The article explores whether the Constitutional Treaty may provide more legitimacy for governance in the European Union. After presenting a list of normative criteria, relevant parts of the Constitutional Treaty are summarised and evaluated. It is concluded that the Constitutional Treaty's 'added value' is rather small: the document does not make the complicated nature of Union powers and Union decision-making visible and understandable to the public; the vertical and horizontal checks on the use of Union power are suboptimal; the EU's weak 'input legitimacy' is not strengthened. On the other side, the Constitutional Treaty might provide for a better protection of fundamental rights at the supranational level. Hence, as regards enhanced legitimacy, the overall picture, albeit somewhat daunting, is not altogether bleak.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
file. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Did you know? Each page is provided with a technical contact, in case something is not right with the supplied information. See under "publisher info".