The Crisis of the European Union: A Response

Abstract

A Crisis of the European Union contains the essay “The Crisis of the European Union in Light of a Constitutionalisation of International Law—An Essay on the Constitution for Europe,” the second essay “The Concept of Human Dignity and the Realistic Utopia of Human Rights,” and an appendix “The Europe of the Federal Republic.” The first essay is itself divided into three sections: “Why Europe is Now More than Ever a Constitutional Project”; “The European Union Must Decide between Transnational Democracy and Post-Democratic Executive Federalism,” and “From the International to the Cosmopolitan Community.” The second of these sections is itself divided between five subsections: “Against a Reification of Popular Sovereignty,” “The First Innovation: The Primacy of Supranational Law Over the National Law of the Monopolists on the Means for a Legitimate Use of Force,” “The Second Innovation: The Sharing of Constituting Power between EU Citizens and European Peoples,” “Shared Sovereignty as the Standard for the Legitimation Requirements of the Union,” and “The Hesitation of the Political Elites at the Threshold to Transnational Democracy.” The Appendix is divided between an interview from the newspaper Die Zeit “After the Bankruptcy,” an essay published in Die Zeit “The Euro Will Decide the Fate of the European Union,” and an essay published in the newspaper Süddeutschen Zeitung “A Pact for or against Europe.” An index is sadly lacking, which is surely a loss to the reader even for a short book of this kind.