The Failure of the Eu’s Constitutional Project: a Cultural Discrepancy

Abstract

Maybe the European constitutional project was a mistake. Maybe it was a mistake to try to confer a formal benediction on the European Union's (EU) already existing material constitution and, at the same time, to transfer the constitutional rhetoric from elite discourses to the general discourse on the EU. EU law is a case of transnational law, and the conceptual difficulties encountered in the examination of the EU's constitutional issues exemplify the difficulties of conceptualizing transnational law. The critical examination of the inherited concepts should begin from the very concept of constitution. This chapter briefly explores the constitution's functions, first in the political and then in the legal system. Constitutional law also includes sub-surface levels. It is also about constitutional culture: constitutional theories, concepts and principles, and patterns of constitutional argumentation. Constitutional culture plays both a constitutive or enabling and a restricting role with respect to constitutional practices.Keywords:constitutional culture; European constitutional project; legal system; political system; transnational law