The Constitution Of European Democracy

Europe is in crisis. With rising unrest among citizens of EU member states exemplified by the UK's decision to leave the EU, and the growing popularity of anti-EU political parties, Dieter Grimm presents the argument that Europe has to change its method of further integration or risks failure. This book, containing essays many of which have not been published in the English language to date, explores how the EU has become over-constitutionalized. Grimm argues that this has left the EU with a democratic deficit leading to the alienation of citizens. This book highlights Europe's democracy problem. The most prominent argument running throughout is that the EU and its decision-making processes have become over-constitutionalized. This is due to the constitutionalization of European treaties, which has occurred by raising them to the eminence of a constitution as a result of the jurisprudence of the European Court of Justice. However, the treaties contain provisions that would be ordinary law in member states. The fact that they enjoy constitutional status in Europe detaches them from the democratic processes in the member states and the EU itself, and contributes to the growing independence of the EU's executive and judicial institutions. The book also asserts that currently the EU does not have enough sources of legitimation to uphold itself, surviving solely on the legitimation provided by member states. One popular remedy is the suggestion of 'parliamentarization' of the EU, giving the European Parliament the powers typically possessed by national parliaments as a means of heightening its legitimation. This is criticized by Grimm as expanding the Parliament's powers would not change the effects of over-constiutionalization as the Parliament is inferior to the constitution. In order to reduce the EU's legitimacy deficit, Grimm makes several recommendations. The repoliticization of the decision-making processes, which can be achieved by reducing treaties to the capacity necessary for their constitutional function; the reinvigoration of European Parliament elections, by having 'Europeanized' parties to increase engagement with European society and give voters the opportunity to more immediately influence European politics; and a new division of powers based on subject matter to restrain European expansionism, reserving particular areas of policy to the responsibility of member states even if this affects the common market.

This two-volume book, published open access, brings together leading scholars of constitutional law from twenty-nine European countries to revisit the role of national constitutions at a time when decision-making has increasingly shifted to the European and transnational level. It offers important insights into three areas. First, it explores how constitutions reflect the transfer of powers from domestic to European and global institutions. Secondly, it revisits substantive constitutional values, such as the protection of constitutional rights, the rule of law, democratic participation and constitutional review, along with constitutional court judgments that tackle the protection of these rights and values in the transnational context, e.g. with regard to the Data Retention Directive, the European Arrest Warrant, the ESM Treaty, and EU and IMF austerity measures. The responsiveness of the ECJ regarding the above rights and values, along with the standard of protection, is also assessed. Thirdly, challenges in the context of global governance in relation to judicial review, democratic control and accountability are examined. On a broader level, the contributors were also invited to reflect on what has increasingly been described as the erosion or ‘twilight’ of constitutionalism, or a shift to a thin version of the rule of law, democracy and judicial review in the context of Europeanisation and globalisation processes. The national reports are complemented by a separately published comparative study, which identifies a number of broader trends and challenges that are shared across several Member States and warrant wider discussion. The research for this publication and the comparative study were carried out within the framework of the ERC-funded project ‘The Role and Future of National Constitutions in European and Global Governance’. The book is aimed at scholars, researchers, judges and legal advisors working on the interface between national constitutional law and EU and transnational law. The extradition cases are also of interest to scholars and practitioners in the field of criminal law. Anneli Albi is Professor of European Law at the University of Kent, United Kingdom. Samo Bardutzky is Assistant Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.

This book engages in the vivid debate about the role of nationalparliaments in the future European democracy. These parliaments are widely regarded to be essential in reducing the European Union's democratic deficit, but it remains unclear how their function should be organized. The purpose of this volume is to contribute to such a regime on the basis of a comparative analysis of scrutiny systems, as they exist today.

This book examines how mass media debates over the last decade have contributed to the politicization of the EU. Exploring social responsiveness to contested EU-constitution making, it demonstrates that media communication is central to comprehend the scope of legitimacy of the European Union.

From small-scale experiments, deliberative mini-publics have recently taken a constitutional turn in Europe. Iceland and Ireland have turned to deliberative democracy to reform their constitutions. Estonia, Luxembourg and Romania have also experienced constitutional process in a deliberative mode. In Belgium the G1000, a citizen-led initiative of deliberative democracy, has fostered a wider societal debate about the role and place of citizens in the country's democracy. At the same time, European institutions have introduced different forms of deliberative democracy as a way to connect citizens back in. These empirical cases are emblematic of a possibly constitutional turn in deliberative democracy in Europe. The purpose of this book is to critically assess these developments, bringing together academics involved in the designing of these new forms of constitutional deliberative democracy with the theorists who propagated the ideas and evaluated democratic standards.

The present collection of essays offers the reader a broad range of original perspectives on democracy and the rule of law in the European Union, approaching the existing policy area from new points of view. Leading experts from different countries and backgrounds focus on how democracy and the rule of law are related to topics like security, pension rights, judicial cooperation and human rights protection. Their expert views are based on a combination of theory and knowledge acquired in their practice as academics or practitioners in the field of European integration.. The issue of the rule of law and democracy is close to the heart of Professor Jaap de Zwaan, a true European, building bridges between countries and peoples. He has written extensively on the subject of European integration. Therefore, this collection of expert views is not only an original and valuable contribution to the literature and discussion on the development and enlargement of the European Union, but at the same time it is a tribute to Jaap de Zwaan, whose academic and diplomatic career can be characterized as always serving “an ever closer Union”. Flora Goudappel is Jean Monnet Professor of EU Trade Law in the Overseas Territories at the Erasmus University Rotterdam and a consultant on European Union law Ernst Hirsch Ballin is Professor of Dutch and European Constitutional Law at Tilburg University and Professor of Human Rights Law at the University of Amsterdam.

Recoge: 1. Democracy. -- 2. What future for parliamentary democracy in the EU. -- 3. The public sphere and civil society: prerequisites for democratically legitimate rule making. -- 4. Democracy and political participation. -- 5. Deliberative democracy.

This book offers a new approach to the study of European democracy showing how this has developed through key episodes in the long history of the process: precursors in the Low Countries; the founding of British parliamentary then American federal democracy; post-revolutionary France; post-war Germany; the European Parliament. It examines the significance of each episode in the development of national or federal democracy and concludes with a positive assessment of the prospects of liberal democracy. This is an important book for political scientists, historians and others concerned with the development of democracy in Europe and beyond.