Abstract
“Every power comes through crisis” has long been a motif of European integration. The financial and sovereign debt crises, which have shaken the European Union (EU) in recent years, are at first glance no different. Treaty reforms, intergovernmental treaties such as the Fiscal Compact and the Treaty Establishing a European Stability Mechanism (ESM Treaty) have significantly altered the constitutional landscape of the EU and its Member States. The crisis has also inspired many European legal scholars to critically analyse the EU’s system of economic governance, as have other events throughout the history of the European Union, from the Empty Chair Crisis to the referenda in the aftermath of the Treaty of Maastricht and the failure of the Constitution for the European Union. What does seem to be different is the way in which scholars approach the issue of the Eurozone crisis. Instead of a purely legal perspective on economic governance, European legal scholars have realised that in order to understand and analyse the euro crisis, interdisciplinarity is the word of the moment.
Highlights
The authors of “The Eurozone Crisis: A Constitutional Analysis” are no exception
The Treaties of Rome and the European Economic Community were characterised by a microeconomic constitution, creating free movement rights for individuals on the one hand, and competition law aiming at creating a level playing field for business on the other, while the Treaty of Maastricht was a result of a ubiquity of the political constitution, the Treaty of Amsterdam a sign of a preponderance of a security constitution (Common Foreign and Security Policy), while the euro crisis has brought the economic constitution in its macroeconomic form back to the foreground
The first part is mainly descriptive and a useful summary of European economic integration and the crisis that the Eurozone is currently facing. It identifies a move from a purely microeconomic constitution to a macroeconomic constitution as a logical step, first focussing on individual freedoms and trade, to an Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) as envisaged by Maastricht, while the authors argue that the decision to complete the EMU was a mainly politically motivated decision based on the prevalence of the political constitution at the time
Summary
The authors of “The Eurozone Crisis: A Constitutional Analysis” are no exception. Their monograph is based on the authors’ assumption that constitutional law and economics are closely interrelated and need to be treated as such. It is an accurate account of events and the authors rightly assert that the Maastricht principles did not include economic policy constraints on Member States other than the issue of government debt, while other macroeconomic imbalances such as private debt and trade balances with non-EU countries should have been addressed.
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