The constitutional mutation of the European Union

Authors

  • Aguistín José Menéndez

Keywords:

European Constitutional Law, Constitutional Mutation, Relationship between national and supranational constitutional law, Constitutional mandates to integrate beyond the state, Social and Democratic Rechtsstaat

Abstract

The government of the manifold European crisis (economic, financial, fiscal, of the steering capacity of macroeconomic performance and, above all, political) has unleashed a process of constitutional mutation in Europe, and very particularly, of the European Union. The many ad hoc decisions and structural reforms by means of which European leaders have tried to mitigate the effects of the European crises, and at the end of the day, overcome the crises themselves, have resulted in a deep transformation of the structural and substantive principles of European constitutional law. This paper aims at providing a systematic reconstruction of the constitutional changes and a normative analysis of how the government of the crises has affected the regulatory ideal of the Social and Democratic Rechtsstaat, and in particular each of the three components of that state model.