40/30 (years) of Constitution and Integration: The national and European representation crisis

Abstract

This article critically approaches some issues of legal and political nature, necessarily controversial, raised by the Portuguese accession to the EU and the own political action of the Union, with the purpose to draw attention to the aspects that seem to be the most relevant in the 40/30 years milestone of the Constitution and the European integration. Amongst these issues I point out the followings: 1) perception and way of receiving the European integration by the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic, 2) degradation of the democratic principle and of the political representation due to the intervention of the EU in the member states politics or the effect of empting the internal politics caused by the action of the EU, 3) globalisation, neoliberalism and the crisis of the democratic power: producing the effect of moving the locus of the democratic powerand the erosion in the relations of the EU with the member states, 4) the EU as a space of action of the market against people. I intend, then, to provoke the debate on these relevant problems of the EU integration.