding of the core issues of EU law, how it offers theoretical and doctrinal insights, and how it adds critical perspective. From Reviews of the First Edition: "...should be mandatory reading for anyone who wants to get a holistic perspective of the academic debate on Europe's constitutional foundations...It is impossible to present the richness of thought contained in the 833 pages of the book in a short review." Common Market Law Review "an enduring scholarly work, which gives an English-speaking audience important, and overdue, access to the long-standing and forever-vigorous traditions of (European) constitutional law... unhesitatingly recommend[ed]." European Law Journal "...real scholarship in the profound sense of the word..." K Lenaerts, Professor of European Law, Leuven
Many on the Left see the European Union as a fundamentally benign project with the potential to underpin ever greater cooperation and progress. If it has drifted rightward, the answer is to fight for reform from within. In this iconoclastic polemic, economist Costas Lapavitsas demolishes this view. He contends that the EU’s response to the Eurozone crisis represents the ultimate transformation of the union into a neoliberal citadel that institutionally embeds austerity, privatization, and wage cuts. Concurrently, the rise of German hegemony has divided the EU into an unstable core and dependent peripheries. These related developments make the EU impervious to meaningful reform. The solution is therefore a direct challenge to the EU project that stresses popular and national sovereignty as preconditions for true internationalist socialism. Lapavitsas’s powerful manifesto for a left opposition to the EU upends the wishful thinking that often characterizes the debate and will be a challenging read for all on the Left interested in the future of Europe.
This book bridges the study of European constitutionalism with the study of 'fiscal federalism' – the subfield of public economics concerned with structuring public finances between different levels of government in federal states. On one axis, this book delves into European Union and Member State constitutional law from all EU Member States in order to investigate and identify the existence of permanent constitutional boundaries that will impinge upon the selection of proposed models for EU fiscal federalism. On the second axis, this book engages the study of fiscal federalism in order to determine which institutional configurations known to that field remain legally and economically implementable within those boundaries. It provides a far-reaching investigation of which models of fiscal federalism are compatible with the constitutional boundaries of the European legal order.
The debate on law, governance and constitutionalism beyond the state is confronted with new challenges. In the EU, confidence in democratic transnational governance has been shaken by the authoritarian and unsocial practices of crisis management. The ambition of this book, which builds upon many years of close co-operation between its contributors, is to promote a viable interdisciplinary alternative to these developments. “Conflicts-law constitutionalism” is a concept of transnational governance which derives democratic legitimacy from the supranational control of the external impact of national decision-making, on the one hand, and the co-operative responses to problem interdependencies on the other. The first section of the book contrasts Europe's new modes of economic governance and crisis management with the conditionality of international investments, and reflects upon the communalities and differences between emergency Europe and global exceptionalism. Subsequent sections substantiate the problématique of executive and technocratic rule, explore conflict constellations of prime importance in the fields of environmental and labour law, and discuss the impact and limits of liberalisation strategies. Throughout the book, European and transnational developments are compared and evaluated.
