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2 - Why Europe needs a Constitution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2009

By
Jürgen Habermas
Edited by
Ralf Rogowski  and
Charles Turner
Ralf Rogowski
Affiliation:
University of Warwick
Charles Turner
Affiliation:
University of Warwick
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Summary

There is a remarkable contrast between the expectations and demands of those who pushed for European unification immediately after the Second World War, and those who contemplate the continuation of this project today – at the very least, a striking difference in rhetoric and ostensible aim. While the first generation advocates of European integration did not hesitate to speak of the project they had in mind as a ‘United States of Europe’, evoking the example of the USA, current discussion has moved away from the model of a federal state, avoiding even the term ‘federation’. Larry Siedentop's recent book Democracy in Europe expresses a more cautious mood:

[A] great constitutional debate need not involve a prior commitment to federalism as the most desirable outcome in Europe. It may reveal that Europe is in the process of inventing a new political form, something more than a confederation but less than a federation – an association of sovereign states which pool their sovereignty only in very restricted areas to varying degrees, an association which does not seek to have the coercive power to act directly on individuals in the fashion of nation states.

Does this shift in climate reflect a sound realism, born of a learning-process of over four decades, or is it rather the sign of a mood of hesitance, if not outright defeatism?

Type
Chapter
Information
The Shape of the New Europe , pp. 25 - 45
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2006

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