Paper Titles & Abstracts

EU constitutionalism over the last decade has been framed by the twin crises of the failure of the Constitutional Treaty (CT), and the ongoing Eurozone sovereign debt crisis. Part of the legacy of the first of those crises was a retreat from the CT's ambition of greater citizen engagement with, and involvement in the integration process. Now, as a result of the serious economic problems facing the currency union, the project of European integration has become politicised and European policies highly salient for national voters. However, this process has occurred almost against the will of EU leaders, who have sought technocratic solutions to what are inherently political problems. Thus, this paper will analyse the consequences of the EU's move from an unsuccessful attempt at democratisation via politicisation, to an unintended politicisation without democratisation. Indeed, those consequences may prove highly damaging to the fabric of European unity. Joseph Weiler described public dissent over the 1992 Maastricht Treaty as 'deliciously hostile', because, by drawing attention to a process that had too long gone unnoticed and unremarked by most Europeans, it indicated the long-awaited emergence of a European public sphere. Twenty years later there is no shortage of hostility in relation to the handling of the Eurozone crisis, but it is no longer delicious. On the contrary, the weakness of many Eurozone economies combined with inadequte EU-level democratic outlets and official policy responses that tend towards executive federalism are fostering conditions under which the integration process becomes reversible.