The New Transformation of Europe: Arcana Imperii

Abstract

Abstract The European Union is undergoing a structural transformation—a regression from integration through law as an anti-hegemonic project of equal membership to a condition in which member state orders, under a transformed European Union law, gravitate around unequal relations of subordination. Alongside the surveillance mechanisms that constrain the member states to conform to the requirements of the Economic and Monetary Union are private law arrangements (the “memoranda of understanding” qua “contracts”) that equally, and with greater force, produce subordination. Adopting a critical comparative-historical approach, this Article delves into Europe’s collective legal memory, and the past of colonial relations, to make intelligible the deployment of the memoranda contracts whose harsh terms have been dramatically changing the condition of the “debtor countries” for the worse; in the arcana of private law lies the truth about the changing condition of sovereign power in contemporary Europe and about the potential to change direction and counter the “jurisdomination” turn.