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From the Constitutionalisation of Europe to a European Constitution

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From the Constitutionalisation of Europe to a European Constitution From the Constitutionalisation of Europe to a European Constitution from the national-conservative to the social democra- by Peter Brandt and Dimitris Tsatsos tic-socialist wing but with the exception of the commu- nists, formulated the programmatic demand for a European unity which appeared essential for security From the constitutionali- and economic reasons. Only by overcoming traditional sation of Europe to a power politics and unrestricted national sovereignty in European constitution favour of a supranational federal authority would Europe and the nations contained within such a he idea of a closer European Union be able to assert themselves against European Union, as the new world powers. Ta kind of league of princes and in sharp deli- The goal of establishing Europe as a 'third force', also neation from the Islamic in terms of its social order, between the USA and the Ottoman Empire and, to a Soviet Union which social democrats in particular saw lesser extent, also Russia as part of the unification perspective lost all chances of and the orthodox Eastern its realisation when the British Labour government, to church, began to find which great hopes had been attached, refused to play expression from as early as the leadership role expected of it. In view of Stalin's Peter Brandt the 15th century in plans for brutal imposition of exploitation and conformity in the a confederation put forward Soviet sphere of power on the one hand, and the deter- by rulers such as Henry IV of France. Beyond that, and mination of the US to uphold their economic and stra- usually more vaguely, eminent thinkers such as Johann tegic interests on this side of the Atlantic on the other, Amos Comenius, Jean Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel a decidedly democratic-socialist policy of European Kant articulated the idea of European unity. Henri independence was faced with enormous obstacles any- Saint-Simon, also one of the early utopian socialists, way. A 'Socialist Movement for the United States of envisaged all of Europe as a constitutional monarchy Europe', founded in June 1947, could not expand this with a bicameral parliament. Conservatives like narrow room for manouevre. François René Chateaubriand developed their own visi- ons as well as representatives of the liberal-democratic From as early as the late 1940s onwards, efforts at national movements, for example Giuseppe Mazzini - European unification, inevitably confined to Western indeed the differentiation of the large cultural and soci- Europe, became an element in the East-West conflict al space west of the Urals into modern nations is a typi- and American hegemonialism, although this began to cally European phenomenon - , the bourgeois peace change in parts from the 1960s. To begin with, the USA movement and of course socialism in all its currents. clearly saw more advantages than risks in a closer union The SPD, for instance, in its Heidelberg Programme of of Europe, with or without Great Britain, and unambi- 1925 advanced the slogan of the 'United States of guously supported the early projects: from the coal and Europe'. steel community via the (failed) European Defence Community with its concomitant unified political It was at this time, under the shadows of the First structures to the European Economic Community of World War, that the idea of European unification the Six agreed in 1957. began to play a larger role in realpolitik terms. In 1930 Aristide Briand, then France's left-liberal foreign mini- The latter's gradual expansion into a union which is ster, first presented other governments with his plan soon to incorporate almost the entire non-Russian for a European federation, inspired by the pan- Europe, and its institutional consolidation, has from European movement of Count Richard Coudenhove- the beginning, and always anew, posed the kind of fun- Calergi. Due to the beginning world economic crisis damental questions with which the unification process and the protectionist measures taken by nation states is still coming to grips and which inevitably stand at the on the one hand, and the unbroken traditions of natio- centre of a 'European Constitution'. As a matter of nal power politics and the corresponding thought pat- fact, the unification process has always contained both terns of all involved on the other, Briand's plan did not intergovernmental and supranational elements, with the progress beyond initial discussions. former usually dominant. Even De Gaulle however, with his attempt to bring the European communities A decisive turning was reached with the Second World under the control of a French-led confederation of War, when the larger part of the European continent states, could not and probably would not completely was occupied by Hitler's Germany which attempted to eliminate the supranational element. unite a fascist Europe under its own leadership. In all the occupied countries, the heads of the resistance, By contrast, attempts such as the one first undertaken 13 Social Europe the journal of the european left May 2005 in 1962 in a draft written by an ad-hoc group for the 'absolute' monarchy - that is one limited only by divine governments, to give the constitution of Europe a pre- and natural law - and in the most 'absolutist' states the dominantly federal character, have so far failed due to intermediary powers of the estates remained much the resistance of the individual states. The constitutio- more important than has been commonly assumed. In nal treaty of 29 October 2004 is therefore above all their own understanding, the claims to autonomy and characterised by the equal weight given to the two participation of the estates included, in certain conditi- structural principles and its avoidance of any finality on ons, the right of resistance to a law-breaking authority, the question while simultaneously keeping open the perhaps even violent resistance. The modern declarati- possibility of a further development of the Union, ons of human rights are grounded in the Europe-wide especially with regards to the powers of the parliament discourse of resistance in the early modern era. which have already been significantly expanded since the 1980s. One of the most fundamental historical preconditions of the constitutional state in Europe was the role of Historical preconditions of the constitutional state the Christian, especially the catholic, churches as a uni- in Europe fying factor in the ancient European political culture. The church had absorbed the cultural heritage of anti- The gradual emergence of a 'European Constitutuion' quity, including that of Roman law, which served to is unthinkable without the specifically European tradi- legitimate the monarchical central power arising in the tions of the constitutional nation state late middle ages. There was no direct which in turn builds on much older histo- road from a feudal society based on rical traditions. The basic principle of legal inequality and territorially frag- Europe's historical develeopment since mented empires to a modern constitu- the Middle Ages is pluralism: between the tional state which, while divided into variegated and relatively small-scale, and socio-economic classes, required a citi- mostly aristocratic, units as well as within zenship defined by legal liberty and the various communities where the emer- equality. It was only the rise of the ging processes of politics favoured sovereign state in the form of absolute functionally differentiated systems over monarchy during the 17th and 18th cen- autocracies. This characteristic 'pluralism' turies which pushed back the interme- usually expressed itself in violent terms, diary powers of the estates to such an in sometimes very bloody wars and civil extent that a politically more uniform wars which permeated European history society of subjects came into existence and were only exceptionally interrupted while on the opposite side the executive by prolonged periods of peace. The mili- Dimitris Tsatsos functions of the ruler became increasing- tary, war and power expansion, moreover, ly differentiated and transferred to the constituted one of the major forces behind the techno- bureaucracy. The relationship between a society of sub- logical-economic formation of Europe until the middle altern subjects and the monarchical state power became of the twentieth century. The social hegemony of the both more direct and more abstract, and against the nobility on the basis of the thousand years dominance background of a clearly accelerating social and econo- of the feudal-agrarian mode of production, comple- mic dynamic since the mid-18th century demanded a mented by cooperative elements of various strengths in new set of administrative and juridical rules. peasant communities, limited the monarchies as the agents of pre-modern state formation as much as the Alongside the originally dominant medical and geogra- relatively autonomous European towns and cities as phic uses of the word 'constitution' it was common to centres of trade and commerce. The social and occupa- consider fundamental treaties and laws such as the tional differentiation in the medieval and early-modern British Magna Carta of 1215 or the Roman-German city required a much higher level of regulation compa- 'Golden Bull' of 1356 as 'constitutional laws'. However, red with rural society, especially with regards to the law, none of these 'constitutional laws' of the early modern administration, and finance, and the necessity to invol- period was intended to provide a comprehensive politi-
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