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A ‘Minefield of Misreckonings’: Europe’s Constitutional Pluralism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 October 2017

Emilios Christodoulidis
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Abstract

The paper is a critique of ‘constitutional pluralism’, as increasingly called upon to compensate for the social and democratic deficits of the European project, and of ‘constitutionalisation’ as compensating for the absence of any semblance of ‘constituent power’ at the European level. The substitution has been largely successful in redefining the terms of the debate. My interest in this paper, more specifically, is with constitutionalisation as a process of ‘becoming-constitutional’, the conditions of that process, and the criteria of ascription of constitutionality. My argument is that it involves a constitutive coupling with constitutional pluralism, such that allows even the current crisis to be portrayed as an ‘opportunity’ for Europe’s alleged ‘social market economy for the 21st century’ to ‘come out stronger’, its progress at no point obstructed or derailed by the peoples’ of Europe resistance to it.

Type
Research Article
Information
Cambridge Yearbook of European Legal Studies , Volume 14 , 2012 , pp. 119 - 144
Copyright
Copyright © Centre for European Legal Studies, Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge 2012

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