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Contesting Political Differentiation pp 159–190Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Constituting Power in Europe

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Abstract

In Europe, sovereignty is pooled and bounded and decision-making power is shared by the EU and member states. This chapter sets out the cosmopolitan dimension of Europe’s liberal political order and clarifies why neither the framework of intergovernmentalism nor that of the federal state fit the EU. The framework of regional cosmopolitanism is a promising way to handle unity in diversity. Only respect for the individual—the ultimate unit of moral concern—gives modern law coherence and unity. The chapter then addresses Habermas’ concept of mixed constituent power and explains why it is shaky on constitutional grounds. Thereafter, it argues that there is a political universitas in Europe based on entrenched dignity protection, and that the integration process has created a European community of obligations.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See also Bajnai et al. (2012).

  2. 2.

    See the call ‘Founding Europe Anew!’, initiated by Frank Bsirske et al. with 35 signatories (including Habermas) (Bsirske et al. 2012).

  3. 3.

    While in line with the cosmopolitan credo, Habermas prefers ‘to focus on the more specific and demanding perspective of a constitutionalization of international law. The concept of “cosmopolitanism” tempts us to continue an older train of thought, rooted in Stoicism, that bypasses the major problem of how to tame, channel and civilize political power in legal terms even beyond the empire or the modern nation-state’ (Habermas 2014a: 5).

  4. 4.

    According to the former President of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, it was a ‘Schuman plan instead of a Treaty of Versailles’ (Leick 2013). See also Schulz (2013).

  5. 5.

    One cannot, to paraphrase Einstein, solve problems with the same means that produced them.

  6. 6.

    Cited from preamble of the Charter of fundamental Rights of the European Union (European Union 2012b).

  7. 7.

    See Brown (2014) and Thym (2016).

  8. 8.

    The following sections draw on Eriksen (2014).

  9. 9.

    People may object to a law but still find it legitimate, and orders can be unjust but still legitimate (Rawls 1995: 175).

  10. 10.

    He draws on the works of Von Bogdandy (2006), Von Bogdandy and Bast (2006), and Franzius (2010).

  11. 11.

    See Habermas (2012, 2014b, 2017), see also Niesen (2017), Patberg (2017), and Günther (2017).

  12. 12.

    Cf. articles 9–12 and 19(2) TEU (European Union 2012a).

  13. 13.

    See also Meyer (2003: 24ff.) for the wording on ‘Federation of Nation States’ and ‘European people’ in the EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights.

  14. 14.

    Habermas suggests that we should regard the Union as though, from the very beginning, two different subjects were involved in the constituting building process (2012: 38). See also Habermas (2014b, c).

  15. 15.

    For Kant ‘the ius cosmopoliticum, far from enacting an immediate political and legal recognition of individual members in a supranational collective authority, is mediated by the ius gentium, the right of states’ (Ypi 2008: 352).

  16. 16.

    Representative government has, according to Sieyes, only to do with choosing and changing experts (Urbinati 2006: 147).

  17. 17.

    ‘The power to act according to discretion for the public good, without prescription by the law and sometimes against it, is that which is called prerogative’ (Locke 1967 [1689]: book II, p. 160).

  18. 18.

    My position is in fact inspired by Habermas’ own procedural conception of popular sovereignty (Habermas 1996; cp. Eriksen and Weigård 2003: 129ff.), as well as of his insight that, ‘The EU constitution, like all modern legal systems […] rests in the final analysis on the subjective rights of the citizens’ (Habermas 2012: 35).

  19. 19.

    ‘Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world’, states the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (United Nations 1948: 1).

  20. 20.

    See also Rosen (2012: 62, 100) and cp. Habermas (2012), who sees human dignity as constituting the moral source of human rights ; see Joas (2011).

  21. 21.

    See Brunkhorst (2014: 426), and see p. 412 on how dignity was adopted in The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the role of Eleanor Roosevelt.

  22. 22.

    The moral standard of having one’s dignity respected is a higher-ranking principle that does not have the same sort of validity as the constitutional principles we live by; it is constitutive for the concept of basic individual human rights and for political equality.

  23. 23.

    Not least have these been visible in the protests and vociferous criticism of austerity measures and the Troika’s dictates in Greece—the protesters’ allegation of humiliation of the Greek population.

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  1. ARENA Centre for European Studies, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    Erik O. Eriksen

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Eriksen, E.O. (2019). Constituting Power in Europe. In: Contesting Political Differentiation. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11698-9_7

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