50 Jahre Europäische Ordnungspolitik: ordnungs- und konstitutionenökonomische Anmerkungen / 50 years of European „Ordnungspolitik”, remarks from a constitutional economics perspective

From a “neo-liberal” point of view, European integration during the last 50 years was a rather mixed event. I contrast Hayek’s early optimistic vision of voluntary interstate federalism leading to a freedom-preserving supra-national order with Erhard’s pessimistic premonition of an interventionist European super-state in order to show that, with the benefit of hindsight, both have been partly right and partly wrong. Hayek underestimated the power of log-rolling and vested interests of European agencies in activist interventionism. Erhard, in turn, did not foresee the element of self-binding commitments already incorporated in the Treaty of Rome and further strengthened by some rather market-friendly interpretations of the European Courts and Commission. The future of European integration may well be shaped by how the EU will address the trade-off between further integration and further widening of the Union. From a constitutional economics perspective, I here advocate a model of flexible integration within clubs aiming at further collaboration in specific policy areas.