The Constitutional Theory of the Federation and the European Union

Synopsis

What type of political association is the European Union? From the start of the European integration process, this question has puzzled scholars. Many different answers have been offered, but in the absence of an agreed response, most scholars implicitly avoid the issue by suggesting that the European Union is sui generis. This book challenges the sui generis thesis by demonstrating that the European Union is not a unique form of association, but rather a federal union of states, or what this book calls a federation. 

This is a discrete form of political association on a par with, though differentiated from, the other two forms of political modernity, namely the state and the empire. Therefore, the federation cannot be understood on the basis of the theory of the state, hereunder the concept of sovereignty. The ‘statist’ worldview still dominates both the debates on federalism and the European Union, meaning that all federal polities are seen either as ‘confederal’ associations of sovereign states or as sovereign federal states. 

The book challenges the statist schism of ‘federal’ versus ‘confederal’ by demonstrating that the federation is a discrete political form with a discrete constitutional theory, characterized by its own strengths and weaknesses. The federation is a political union of states founded on an interstate agreement of a constitutional nature, a federal compact, that does not absorb the Member States into a new state. It is characterized by a double political existence and the internal absence, contestation, or repression of sovereignty.

Description
Signe REHLING LARSEN. The constitutional theory of the federation and the European Union. Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2021, 212 p.