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The Constitution, The State and the European Union

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 October 2017

NW Barber
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Is the european Union a state? Does it possess a constitution? And, accompanying these conundrums, if the Union lacks these characteristics, should we seek to confer them on it? There are some questions which are easier to answer than to understand, and questions about the statehood and constitution of the Union are of this nature. Pragmatic scholars have tended to dispose of such matters briskly; confident that their answers were correct, even if unsure of the basis for their confidence. The decision to entitle the product of the European Convention a ‘constitution’ has given these questions new significance. A small portion, at the very least, of the confused debate surrounding the Draft Constitution has been caused by the murky relationship between constitutions and states, and the implications that flow from statehood.

Type
Research Article
Information
Cambridge Yearbook of European Legal Studies , Volume 8 , 2006 , pp. 37 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © Centre for European Legal Studies, Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge 2006

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