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Constitutional Treaty (constitutional + treaty)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	50%

Selected Abstracts

Constitutionalism and Dissonances: Has Europe Paid Off Its Debt to Functionalism?

EUROPEAN LAW JOURNAL, Issue 3 2009
Marco Dani
This impression seems confirmed by the recent Presidency Conclusions of the European Council which, although salvaging many important solutions contained in the Constitutional Treaty, explicitly sanction that ,the constitutional concept . . . is abandoned'. In the light of this context, what role could the constitutional scholarship play? How to make sense of a polity in which the claims of constitutionalism as a form of power are politically unappealing though legally plausible? This article tries to respond to these questions by reaffirming functionalism as a valid analytical and normative perspective in facing the current constitutional reality of European integration. The analytical value associated with functionalism is evidenced by testing against the current context of the EU legal framework the accounts for EU constitutionalism which postulate functional equivalence between the EU and the Member States. The normative potential of functionalism, then, is discussed by arguing that there may be a value worth preserving in a degree of functional discrepancy between the EU and state constitutionalism and, notably, that the transformative and civilising dividend inherent in functionalism could still be exploited, at least in certain areas of EU policy making. Finally, the article suggests that the difficulties in accounting for EU constitutionalism in the light of state-centred constitutional theory could be regarded as symptoms of European integration marking a moment in the theoretical evolution of constitutionalism. [source]

The Jurisprudence of Constitutional Conflict: Constitutional Supremacy in Europe before and after the Constitutional Treaty

EUROPEAN LAW JOURNAL, Issue 3 2005
Mattias Kumm
With the inclusion in the recently adopted Constitutional Treaty of a clause explicitly confirming the ,primacy of EU Law' appearances suggest that the EU is about to establish a characteristic of mature, vertically integrated, federal states such as the USA. This article argues that this view is mistaken. It develops a comprehensive jurisprudential framework for addressing constitutional conflicts, ,Constitutionalism Beyond the State' (CBC). CBS detaches the discussion of supremacy and constitutional conflict from a statist framework; provides a jurisprudential account that explains and justifies the highly differentiated, context-sensitive and dynamic set of conflict rules that national courts have in the past adopted; and provides the lacking theoretical basis for the more attractive, but undertheorised sui generis accounts of European constitutional practice that have recently gained ground in the literature. CBS provides a jurisprudentially grounded reconstructive account of why the issue of constitutional conflict is as rich and complicated in Europe as it is and why it is likely to remain so even if the Constitutional Treaty is ratified. The article then goes on to make concrete proposals addressed to national constitutional courts and the Court of Juctise respectively about how, in application of the developed approach, constitutional conflicts ought to be addressed doctrinally. It includes a proposal to read the new ,constitutional identity' clause as authorising Member States as a matter of EU Law to set aside EU Law on constitutional grounds under certain circumstances. [source]

The Difficulty of Justifying European Integration as a Consequence of Depoliticization: Evidence from the 2005 French Referendum

GOVERNMENT AND OPPOSITION, Issue 3 2009
Andrew Glencross
This article analyses the 2005 French referendum debate on the EU Constitutional Treaty as an instance of depoliticization. Particular emphasis is placed on the argumentative strategy of President Chirac as, despite the treaty's focus on institutional reform, he eventually chose to justify the document in terms of social policy: an ultimately unconvincing strategy because voters believed it was contradicted by current EU policy priorities. On this evidence, pace Glyn Morgan, prioritizing a justification of EU finality over that of institutions and policies does not seem appropriate. Rather, the priority for integration is to overcome elites' strategies of depoliticization during referendum campaigns. [source]

Dynamics and Countervailing Pressures of Visa, Asylum and Immigration Policy Treaty Revision: Explaining Change and Stagnation from the Amsterdam IGC to the IGC of 2003,04*

JCMS: JOURNAL OF COMMON MARKET STUDIES, Issue 3 2008
ARNE NIEMANN
The objective of this article is to account for the varying, and sometimes puzzling, outcomes of the past three Treaty revisions of EU/EC visa, asylum and immigration policy. The article focuses on decision rules and the institutional set-up of these policies, subjecting the results of the Intergovernmental Conference negotiations leading to the Treaties of Amsterdam and Nice and the Constitutional Treaty to causal analysis. The article maintains that four factors can explain the various Treaty outcomes: (i) functional pressures; (ii) the role of supranational institutions; (iii) socialization, deliberation and learning processes; and (iv) countervailing forces. [source]

