EU Constitutionalism in the Twenty-First Century: Flux as the New Status Quo?
Nicole Scicluna, La Trobe University
The Lisbon Treaty was supposed to mark the end of an almost-decade-long period of treaty reform. Yet, barely two years after it came into force, the constitutional settlement it imposed risks being overturned by the Eurozone debt crisis. The European Council summit in December 2011 produced an almost unanimous commitment to introduce a new treaty imposing stricter fiscal discipline, among other measures. Will this proposed fiscal compact revive the federalist project, succeeding where the Constitutional Treaty failed? Could the Eurozone debt crisis that began in 2010 be the ‘constitutional moment’ that the EU has hitherto lacked? This seems to be the prevalent view. Rather than questioning the efficacy of 'more Europe', EU elites see the crisis as an opportunity to complete the process that the introduction of the euro began - true political and economic union. Political and scholarly proponents of ever-closer union often set up a false choice between ‘more Europe and no Europe’. Such claims are misguided in their conceptualisation of the European project and dangerous in their potential to become self-fulfilling prophecies. European integration is not, and never has been, an all or nothing proposition. It takes place in a continuum, constantly pushed and pulled by opposing dynamics of centralisation and diffusion. The constitutional order that is emerging is likely to involve a mixture of centralisation and diffusion, threatening the EU’s post-Lisbon constitutional settlement. For better or worse, EU constitutionalism is bound to be in a state of flux, empowering both the member states and some supranational structures.