Is a European Constitution for an Enlarged European Union Necessary? Some Thoughts Using Public Choice Analysis

Friedrich Schneider ()

Chapter U in 50 Years of EU Economic Dynamics, 2007, pp 341-356 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract After successfully implementing the European Economic and Monetary Union, we are currently realizing the failure of implementing a European constitution due to the selfish behavior of politicians and the rejection of this constitution in popular referenda by a vast majority of the French and Dutch voters in spring 2005. A year earlier, ten mostly former transition countries (e.g. Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia) entered the EU in May 2004 establishing a European Union of 25 members. Given this development, the following basic question arises: Which essential constitutional reforms (possibly ending in a European Federal Constitution) are needed? Due to the rejection of the European Constitution by the French and Dutch voters and due to the enlarged EU with 25 members, the “old” EU arrangements do not guarantee a smooth functioning of the institutions of the European Union with 25 quite different members, mainly different with respect to their economic development. Hence new institutional arrangements have to be developed and one possible reform step is a new but much less ambitious European Constitution2. In order to avoid a major crisis of the functioning of this larger EU, the author proposes the idea, that some (albeit, minimal) European federal union will be necessary3.

Keywords: Public Choice; Direct Democracy; European Parliament; European Constitution; European Government (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-540-74055-1_22

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-540-74055-1_22

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