The neutralisation of the political. Carl Schmitt and the depoliticisation of Europe

Abstract

ABSTRACT Making use of Carl Schmitt’s theoretical tool kit, in this article, we intend to offer an insight into the liberal depoliticisation presupposed and sustained by the process of European integration. We argue that the comprehension of the current deficit of legitimacy of the EU – materialised in a formal self-constitution (which dismisses completely the question of the European demos) and a technocratic governance whose liberal-authoritarian traits produces an essential insulation of the decision-making processes – must pass through an engagement with the epochal and ideological conditions upon which it has been thought; that is the necessity to find a solution to the endless European civil war, on the ground of widespread liberal forms of depoliticisation. In the exaltation of the law as a supreme/exclusive means of an indefinite process of integration, the political soul of integration has become lost, caged in formalist procedures deliberately intended to depoliticize the decision-making process. Leaning on Schmitt’s concept of ‘neutralisation’ and ‘depoliticisation’ is functional to the comprehension of how the process of European integration has used the law, a liberal ethos and market economy and as strategies to thwart the political.