The Social Construction of the Acquis Communautaire: A Cornerstone of the European Edifice

Knud Erik Jorgensen

European Integration online Papers (EIoP), 1999, vol. 3

Abstract: The acquis communautaire is almost always (self-re)presented as a rock hard principle, as something applicant countries have to adapt to. Employing a Nietzsche-Foucauldian genealogical method, the paper explores an important instance of intersubjectivity of meaning among European integrators, or, in concrete terms, the genealogy of the acquis . The paper explores how the acquis has become such a powerful non-negotiable condition for accession and traces one origin of the acquis back to the early 1960s, to the first round of (failed) negotiations on enlargement. The paper argues that currently there are at least two meanings of the acquis : (i) a political principle and, (ii) a legal principle, constituting a crucial aspect of constitutionalization in the European Union. Finally, the paper concludes that despite various direct political attacks, and despite the worries of several scholars, the acquis seems not at all to be an endangered principle.

Keywords: acquis communautaire; constitution building; enlargement; European identity; Europeanization; governance; law; polity building; power analysis; supranationalism; political science (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1999-04-29
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://eiop.or.at/eiop/texte/1999-005a.htm Abstract (text/html)
http://eiop.or.at/eiop/texte/1999-005.htm Full text (text/html)
http://eiop.or.at/eiop/pdf/1999-005.pdf Full text (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:erp:eiopxx:p0038

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://eiop.or.at/eiop/

Access Statistics for this article

European Integration online Papers (EIoP) is currently edited by Gerda Falkner

More articles in European Integration online Papers (EIoP) from European Community Studies Association Austria (ECSA-A) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Editorial Assistant (eiop@eiop.or.at this e-mail address is bad, please contact repec@repec.org).