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- Carl Schmitt (1)
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- Jürgen Habermas (1)
- Karl Polanyi (1)
Europe’s Economic Constitution in Crisis and the Emergence of a new Constitutional Constellation
(2014)
The European Union rides through troubled waters. Its original reliance on law as the object and agent of the integration project and on the “economic constitution,” which the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU)—as accomplished by the Treaty of Maastricht—expected to complete, have proven unsustainable. Following the financial and sovereign debt crises, individuals perceive the EMU, with its commitments to price stability and monetary politics, as a failed construction precisely because of its reliance on inflexible rules. The European crisis management seeks to compensate for these failures by means of regulatory machinery which disregards the European order of competences, takes power from national institutions, and burdens—in particular—Southern Europe with austerity measures; it establishes pan-European commitments to budgetary discipline and macroeconomic balancing. This abolishes the ideal of a legal ordering of the European economy, while the economic and social prospects of these efforts appear gloomy and the Union’s political legitimacy becomes precarious. A fictitious debate between Carl Schmitt and Jürgen Habermas addresses the present critical constellation, where a number of Schmittian notions seem alarmingly realistic. This essay pleads for a more modest Europe committing itself to “unity in diversity,” the motto of the ill-fated Constitutional Treaty of 2003.
Law and Politics i n Europe’s Crisis: On the History of the Impact of a n Unfortunate Configuration
(2014)
De la integrarea prin drept la criza financiară: Ce a mai rămas din constituţia economică europeană?
(2013)
This paper will defend the 'conflicts-law approach' and develop a step further an approach to European law which I call "conflicts-law constitutionalism". The argument will proceed in three distinct steps. I will first recall very briefly the legacy of the 'integration through law' project and submit that the conflicts-law approach can be understood as an effort to rewrite and to re-conceptualise the project of Europe's 'integration trough law' (II). The main section of the paper will confront the legacy of 'integration through law' with Karl Polanyi's economic sociology and its warnings against the commod if ication of land, labour and money (III). On that basis the potential of the conflicts-law approach will be explored in three scenarios which the commod if ication of these goods have provoked (IV). The concluding part will contrast the approach with Jürgen Habermas' renewed plea for a demoaatisation of the European project on the one hand and the Großraum theory of Habermas' favourite enemy on the other (V).
Europe unwell, yet alive
(2016)
European Studies used to be dominated by legal and political science approaches which hailed the progress of European integration and its reliance on law. The recent set of crises that struck the EU have highlighted fundamental problems in the ways and means by which European integration unfolds. The quasi-authoritarian emergency politics deployed in the euro crisis is a radical expression of the fading prevalence of democratic processes to accommodate economic and social diversity in the Union. As we argue in this paper, however, the mainstreams in both disciplines retain a largely affirmative and apologetic stance on the EU's post-democratic and extra-constitutional development. While political science contributions mostly content themselves with a revival of conventional integration theories and thus turn a blind eye to normatively critical aspects of European crisis governance, legal scholarship is in short supply of normatively convincing theoretical paradigms and thus aligns itself with the functionalist reasoning of the EU's Court of Justice. Yet, we also identify critical peripheries in both disciplines which intersect in their critical appraisal of the authoritarian tendencies that inhere in the crisis-ridden state of European integration. Their results curb the prevailing optimism and underline that the need for fundamental reorientations in both the theory and practice of European integration has become irrefutable.
European Studies used to be dominated by legal and political science approaches which hailed the progress of European integration and its reliance on law. The recent set of crises that struck the EU have highlighted fundamental problems in the ways and means by which European integration unfolds. The quasi-authoritarian emergency politics deployed in the euro crisis is a radical expression of the fading prevalence of democratic processes to accommodate economic and social diversity in the Union. As we argue in this paper, however, the mainstreams in both disciplines retain a largely affirmative and apologetic stance on the EU's post-democratic and extra-constitutional development. While political science contributions mostly content themselves with a revival of conventional integration theories and thus turn a blind eye to normatively critical aspects of European crisis governance, legal scholarship is in short supply of normatively convincing theoretical paradigms and thus aligns itself with the functionalist reasoning of the EU's Court of Justice. Yet, we also identify critical peripheries in both disciplines which intersect in their critical appraisal of the authoritarian tendencies that inhere in the crisis-ridden state of European integration. Their results curb the prevailing optimism and underline that the need for fundamental reorientations in both the theory and practice of European integration has become irrefutable.
In this article, the controversy between the European Court of Justice and the German Federal Constitutional Court over the Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT) Programme remains in the background. Rather than summarising and evaluating all this, the Author focuses his attention on a defence of the message in the title. Firstly, he starts with the ruling of the German Court of January 2014, which, as is well known, is the “first reference ever”. In this the Author focuses his attention on the two dissenting opinions by judges Lübbe-Wolff and Gerhardt. Then, the analysis focuses mainly on to the exercise of discretion by the ECB and the role of the judiciary. Thereafter, the Author examines the responses to these developments in various branches of European studies and concludes with an explanation of title.