The first senate of the German Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) in Karlsruhe (Baden-Württemberg), 2015. Uli Deck/Press Assocation. All rights reserved.One of the goals in DiEM25’s Progressive Agenda for Europe is to initiate a constituent process – to imagine a democratic pan-European constitution and the process that may lead to it. We’re already making good progress in this long enterprise, with the conversation well under way amongst members across Europe. In this two-part series, London DSC member Sam Hufton shares his thoughts on such a constituent process as a contribution to our conversation. Sam looks first at why Europe’s existing treaties are failing its citizens… and then at how the European idea can be saved. Here’s part 1.
The problem with founding a constitutional order on the basis of treaties has been amply discussed by observers of the European construct for decades, and from the crucial decade of the 1990s in particular. Chief among these concerns is that in reality, treaties are international law. Treaties are drafted by ministers of state and diplomats and not by the people to which they will apply; it is the states rather than their citizens, who are the ‘High Contracting Parties’.
The result of this is the fact that in our political discourse and in law they do not carry the same weight as a real constitution. In European politics, the treaties are not referred to as the authority defining or guaranteeing our rights and duties to one another, nor as an example of our common involvement in and control over the Union – because they are not. They are creatures of intergovernmental conferences, not citizens’ politics.