Migrants as Minorities: Integration and Inclusion in the Enlarged European Union,

JCMS: JOURNAL OF COMMON MARKET STUDIES, Issue 4 2005
RYSZARD CHOLEWINSKI
The developing migration and asylum law and policy of the European Union aim to construct a common normative framework to address the admission and residence of diverse categories of third-country nationals in EU territory. The principles of minority protection, however, are absent from EU law, with the exception of some references in the new Constitutional Treaty and the incorporated Charter of Fundamental Rights, although they have been employed, to a certain degree, in a prescriptive and pragmatic way in the context of the accession of new Member States. However, increased EU attention to the concept of integration in recent Council policy pronouncements and newly adopted legal measures, aimed almost exclusively at lawfully resident third-country nationals, provides a space where migration policy and minority protection principles may engage more directly. This article undertakes a preliminary assessment of the points of convergence and divergence in these two sets of principles, and argues that greater convergence would result in a more coherent EU policy on integration. [source]

An American Perspective on the EU's Constitutional Treaty

POLITICS, Issue 1 2007
Alberta Sbragia
This article argues that the American experience can help illuminate some of the tensions surrounding the European Union's embattled Constitutional Treaty. I want to emphasise, however, that I am not trying to make any rigorous comparative statement here. I am not arguing that the United States and the EU are similar. They have developed in very different historical periods: the 13 colonies were certainly not equivalent to the old and well-established nation states which form the EU. Nonetheless, I am saying that some aspects of the American experience may be useful in thinking about the current state of tension which surrounds the process of European integration. In this article, therefore, I shall very schematically contrast the American and the European experience of integration and use that contrast to help illuminate the tensions which are now at work in the EU. [source]

The Treaty of Nice: The Sharing of Power and the Institutional Balance in the European Union,A Continental Perspective

EUROPEAN LAW JOURNAL, Issue 3 2001
Xenophon A. Yataganas
This paper presents an initial response to the conclusions of the Nice Summit and the new EU Treaty which emerged from it. It consists of two parts: in the first I discuss the climate in which the Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) took place and the opening positions of the Institutions, the Member States, and the applicant countries. The results achieved at Nice are set out in the second part, with special emphasis on the themes that mark a shift of power within the Community's institutional architecture; i.e. the extension of qualified-majority voting in the Council and the co-decision procedure with the European Parliament, the reweighting of votes and the composition of the Institutions with a view to an enlargement which is both imminent and unprecedented in the history of the EU. I conclude that while the results of the IGC and the new Treaty of Nice fall short of what is needed in an EU with ambitions on a continental scale, they do mark another stage in the process of European integration and the permanent evolution of its constitution. In this sense, the balance of power is likely to be different from what it has been in the past. The Franco-German axis has been severely weakened, the UK and Spain seem to be determined to play a central role, and the smaller countries are seeking to retain some influence over how the process works. New alliances are likely to emerge, particularly after enlargement, with Germany in search of a dominant position, France desperately trying to preserve the status quo, and the UK wanting to influence the direction of moves towards integration from the inside. Nice seems to mark an interim stage in this process. A new IGC has already been scheduled for 2004. There is no doubt that the post-Nice period will be one of transition towards a new distribution of power within the EU, sanctioned by a new, highly constitutional treaty. [source]

The politics of Europe 2003: differences and disagreements

INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS JOURNAL, Issue 6 2004
Erik Jones
ABSTRACT The European Union (EU) was supposed to make a great leap forward in 2003. In many ways, it did. The European Convention presented its draft constitutional treaty. The 10 candidate countries signed and ratified their treaties of accession, and the EU and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) agreed to share institutional resources. However, the year was marked more by division than by achievement. A series of crises over Iraq, the Stability and Growth Pact and the intergovernmental conference together shook confidence in the future of Europe. This essay examines what the implications of these crises are for Europe's future. It argues that they represent important disagreements,,but not lasting differences,,between the member states. The politics of Europe remains on track at the intergovernmental level. If there are problems in Europe's future, they are more likely to arise between elites and voters than between the member states. [source]