Administration or Federation? Constitutional Self-Image and the World Political Order in Which the EU Finds Itself
Perspectives on Federalism, Volume 9, Issue 2, pp. 216-239, 2017
24 Pages Posted: 19 Jul 2017 Last revised: 6 Jan 2023
Date Written: July 14, 2017
Abstract
In this article, I compare the constitutional and the administrative model in terms of their implications for the EU legal order’s interaction with other legal regimes. I aim to make a twofold argument on the implications of the EU’s constitutional self-image to the world political order. First, as the CJEU takes an identity-centred strong constitutionalist position on the Union’s external relations, it implicitly frames the EU legal order’s interaction with other legal regimes as in a federated order. Yet the strong political implications of federation are likely to bring about more inter-regime conflicts and provoke reactions from the member states. Second, I provide a critique of the administrative model in light of GAL’s intervention in inter-regime relations, suggesting a post-identity constitutional alternative in times of crisis. Freed from the value-laden concept of constitutional identity but without de-constitutionalizing itself, the EU can have the benefits of both the constitutional and administrative models by moving towards a weak-form constitutional order. In the event, whether to conduct the EU’s external relations according to the constitutional or the administrative model is a misconceived debate.
Keywords: Administration, Federation, Global Administrative Law (GAL), Inter-Regime Relations, Weak-Form Constitutional Order, EU Crisis, Constitutional Self-Image, Constitutional Identity and Integrity, EU External Relations, Post-Identity Constitutional Vision, Political Form
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