06 December 2016
A Homeless Ghost? European Legal Integration in Search of a Polity
A member of the European Parliament recently compared the European Union to an Airbus on autopilot attempting to cross the Alps without taking off the ground. Be it the EUās piecemeal approach to fixing its economic governance post-financial crisis or its inability to speak with one voice in matters of common concern from internal border management to external trade: there is a growing sense of urgency in reforming the EU legal architecture to steer European integration back on course. However, such functional necessities are unlikely to sway the peoples of Europe who ā tired of the EUās attempts at technocratic self-rule ā increasingly retreat into the homeliness of their nation-states. From the early āno moreā war discourse to the āno choiceā rhetoric of late in governing a Union in crisis, European integration has often been presented as a political inevitability. Yet it appears that the most ambitious modern project of legal and political integration beyond the state has come to a halt ā where from here? Continue reading >>
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10 November 2016
Thirteen Theses on Trump and Liberal Democracy
No one wants to go down in the history books like those fools who said in the 1930s, "well, Hitler isn't such a bad chap really..." Protecting our egos from the imagined judgment of prosperity, the cautious course is to predict the worst for the Trump Presidency, the very destruction of the American constitutional regime, the collapse of liberal democratic values. I however am willing to risk being proven a fool, so here goes... Continue reading >>04 November 2016
Enemies of the People?
"Enemies of the People": that is, according to the Daily Mail, what the High Court judges are. Joseph Stalin would have been wildly amused by this way of putting thingsā¦ Leaving aside such 30s reminiscences, it seems to me too simple to reduce this phenomenon solely to the disgracefulness of the British boulevard press and Tory backbenchers. There is something more fundamental going on. Not only in the United Kingdom. But in the entire Western democratic constitutional space. Continue reading >>24 October 2016
Ganz Gallien? FehlschlĆ¼sse aus dem wallonischen CETA-Veto
Wallonien lƤsst die westliche Welt zappeln ā und wird dafĆ¼r je nach politischem Standpunkt des Betrachters als einzig aufrechtes gallisches Dorf besungen oder als eigennĆ¼tzige Erpresserbande geschmƤht. Stutzig macht jedoch die prompte Reaktion, man hƤtte CETA besser doch nicht als āgemischtes Abkommenā einstufen sollen, sondern als Abkommen zwischen der EU und Kanada ohne direkte Beteiligung der Mitgliedstaaten. Diese Reaktion zeugt von Demokratieverachtung. Continue reading >>06 July 2016
Calling Europe into Question: the British and the Greek referenda
On this day last year, Greeks woke up facing a referendum result that very few had expected. Almost a year later, on the 24th of June 2016, British and other Europeans woke up overwhelmingly surprised by the āLeaveā vote. Despite their significant differences, the Greek and the British referenda have some important things in common. Reading them together might have something to teach us about referenda on the EUāespecially now that more people seem to be asking for one in their own country. Continue reading >>29 June 2016
Sovereign and misinformed: Brexit as an exercise in democracy?
Rather than criticising the Brexit referendum as a decision-making tool because āthe peopleā donāt have the necessary expertise to take decisions of this magnitude, we should question the conditions in which many UK voters were called to express their opinion. They, like many all over the world, have seen the progressive hollowing-out of those basic rights that make voting the expression of the right to individual and collective self-rule in the first place. Continue reading >>21 June 2016
Staunenswertes aus Karlsruhe: zum OMT-Urteil des BVerfG
Ćber die heutige Entscheidung aus Karlsruhe zur Geld- bzw. Wirtschaftspolitik der EZB und das darin zur Vollendung gelangte "Grundrecht auf Demokratie". Continue reading >>11 March 2016
Aus Anlass Polens: einige Ćberlegungen zum Recht auf Widerstand
Ab heute ist es amtlich: Die Mittel, zu denen Polens Regierung, PrƤsident und Parlamentsmehrheit im Konflikt mit dem polnischen Verfassungsgericht gegriffen haben, sind nicht einfach nur ein VerfassungsverstoĆ. Das ist ein Angriff auf die Grundlagen der Verfassungsstaatlichkeit selbst ā auf Rechtsstaatlichkeit, Demokratie und Menschenrechte. WƤre eine Konstellation, wie sie im Augenblick in Polen zu finden ist, ein Anwendungsfall fĆ¼r ein Art. 20 Abs. 4 Grundgesetz entsprechendes Recht auf Widerstand? Mir scheint, das wƤre sie ā wenn die polnische Regierung sich dem Gutachten der Venedig-Kommission nicht beugt. Continue reading >>11 March 2016
The Polish Constitutional Crisis and āPolitics of Paranoiaā
Thanks to the growing interest in the āPolish caseā, Europe should now have a clear legal understanding of what is going on in Poland and of the motives of the government: the systemic repudiation of some of the fundamental principles of Polish constitutional order, rule of law, legality, separation of powers, independence of the judiciary, supremacy of the Constitution and the monopoly of constitutional review. Continue reading >>
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15 February 2016