Constituting Europe: Flexibility or Finalite

Abstract

Perhaps of all the dimensions of European integration, the debate about the constitution of Europe captures most comprehensively the variety of issues at stake. Although a theme of the political debate since the outset of the project and part of the judicial and academic vernacular since the Les Verts' judgment of the European Court, European constitutionalism seems recently to have gathered new momentum due to the intervention of actors at the forefront of the European political sphere.2 In many ways it is not surprising that constitutionalism-'lying between law and politics'3 and not only reflecting the relationship between the institutional and normative forces behind the integration process (forces which, at different stages in its development from 'integration through law' to the legitimation crisis post-Maastricht, have seen different degrees of emphasis and interaction), but presenting itself as a tool with which to further a particular vision of European integration-has been grasped by Euro-sceptics and proponents alike. There is a sense in which the current stage of integration-precipitated by Maastricht and the subsequent debates on legitimacy and the democratic deficit, and at the eve of a greatly enlarged political Union-represents a cross-roads, a point at which the selfreflection of political and institutional actors as well as the wider community in general has led to a deeper consideration of Europe's constitutional makeup. The degree of disagreement is substantial. And if the European project