El Tratado de Lisboa en el diván. Una reflexión sobre estatalidad, constitucionalidad y Unión Europea.

Abstract

This article analyses the Lisbon Treaty in the context of EU integration and constitutionalisation. The author criticises the Euro-sceptics’ rejection of State-like characteristics in the European Union, manifested in the way the Lisbon Treaty was drawn up in an attempt to «destructure» and disguise European constitutional law. His article analyses the model of European integration over the EU’s first fifty years, based on an assymmetry between the continuity of States, ie, State power, in each national space and in the European space, vis-a-vis the discontinuity of citizenship, fragmented and limited to the national space. The article questions the idea that the European Union is not a «State» in the sense that, although it is not «a State», it is endowed with Statelike characteristics in that it exercises powers that States used to exercise. It also casts doubt on the idea that constituional law has a performative condition of statehood. On the contrary, what constitutional law contributes to the European Union is not statehood but democracy. It is not about it being «more State» but «more democratic State». In line with this idea, it traces the exhaustion of the integration model established in the first fifty years and shows the need to orient a new model towards rupturing the citizenship discontinuity, towards the construction of a constitutional decision-making space in the European Union in which its member citizens are not fragmented. From this perspective, despite the fact that the Lisbon Treaty is a clear step backwards after the Constitutional Treaty, is makes a substantial contribution to the incorporation of constitutional content into European law. Very specifically, it places the accent on the importance of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights coming into force in order to help to develop a genuine European political community.