Revisiting “An Ever Closer Union of Law and Values”. Still Paddling Together?

Abstract

The ambition of this analysis is to move beyond the dominant perspective of human rights and instead embrace the neglected dimension of the axiology of the supranational integration. The technical question “how” supranational governance must today respond to the changing context of the law of integration and go hand in hand with revisiting the “why”, despite all our differences, we are still ready to live together within the supranational community. Such a shift in the emphasis is necessary given the fact that the law of integration read only through the prism of market has proven ineffective when it comes to counteracting new kinds of legalistic dangers that feed off „the politics of fear”, where the law is used not to empower but to disempower, not to liberate but to oppress, not to bring to the surface, but to hide and manipulate. In these circumstances one of the major scientific and political tasks is thus to improve the understanding of the novel threats on the individual, social and political levels and in this way to develop counter strategies and counter narratives. In other words, supranational governance needs a new conceptual justification that would explain the ethnography and the practice of supranational law of integration when faced with the novel forms of contestation. It is argued that the value discourse associated with supranational legality provides a truly paradigmatic turn in the studies on the supranational governance and design. In this spirit the analysis invites attention and more robust research to the neglected first order questions of belonging and identity in a common legal order where all the actors are being challenged to rethink their allegiances and anchor them firmly within the framework of common values and aspirations. For that to happen, though, a new narrative is needed, one that would provide all the actors of the law of integration with the discursive framework and a point of reference to defend and better explicate transnational democracy and the rule of law, and not just human rights, as the constitutional essentials (“First Principles”) of the supranational legal order.