The Euro Crisis and the Constitutional Disorder of the European Union

Abstract

The Lisbon Treaty is the outcome of several constitutional compromises. The compromise between the supranational and the intergovernmental views of the European Union (EU), the compromise between the member states engaged in building a European Monetary Union (EMU) and those allowed to opt-out from it and the compromise, within the EMU, between a centralized approach to monetary policy and decentralized economic, fiscal and budgetary policies, constrained however within the formalized rules of the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP). The euro crisis has called into question this multiple constitutional setting. The balance between supranational and intergovernmental views has been upset in favour of the former. The approval of new intergovernmental treaties has made crystal clear the separation of interests between the EMU and the opt-out member states (the United Kingdom in specific). The inefficacy of the voluntary coordination between national governments in dealing with the euro crisis has brought to an unprecedented centralization and judicialization in the governance of the common currency. In the constitutional disorder induced by the euro crisis the EU has assumed specific institutional, legal and ideological configurations.