Improving EU Constitutional Politics? A Preliminary Assessment of the Convention

Abstract

The drafting of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union inaugurated a new procedure for the elaboration of constitutional rules, i.e. the Convention (whose very name was an act of self-assertion by releasing itself from its original designation as ‘the body’), and its success prompted its adoption for the preparation of the forthcoming 2004 IGC. The Convention, followed by an IGC, splits the procedure of 'constitutional' reform into two stages: a preparatory (deliberative) phase and a decision-making (negotiating) one and, in the eyes of the European leaders, this may resolve the dilemma of how to suffuse the Constitution-making exercise with legitimacy without relinquishing the 'constitutive power' of national governments. Re-staging the preparatory phase within a Convention implies opening up EU constitutive politics to a deliberative process that, nevertheless, does not a priori exclude the transactional dynamics of an IGC since preparatory outcomes do not necessarily bind upon 'true' negotiators.