Constitution
- Supporters of a European Constitution (Photo: thesetides.com)
A constitution is the basic rulebook for a state that limits the powers of all authorities, including the legislators, and gives citizens common fundamental rights.
The EU Court in Luxembourg has developed a system of EU law where EU rules and laws overrule (prevail over) national laws and constitutions. The Court sees the EU legal system as a supra-national constitutional system. (See the Court case "Les Verts" from 1986).
The future
The proposition for the EU Constitution proposed a "constitutional Treaty" which would establish a "constitution for Europe" highlighting the primacy of EU rules and laws over national rules and laws - and also over national constitutions.
The word constitution was used 180 times in the proposition for the EU Constitution.
The revised EU Constitution has deleted the name “Constitution” every where in the text. Instead it reminds in a footnote to Declaration no 17 on existing case law from the EU Court having established the principle of primacy of EU law.
There is also a statement from the Court calling the EU treaties ”the Constitutional Charter of a Community of Law, a new legal order for the sake of which the States have limited their sovereign rights” (Opinion 1/91).
A country can only leave the EU by a unanimous decision in the Council (or by breaking the rules). The proposition for the EU Constitution and now the Lisbon Treaty makes it posible to leave the EU within the two years that an agreement is negotiated. The member state can decide to leave the EU after two years.
Links
The main stages in the institutional reform of the European Union http://europa.eu/institutional_reform/index_en.htm
Also see
