Final Activity Report Summary - EUROCONSTITUTIONS (L'Europe en Constitution(s); geneses d'une utopie politique et juridique: la constitution europeenne au 20eme siecle)
The treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe is the result of two different and parallel strategies. A political strategy to draft a constitutional treaty and a juridical strategy to 'constitutionalise' the existing treaties. These two different strategies, that go back to the genesis of European integration and developed in parallel, finally converged at the end of the nineties after various attempts to draft a Constitution failed again in 1984 and 1994, and the European Court of Justice recognised that the Treaty of Rome was the 'basic constitutional charter' of the European Communities in 1986.
This convergence is particularly apparent in both the Amato and Duhamel reports of 1999 and 2000 respectively calling for a further 'constitutionalisation' of the treaties and for a European Convention vested with the power to draft a European Constitution.
The main conclusion of this research project is that this convergence between two sets of strategies is not only the product of a conscious plan to strengthen the juridical architecture of the European Union, but also the result of the a long-term transformation of elite recruitment in the European institutions and, more so, the common social and professional trajectories and capitals of the various political and juridical elites which promoted the constitutionalisation and Constitution of Europe.
This convergence is particularly apparent in both the Amato and Duhamel reports of 1999 and 2000 respectively calling for a further 'constitutionalisation' of the treaties and for a European Convention vested with the power to draft a European Constitution.
The main conclusion of this research project is that this convergence between two sets of strategies is not only the product of a conscious plan to strengthen the juridical architecture of the European Union, but also the result of the a long-term transformation of elite recruitment in the European institutions and, more so, the common social and professional trajectories and capitals of the various political and juridical elites which promoted the constitutionalisation and Constitution of Europe.